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Title: The General
Author: Forester, C. S. [Cecil Scott]
   [Smith, Cecil Louis Troughton] (1899-1966]
Date of first publication: 1936
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Michael Joseph, 1950
Date first posted: 20 April 2018
Date last updated: 20 April 2018
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1525

This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






THE GENERAL

by C. S. Forester






CHAPTER ONE


Nowadays Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Curzon, K.C.M.G., C.B., D.S.O.,
is just one of Bournemouth's seven generals, but with the distinction of
his record and his social position as a Duke's son-in-law, he is really
far more eminent than those bare words would imply. He is usually to be
seen in his bathchair with Lady Emily, tall, raw-boned, tweed-skirted,
striding behind. He has a large face, which looks as if it had been
rough-carved from a block of wood and his white hair and moustache stuck
on afterwards, but there is a kindly gleam in his prominent blue eyes
when he greets his acquaintances, and he purses up his lips in the
queerest old-maidish smile. He clings to the habit of the old-fashioned
bathchair largely for the reason that it is easier from a bathchair to
acknowledge one's friends; he has never taught himself to walk with ease
with any of the half-dozen artificial limbs he has acquired since the
war, and the stump of his amputated thigh still troubles him
occasionally. Besides, now that he is growing old he is a tiny bit
nervous in a motor-car.

Everybody is glad to have him smile to them on Bournemouth promenade,
because his smile is a patent of social eminence in Bournemouth. And he
wears his position with dignity, and is generous with his smiles, so
that his popularity is great although he plays very bad bridge. He goes
his way through the town, a plaid rug over his knees, the
steering-handle in his gloved hands, and on his approach newcomers are
hurriedly informed by residents about his brilliant career and his life
of achievement. Nowadays, when the memory of the war is fading, these
verbal accounts are growing like folk legends, and public opinion in
Bournemouth is inclined to give Sir Herbert Curzon more credit than he
has really earned, although perhaps not more than he deserves.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The day on which Curzon first stepped over the threshold of history, the
day which was to start him towards the command of a hundred thousand
men, towards knighthood--and towards the bathchair on Bournemouth
promenade--found him as a worried subaltern in an early South African
battle. The landscape all about him was of a dull reddish brown; even
the scanty grass and the scrubby bushes were brown. The arid plain was
seamed with a tangle of ravines and gullies, but its monotony was
relieved by the elevation in the distance of half a dozen flat-topped
rocky hills, each of them like the others, and all of them like nearly
every other kopje in South Africa.

Curzon was in command of his squadron of the Twenty-second Lancers, the
Duke of Suffolk's Own, an eminence to which he had been raised by the
chances of war. Three officers senior to him were sick, left behind at
various points on the lines of communication, and Captain the Honourable
Charles Manningtree-Field, who had been in command when the squadron
went into action, was lying dead at Curzon's feet with a Mauser bullet
through his head. Curzon was not thinking about Manningtree-Field. His
anxiety was such that immediately after the shock of his death, and of
the realization that men really can be killed by bullets, his first
thought had been that now he could use the captain's Zeiss binoculars
and try and find out what was happening. He stood on the lip of the
shallow depression wherein lay Manningtree-Field's body, the two
squadron trumpeters, and two or three wounded men, and he stared round
him across the featureless landscape.

In a long straggling line to his right and left lay the troopers of the
squadron, their forage caps fastened under their chins, firing away
industriously at nothing at all, as far as Curzon could see. In a gully
to the rear, he knew, were the horses and the horseholders, but beyond
that Curzon began to realize that he knew extraordinarily little about
the battle which was going on. The squadron was supposed to be out on
the right flank of an advancing British firing-line, but when they had
come galloping up to this position Curzon had not been in command, and
he had been so preoccupied with keeping his troop properly closed up
that he had not paid sufficient attention to what Manningtree-Field had
been doing.

Probably Manningtree-Field had not been too sure himself, because the
battle had begun in a muddle amid a cascade of vague orders from the
Staff, and since then no orders had reached them--and certainly no
orders had envisaged their coming under heavy fire at this particular
point. As an accompaniment to the sharp rattle of musketry about him
Curzon could hear the deeper sound of artillery in the distance, echoing
over the plain with a peculiar discordant quality, and against the
intense blue of the sky he could see the white puffs of the shrapnel
bursts far out to the left, but it was impossible to judge the position
of their target at that distance, and there was just enough fold in the
flat surface of the plain to conceal from him any sight of troops on the
ground.

Meanwhile an invisible enemy was scourging them with a vicious and
well-directed fire. The air was full of the sound of rifle bullets
spitting and crackling past Curzon's ears as he stood staring through
the binoculars. Curzon had an uneasy feeling that they were coming from
the flank as well as from the front, and in the absence of certain
knowledge he was rapidly falling a prey to the fear that the wily Boers
were creeping round to encircle him. A fortnight ago a whole squadron of
Lancers--not of his regiment, thank God--had been cut off in that way
and forced to surrender, with the result that that regiment was now
known throughout South Africa as "Kruger's Own." Curzon sweated with
fear at the thought of such a fate overtaking him. He would die rather
than surrender, but--would his men? He looked anxiously along the
straggling skirmishing line.

Troop Sergeant-Major Brown came crawling to him on his hands and knees.
Brown was a man of full body, and his face was normally brick-red, but
this unwonted exertion under a scorching sun coloured his cheeks like a
beetroot.

"Ain't no orders come for us, sir?" asked Brown, peering up at him.

"No," said Curzon sharply. "And stand up if you want to speak to me."

Brown stood up reluctantly amid the crackle of the bullets. After twenty
years' service, without having had a shot fired at him, and with his
pension in sight, it went against his grain to make a target of himself
for a lot of farmers whose idea of war was to lay ambushes behind rocks.

"Come down 'ere, sir, please, sir," pleaded Brown in a fever of
distress. "We don't want to lose _you_, sir, too, sir."

The loss of the only officer the squadron had left would place
Sergeant-Major Brown in command, and Brown was not at all desirous of
such a responsibility. It was that consideration which caused Curzon to
yield to his solicitations, and to step down into the comparative safety
of the depression.

"D'you fink we're cut orf, sir?" asked Brown, dropping his voice so as
to be unheard by the trumpeters squatting on the rocks at the bottom of
the dip.

"No, of course not," said Curzon. "The infantry will be up in line with
us soon."

"Ain't no sign of them, is there, sir?" complained Brown. "Expect the
beggars are 'eld up somewhere, or lorst their way, or something."

"Nonsense," said Curzon. All his training, both military and social, had
been directed against his showing any loss of composure before his
inferiors in rank, even if those inferiors should actually be voicing
his own fears. He stepped once more to the side of the hollow and stared
out over the rolling plain. There was nothing to be seen except the
white shrapnel bursts.

"Our orders was to find their flank," said Brown, fidgeting with his
sword hilt. "Looks to me more like as if they've found ours."

"Nonsense," repeated Curzon. But just exactly where the Boer firing-line
was to be found was more than he could say. Those infernal kopjes all
looked alike to him. He looked once more along the line of skirmishers
crouching among the rocks, and as he looked he saw, here and there,
faces turned towards him. That was a bad sign, for men to be looking
over their shoulders in the heat of action. The men must be getting
anxious. He could hardly blame them, seeing that they had been trained
for years to look upon a battle as a series of charges knee to knee and
lance in hand against a serried enemy. This lying down to be shot at by
hidden enemies a mile off was foreign to their nature. It was his duty
to steady them.

"Stay here, sergeant-major," he said. "You will take command if I'm
hit."

He stepped out from the hollow, his sword at his side, his uniform spick
and span, and walked in leisurely fashion along the firing-line. He
spoke to the men by name, steadily and unemotionally as he readied each
in turn. He felt vaguely as he walked that a joke or two, something to
raise a laugh, would be the most effective method of address, but he
never was able to joke, and as it was his mere presence and unruffled
demeanour acted as a tonic on the men. Twice he spoke harshly. Once was
when he found Trooper Haynes cowering behind rocks without making any
attempt to return the fire, and once was when he found Trooper Maguire
drinking from his water-bottle. Water out here in the veldt was a most
precious possession, to be hoarded like a miser's gold, for when there
was no more water there would be no fight left in the men.

He walked down the line to one end; he walked back to the other.
Sergeant-Major Brown, peeping out from his hollow, watched his officer's
fearless passage, and, with the contrariness of human nature, found
himself wishing he was with him. Then, when Curzon was nearly back in
safety again, Brown saw him suddenly swing right round. But next instant
he was walking steadily down to the hollow, and only when he was out of
sight of the men did he sit down sharply.

"Are you hit, sir?" asked Brown, all anxiety.

"Yes. Don't let the men know. I'm still in command."

Brown hastily called the squadron first-aid corporal with his haversack
of dressings. They ripped open Curzon's coat and bound up the entrance
and exit wounds. The destiny which directs the course of bullets had
sent this one clean through the fleshy part of the shoulder without
touching bone or artery or nerve.

"I'm all right," said Curzon manfully, getting to his feet and pulling
his torn coat about him. The arrival of a crawling trooper interrupted
Sergeant-Major Brown's protests.

"Message from Sergeant Hancock, sir," said the trooper. "Ammunition's
running short."

"Um," said Curzon thoughtfully, and a pause ensued while he digested the
information.

"There ain't fifty rounds left in our troop, sir," supplemented the
trooper, with the insistence of his class upon harrowing detail.

"All right," blazed Curzon irritably. "All right. Get back to the line."

"'Ave to do somethink now, sir," said Sergeant-Major Brown as the
trooper crawled away.

"Shut up and be quiet," snapped Curzon.

He was perfectly well aware that he must do something. As long as his
men had cartridges to fire they would remain in good heart, but once
ammunition failed he might expect any ugly incident to occur. There
might be panic, or someone might show a white flag.

"Trumpeter!" called Curzon, and the trumpeter leaped up to attention to
receive his orders.

The squadron came trailing back to the gully where the horses were
waiting. The wounded were being assisted by their friends, but they were
all depressed and ominously quiet. A few were swearing, using words of
meaningless filth, under their breath.

"What about the dead, sir?" asked Sergeant Hancock, saluting. "The
captain, sir?"

The regiment was still so unversed in war as to feel anxiety in the heat
of action about the disposal of the dead--a reminiscence of the warfare
against savage enemies which constituted the British Army's sole recent
experience. This new worry on top of all the others nearly broke Curzon
down. He was on the point of blazing out with "Blast the dead," but he
managed to check himself. Such a violation of the Army's recent
etiquette would mean trouble with the men.

"I'll see about that later. Get back into your place," he said. "Prepare
to mount!"

The squadron followed him down the ravine, the useless lances cocked up
at each man's elbow, amid a squeaking of leather and a clashing of iron
hoofs on the rocks. Curzon's head was beginning to swim, what with the
loss of blood, and the pain of his wound, and the strain he had
undergone, and the heat of this gully. He had small enough idea of what
he wanted to do--or at least he would not admit to himself that what he
wanted was to make his way back to some area where the squadron would
not be under fire and he might receive orders. The sense of isolation in
the presence of an enemy of diabolical cunning and strength was
overwhelming. He knew that he must not expose the squadron to fire while
in retreat. The men would begin to quicken their horses' pace in that
event--the walk would become a trot, the trot a gallop, and his
professional reputation would be blasted. The gully they were in
constituted at least a shelter from the deadly hail of bullets.

The gully changed direction more than once. Soon Curzon had no idea
where he was, nor whither he was going, but he was too tired and in too
much pain to think clearly. The distant gun-fire seemed to roll about
inside his skull. He drooped in his saddle and with difficulty
straightened himself up. The fortunate gully continued a long way
instead of coming to a rapid indefinite end as most gullies did in that
parched plain, and the men--and Sergeant-Major Brown--were content to
follow him without question. The sun was by now well down towards the
horizon, and they were in the shade.

It was in fact the sight of the blaze of light which was reflected from
the level plain in front which roused Curzon to the realization that the
gully was about to end beyond the tangle of rocks just in front. He
turned in his saddle and held up his hand to the column of men behind;
they came sleepily to a halt, the horses cannoning into the
hind-quarters of the horses in front, and then Curzon urged his horse
cautiously forward, his trumpeter close behind.

Peering from the shelter of the rocks, Curzon beheld the finest
spectacle which could gladden the eyes of a cavalry officer. The gully
had led him, all unaware, actually behind the flank of the Boer
position. Half a mile in front of him, sited with Boer cunning on the
reverse slope of a fold in the ground, was a battery of field-guns sunk
in shallow pits, the guns' crews clearly visible round them. There were
groups of tethered ponies. There was a hint of rifle trenches far in
front of the guns, and behind the guns were waggons and mounted staffs.
There was all the vulnerable exposed confusion always to be found behind
a firing-line, and he and his squadron was within easy charging distance
of it all, their presence unsuspected.

Curzon fought down the nightmare feeling of unreality which was stealing
over him. He filed the squadron out of the gully and brought it up into
line before any Boer had noticed them. Then, forgetting to draw his
sword, he set his spurs into his horse and rode steadily, three lengths
in front of his charging line, straight at the guns. The trumpeters
pealed the charge as the pace quickened.

No undisciplined militia force could withstand the shock of an
unexpected attack from the flank, however small the force which
delivered it. The Boer defence which had all day held up the English
attack collapsed like a pricked balloon. The whole space was black with
men running for their ponies. Out on the open plain where the sweltering
English infantry had barely been maintaining their firing-lines the
officers sensed what was happening. Some noticed the slackening of the
Boer fire. Some saw the Boers rise out of their invisible trenches and
run. One officer heard the cavalry trumpets, faint and sweet through the
heated air. He yelled to his bugler to sound the charge. The skirmishing
line rose up from flank to flank as bugler after bugler took up the
call. Curzon had brought them the last necessary impetus for the attack.
They poured over the Boer lines to where Curzon, his sword still in its
sheath, was sitting dazed upon his horse amid the captured guns.

The battle of Volkslaagte--a very great battle in the eyes of the
British public of 1899, wherein nearly five thousand men had been
engaged a side--was won, and Curzon was marked for his captaincy and the
D.S.O. He was not a man of dreams, but even if he had been, his wildest
dreams would not have envisaged the future command of a hundred thousand
British soldiers--nor the bathchair on Bournemouth promenade.




CHAPTER TWO


To Curzon the rest of the South African War was a time of tedium and
weariness. His wound kept him in hospital during the Black Week, while
England mourned three coincident defeats inflicted by an enemy whom she
had begun to regard as already at her mercy. He was only convalescent
during Roberts' triumphant advance to Pretoria. He found himself
second-in-command of a detail of recruits and reservists on the long and
vulnerable line of communications when the period of great battles had
come to an end.

There were months of tedium, of army biscuit and tough beef, of scant
water and no tobacco. There were sometimes weeks of desperate marching,
when the horses died and the men grumbled and the elusive enemy escaped
by some new device from the net which had been drawn round him. There
were days of scorching sun and nights of bitter cold. There was water
discipline to be enforced so as to prevent the men from drinking from
the polluted supplies which crammed the hospitals with cases of enteric
fever. There was the continuous nagging difficulty of obtaining fodder
so as to keep horses in a condition to satisfy the exacting demands of
column commanders. There were six occasions in eighteen months during
which Curzon heard once more the sizzle and crack of bullets overhead,
but he did not set eyes on an enemy--except prisoners--during that
period. Altogether it was a time of inconceivable dreariness and
monotony.

But it could not be said that Curzon was actively unhappy. He was not of
the type to chafe at monotony. The dreariness of an officers' mess of
only two or three members did not react seriously upon him--he was not a
man who needed mental diversion. His chill reserve and ingrained frigid
good manners kept him out of mess-room squabbles when nerves were
fraying and tempers were on edge; besides, a good many of the officers
who came out towards the end of the war were not gentlemen and were not
worth troubling one's mind about. Yet all the same, it was pleasant when
the war ended at last, and Curzon could say good-bye to the mixed rabble
of mounted infantry who had made up the column to which he was
second-in-command.

He rejoined the Twenty-second Lancers at Capetown--all the squadrons
together again for the first time for two years--and sailed for home.
The new King himself reviewed them after their arrival, having granted
them time enough to discard their khaki and put on again the glories of
blue and gold, schapska and plume, lance pennons and embroidered
saddle-cloths. Then they settled down in their barracks with the fixed
determination (as the Colonel expressed it, setting his lips firmly) of
"teaching the men to be soldiers again."

The pleasure of that return to England was intense enough, even to a man
as self-contained as Curzon. There were green fields to see, and
hedgerows, and there was the imminent prospect of hunting. And there
were musical comedies to go to, and good food to eat, and pretty women
to be seen in every street, and the Leicester Lounge to visit, with a
thrill reminiscent of old Sandhurst days. And there was the homage of
society to the returned warriors to be received--although that was not
quite as fulsome as it might have been, because public enthusiasm had
begun to decline slowly since the relief of Mafeking, and there was
actually a fair proportion of people who had forgotten the reported
details of the battle of Volkslaagte.

There was naturally one man who knew all about it--a portly, kindly
gentleman with a keen blue eye and a deep guttural voice who had been
known as H.R.H. at the time when the Lancers had been ordered to South
Africa, but who was now King of England. He said several kindly words to
Curzon at the investiture to which Curzon was summoned by the Lord
Chamberlain. And Curzon bowed and stammered as he received his
D.S.O.--he was not a man made for courts and palaces. In the intimacy of
his hotel bedroom he had felt thrilled and pleased with himself in his
Lancer full dress, with his plastron and his schapska, his gold lace and
glittering boots and sword, and he had even found a sneaking pleasure in
the stir among the people on the pavement as he walked out to get into
the waiting cab, but his knees knocked and his throat dried up in
Buckingham Palace.

On the same leave Curzon had in duty-bound to go and visit Aunt Kate,
who lived in Brixton. The late Mr. Curzon, Captain Herbert Curzon's
father, had married a trifle beneath him, and his wife's sister had
married a trifle beneath her, and the Mr. Cole whom she had married had
not met with much success in life, and after marriage Mr. Curzon had met
with much, so that the gap between Curzon and his only surviving
relatives--between the Captain in the Duke of Suffolk's Own and the
hard-up city clerk with his swarm of shrieking children--was wide and
far too deep to plumb. Curzon drove to Brixton in a cab, and the
appearance of the cab caused as much excitement in that street as did
his full dress uniform in the West End. Aunt Kate opened the door to
him--a paint-blistered door at the end of a tiled path three yards long,
leading from a gate in the iron railings past a few depressed laurels in
the tiny "front garden." Aunt Kate was momentarily disconcerted at the
sight of the well-dressed gentleman who had rat-tat-tatted on her door,
but she recovered herself.

"Why, it's Bertie," she said. "Come in, dear. Uncle Stanley ought to be
home soon. Come in here and sit down. Maud! Dick! Gertie! Here's your
cousin Bertie home from South Africa!"

The shabby children came clustering into the shabby parlour; at first
they were shy and constrained, and when the constraint wore off they
grew riotous, making conversation difficult and hindering Aunt Kate in
her effort to extract from her nephew details of his visit to Buckingham
Palace.

"What's it like in there?" she asked. "Is it all gold? I suppose there's
cut-glass chandeliers?"

Curzon had not the least idea. And----

"Did the King _really_ speak to you? What was he wearing?"

"Field-Marshal's uniform," said Curzon briefly.

"Of course, you've been presented to him before, when you went into the
army," said Aunt Kate, enviously. "That was in the dear Queen's time."

"Yes," said Curzon.

"It must be lovely to know all these people," said Aunt Kate. "Are there
any Lords in your regiment now?"

"Yes," said Curzon. "One or two."

It was irritating, because he himself found secret pleasure in serving
in the same regiment as lords, and in addressing them without their
titles, but the pleasure was all spoilt now at finding that Aunt Kate
was of the same mind.

More irritating still was the arrival of Stanley Cole, Aunt Kate's
husband, whom Curzon felt he could not possibly address now as "Uncle
Stanley," although he had done so as a boy. Mr. Cole was an
uncompromising Radical, and no respecter of persons, as he was ready to
inform anyone.

"I didn't 'old with your doings in South Africa," he announced, almost
before he was seated. "I didn't 'old with them at all, and I said so all
along. We didn't ought to 'ave fought with the Bores in the first place.
And burning farms, and those concentration camps. Sheer wickedness, that
was. You shouldn't have done it, you know, Bertie."

Curzon, with an effort, maintained an appearance of mild good manners,
and pointed out that all he had done was to obey orders.

"Orders! Yes! It's all a system. That's what it is."

Mr. Cole seemed to think that in this case the word "system" was deeply
condemnatory--to Curzon, of course, the word was, if anything, of the
opposite implication. He was roused far enough to suggest to his uncle
that if he had undergone the discomforts of two years of guerilla
warfare he might not be so particular as to the methods employed to
suppress it.

"I wouldn't have gone," said Mr. Cole. "Not if they had tried to make
me. Lord Roberts, now. 'E's trying to introduce conscription. Ought to
'ave more sense. And now there's all this talk about a big navy. Big
fiddlestick!"

There was clearly no ground at all which was common to Mr. Cole and his
nephew by marriage.

"Look at the rise in the income tax!" said Mr. Cole. "Two shillings in
the pound! Peace, retrenchment, and reform. That's what we want. And a
sane Government, and no protection."

Curzon might have replied that Mr. Cole had nothing to complain about in
the matter of income tax, seeing that his income was clearly below the
taxable limit, but his good manners would not permit him to say so while
he was conscious of his own seven hundred a year from his private means.
Instead, he rose to go, apologizing for the briefness of his visit and
pleading further urgent matters demanding his attention. He declined the
tea which Aunt Kate belatedly remembered to offer him; he said
truthfully enough, that he never had tea, and the children goggled up in
surprise at a man who could so lightly decline tea, and Aunt Kate said:
"You'll be going to have late dinner, I suppose."

She accompanied him to the door.

"Good-bye, then, Bertie," she said. "It was nice of you to come. We'll
be seeing you again soon, I suppose?"

"Yes, of course," said Curzon, and he knew it was a lie as he said it,
that he would never be able to bring himself again to penetrate into
Brixton. He thought the lie had succeeded, if he thought about it at
all, but Aunt Kate dabbed furtively at her eyes before she went back
into the parlour to talk over the visitor with her family. She knew
perfectly well that she would never see "Lily's boy" again.

Meanwhile Curzon, out in the cabless suburban street, had to make his
way on foot to the main road to some means of conveyance to take him
back to his hotel. Before he took a cab he was constrained to go into a
saloon bar and order himself a large whisky-and-soda, and while he drank
it he had to mop his forehead and run his finger round underneath his
collar as recollections of his visit surged up within him. He thanked
God fervently that he was an orphan, that he was an only child, and that
his father was an only child, and that his mother had had only one
sister. He thanked God that his father's speculations in Mincing Lane
had been early successful, so that preparatory school and Haileybury and
Sandhurst had come naturally to his son.

In a moment of shuddering self-revelation he realized that in other
circumstances it might have been just possible that he should have
breathed naturally in the air of Brixton. Worse still he felt for a
nauseating moment that in that environment he too might have been
uncertain with his aitches and spoken about late dinner in a respectful
tone of voice. It was bad enough to remember that as a child he had
lived in Bayswater--although he could only just remember it, as they had
early moved to Lancaster Gate. He had ridden in the Park, then, and his
father had already decided that he should go into the Army and, if
possible, into the cavalry among the real swells.

He could remember his father using that very expression, and he could
remember his father's innocent pride in him at Sandhurst and when he had
received his commission in the Duke of Suffolk's Own. Curzon struggled
for a moment--so black was his mood--with the realization that the
Twenty-second Lancers was not really a crack regiment. He could
condescend to infantrymen and native Indian army--poor devils--of
course, but he knew perfectly well when he came to admit it to himself,
as on this black occasion, that the Households and Horse Gunners and
people like the Second Dragoons could condescend to him in their turn.

His father, of course, could not appreciate these distinctions and could
have no realization that it was impossible for a son of a Mincing Lane
merchant to obtain a nomination to one of these exclusive regiments.

Perhaps it was as well that the old man had died when he did, leaving
his twenty-year-old son the whole of his fortune--when his partnership
had been realized and everything safely invested it brought in seven
hundred a year. Seven hundred a year was rather on the small side,
regarded as the private means of a cavalry subaltern, but it sufficed,
and as during the South African War he had been unable to spend even his
pay, he was clear of debt for once, and could look forward to a good
time.

The world was growing rosier again now, with his second whisky-and-soda
inside him. He was able to light a cigar and plan his evening. By the
time his cab had carried him up to town he was able to change into dress
clothes without its crossing his mind even once that in other
circumstances to change might not have been so much of a matter of
course.




CHAPTER THREE


There were twelve years of peace between the two wars. It was those
twelve years which saw Herbert Curzon undergo transformation from a
young man into a middle-aged, from a subaltern into a senior major of
cavalry. A complete record in detail of those twelve years would need
twelve years in the telling to do it justice, so as to make it perfectly
plain that nothing whatever happened during those twelve years; the
professional life of an officer in a regiment of cavalry of the line is
likely to be uneventful and Curzon was of the type which has no other
life to record.

They were twelve years of mess and orderly room; twelve years of
inspection of horses' feet and of inquiry why Trooper Jones had been for
three days absent without leave. Perhaps the clue to Curzon's
development during this time is given by his desire to conform to type,
and that desire is perhaps rooted too deep for examination. Presumably
preparatory school and Haileybury and Sandhurst had something to do with
it. Frequently it is assumed that it is inherent in the English
character to wish not to appear different from one's fellows, but that
is a bold assumption to make regarding a nation which has produced more
original personalities than any other in modern times. It is safer to
assume that the boldness and insensitiveness which is found sporadically
among the English have developed despite all the influences which are
brought to bear to nip them in the bud, and are therefore, should they
survive to bear fruit, plants of sturdy growth.

Whether or not Herbert Curzon would have displayed originality, even
eccentricity, if he had been brought up in another environment--in that
of his cousins, Maudie and Gertie and Dick Cole, for instance--it is
impossible to say. It sounds inconceivable to those of us who know him
now, but it might be so. There can be no doubt whatever, on the other
hand, that during the middle period of his life Curzon was distinguished
by nothing more than his desire to be undistinguishable. The things
which he did, he did because other people had done before him, and if a
tactful person had been able to persuade him to defend himself for so
doing, he could only have said that to him that appeared an entirely
adequate reason for doing them.

When as a senior captain in the regiment he quelled with crushing
rudeness the self-assertiveness of some newly arrived subaltern in the
mess, he did not do so from any feeling of personal animosity towards
the wart in question (although the wart could not help feeling that this
was the case), but because senior captains have always quelled
self-assertive young subalterns.

He was a firm supporter of the rule that professional subjects should
not be discussed in the mess. Whether the subject rashly brought up was
"The Tactical Employment of Cavalry in the Next War" or the new
regulations regarding heelropes, Curzon was always on the side of
propriety, and saw to it that the discussion was short-lived. It did not
matter to him--probably he did not know--that the convention prohibiting
the discussion in mess of professional matters and of women dated back
to the days of duelling, and that these two subjects about which men are
more likely to grow angry had been barred then out of an instinct of
self-preservation. It was sufficient to him that the convention was
established; it was that fact which justified the convention.

And that his conviction was sincere in this respect was obvious. No one
who knew him could possibly doubt that he would far rather receive
another wound as bad as the one at Volkslaagte--more, that he would far
rather go again through all the mental agony of Volkslaagte--than appear
in public wearing a bowler hat and a morning coat. Even if he had
thought such a combination beautiful (and he really never stopped to
wonder whether anything was beautiful or not) he could not have worn it;
indeed, it is difficult to imagine anything which would have induced him
to do so. The example of the royal family over a series of years might
have contrived it, but even then he would have been filled with
misgivings.

The feeling of distaste for everything not done by the majority of those
among whom he moved (wherever this feeling originated, in the germ or in
the womb or at school, or in the Army) had its effect, too, on his
professional career. The majority of his fellows did not apply to go
through the Staff College; therefore he did not apply. There was only a
small proportion of officers who by their ebullient personalities
attracted the attention of their seniors; therefore Curzon made no
effort to be ebullient in his personality--quite apart from his dislike
of attracting attention.

These pushful, forceful persons had a black mark set against them in
Curzon's mind for another reason as well, distinct although closely
connected. They disturbed the steady even tenor of life which it was
right and proper to expect. If routine made life more comfortable and
respectable (just as did the prohibition of shop in mess) the man who
disturbed that routine was an enemy of society. More than that, no man
had any right whatever to upset the arrangements of his seniors.

There was a very painful occasion when Curzon was commanding a squadron
and had just arranged a much-desired shooting leave--it was during the
five years that the regiment was stationed in India. Squires, his senior
captain, came to him in high spirits, and announced that the War Office
had at last seen fit to sanction his application for the Staff College;
he would be leaving in a month. Curzon's face fell. A month from now his
leave was due; a fortnight from now would arrive the new draft of
recruits and remounts--hairy of heel all of them, as years of experience
of recruits and remounts had taught him to expect. He had counted on
Squires to get them into shape; Squires could be relied upon to keep the
squadron up to the mark (as Curzon frankly admitted to himself) better
than any of the remaining officers. Curzon had no hesitation when it
came to choosing between the squadron and his leave. He must postpone
his shooting, and he had been looking forward so much to the thrill and
danger of following a gaur through blind cover.

"If the orders come through, of course you must go," said Curzon. "But
it's devilishly inconsiderate of you, Squires. I'll have to disappoint
Marlowe and Colonel Webb."

"Blame the War Office, don't blame me," said Squires lightly, but of
course it was Squires whom Curzon really blamed. The situation would
never have arisen if he had not made his untimely application. It was
years before Curzon could meet without instinctive distrust officers
with p.s.c. after their name.

That may have been at the root of Curzon's distrust of theorists about
war. It was not often that Curzon could be brought to discuss the theory
of war, although he would argue gladly about its practical details, such
as the most suitable ration of fodder or the pros and cons of a bit and
snaffle. But apart from this distrust of theorists because of their
tendency to be different, there was also the more obvious reason that
the majority of theorists were mad as hatters, or even madder. As soon
as any man started to talk about the theory of war one could be nearly
sure that he would bring forward some idiotic suggestion, to the effect
that cavalry had had its day and that dismounted action was all that
could be expected of it, or that machine-guns and barbed wire had
wrought a fundamental change in tactics, or even--wildest lunacy of
all--that these rattletrap aeroplanes were going to be of some military
value in the next year.

There was even a feather-brained subaltern in Curzon's regiment who
voluntarily, in his misguided enthusiasm, quitted the ranks of the
Twenty-second Lancers, the Duke of Suffolk's Own, to serve in the Royal
Flying Corps. He actually had the infernal impudence to suggest to the
senior major of his regiment, a man with ribbons on his breast, who had
seen real fighting, and who had won the battle of Volkslaagte by a
cavalry charge, that the time was at hand when aeroplane reconnaissance
would usurp the last useful function which could be performed by
cavalry. When Major Curzon, simply boiling with fury at this treachery,
fell back on the sole argument which occurred to him at the moment, and
accused him of assailing the honour of the regiment with all its
glorious traditions, he declared light-heartedly that he would far
sooner serve in an arm with only a future than in one with only a past,
and that he had no intention whatever of saying anything to the
discredit of a regiment which was cut to pieces at Waterloo because they
did not know when to stop charging, and that Major Curzon's argument was
a _non sequitur_ anyway.

With that he took his departure, leaving the major livid with rage; it
was agony to the major that the young man's confidential report from the
regiment had already gone in to the War Office and could not be recalled
for alteration (as the young man had been well aware). Curzon could only
fume and mutter, complaining to himself that the Army was not what it
was, that the manners of the new generation were infinitely worse than
when he was a young man, and that their ideas were dangerously
subversive of everything worth preserving.

This picture of Curzon in the years immediately before the war seems to
verge closely on the conventional caricature of the Army major, peppery,
red-faced, liable under provocation to gobble like a turkey-cock,
hide-bound in his ideas and conventional in his way of thought, and it
is no more exact than any other caricature. It ignores all the good
qualities which were present at the same time. He was the soul of
honour; he could be guilty of no meannesses, even boggling at those
which convention permits. He would give his life for the ideals he stood
for, and would be happy if the opportunity presented itself. His
patriotism was a real and living force, even if its symbols were
childish. His courage was unflinching. The necessity of assuming
responsibility troubled him no more than the necessity of breathing. He
could administer the regulations of his service with an impartiality and
a practised leniency admirably suited to the needs of the class of man
for which those regulations were drawn up. He shirked no duty, however
tedious or inconvenient; it did not even occur to him to try to do so.
He would never allow the instinctive deference which he felt towards
great names and old lineage to influence him in the execution of
anything he conceived to be his duty. The man with a claim on his
friendship could make any demand upon his generosity. And while the
breath was in his body he would not falter in the face of difficulties.

So much for an analysis of Curzon's character at the time when he was
about to become one of the instruments of destiny. Yet there is
something sinister in the coincidence that when destiny had so much to
do she should find tools of such high quality ready to hand. It might
have been--though it would be a bold man who would say so--more
advantageous for England if the British Army had not been quite so full
of men of high rank who were so ready for responsibility, so
unflinchingly devoted to their duty, so unmoved in the face of
difficulties, of such unfaltering courage.

It might be so. But in recounting the career of Lieutenant-General Sir
Herbert Curzon it would be incongruous to dwell on "mays" or "mights."
There are more definite matters to record in describing the drama of his
rise.




CHAPTER FOUR


The first step came even before the declaration of war, during the tense
forty-eight hours which followed mobilization. Curzon was in the stables
supervising the arrival of the remounts which were streaming in when a
trooper came running up to him and saluted.

"Colonel's compliments, sir, and would you mind coming and speaking to
him for a minute."

Curzon found the Colonel alone--he has passed the adjutant emerging as
he entered--and the Colonel was standing erect with an opened letter in
his hand. His face was the same colour as the paper he held.

"You're in command of the regiment, Curzon," said the Colonel.

"I--I beg your pardon, sir?" said Curzon.

"You heard what I said," snapped the Colonel, and then recovered himself
with an effort and went on with pathetic calm. "These are War Office
orders. You are to take command of the regiment with the temporary rank
of Lieutenant-Colonel. I suppose it'll be in the Gazette to-morrow."

"And what about you, sir?" asked Curzon.

"I? Oh, I'm being given command of a brigade of yeomanry. Up in the
Northern Command somewhere."

"Good God!" said Curzon, genuinely moved.

"Yes, yeomanry, man," blazed the Colonel. "Yokels on plough horses.
It'll take a year to do anything with them at all, and the war'll be
over in three months. And _you_ are to take the regiment overseas."

"I'm damned sorry, sir," said Curzon, trying his best to soften the
blow, "but it's promotion for you, after all."

"Promotion? Who cares a damn about promotion? I wanted to go with the
regiment. You'll look after them, won't you, Curzon?"

"Of course I will, sir."

"You'll be in France in a fortnight."

"France, sir?" said Curzon, mildly surprised. The destination of the
Expeditionary Force had been an object of some speculation. It might
possibly have been Belgium or Schleswig.

"Yes," said the Colonel. "Of course, you don't know about that. It's in
the secret mobilization orders for commanding officers. You had better
start reading them now, hadn't you? The British Army comes up on the
left of the French. Maubeuge, and thereabouts. Here you are."

That moment when he was given the printed sheets, marked "Most Secret.
For Commanding Officers of Cavalry Units Only," was to Curzon the most
important and vital of his career. It marked the finite change from a
junior officer's position to a senior officer's. It was the opening of
the door to real promotion. It made it possible that the end of the war
would find him a General. Naturally it was not given to Curzon to
foresee that before the war should end he would be in command of more
men than Wellington or Marlborough ever commanded in the field. And he
never knew to what fortunate combination of circumstances he owed this
most fortunate bit of promotion, for the secrets of War Office patronage
are impenetrable. Of course, the memory of the battle of Volkslaagte had
something to do with it. But presumably someone in the War Office had
marked the fact that the Colonel of the Twenty-second Lancers was
verging on the age of retirement and had debated whether it would not be
better for the regiment to be commanded by a forceful younger man, and
at the same time the question of the yeomanry brigade command had
arisen, so that Curzon's promotion had solved a double difficulty. It
maintained a reputable trainer of peace-time cavalry in a situation
where his talents could be usefully employed, and it gave a man of
proved ability in war a command in which he would find full scope.

If Curzon had had time to think about it at all, and if his
self-conscious modesty had permitted it, he would undoubtedly have
attributed these motives to the War Office; and as it was, his
subconscious approval of them sent up his opinion of the Higher Command
a good many degrees. Moreover, this approval of his was heightened by
the marvellous way in which mobilization was carried through. Reservists
and remounts poured in with perfect smoothness. His indents for
equipment were met instantly by the Command headquarters. In six brief
days the Twenty-second Lancers had expanded into a regiment of three
full squadrons, complete in men and horses and transport, ammunition and
supplies, ready to move on the first word from London--nor was the word
long in coming.

Curzon, of course, had worked like a slave. He had interviewed every
returning reservist; he had inspected every horse; he had studied his
orders until he knew them by heart. Nor was this from personal motives,
either. His anxiety about the efficiency of the regiment sprang not at
all from the consideration that his professional future depended upon
it. The job was there to be done, and done well, and it was his business
to do it. Somewhere within his inarticulate depths was the feeling that
England's future turned to some small extent upon his efforts, but he
could not put that feeling into words even to himself. He could faintly
voice his feelings regarding the credit of the Army, and of the cavalry
arm in particular. He could speak and think freely about the honour of
the regiment, because that was a subject people did speak about. But he
could not speak of England; not even of the King--in just the same way
the inarticulate regiment which followed its inarticulate colonel sang
popular ballads instead of hymns to the Motherland.

Someone in London had done his work extraordinarily well. There never
had been a mobilization like this in all British history. In contrast
with the methods of the past, which had scraped units together from all
parts and flung them pell-mell on to the Continental shore, without guns
or transport or cavalry like Wellington in Portugal, or to die of
disease and privation like the Army in the Crimea, the present system
had built up a real Army ready for anything, and had means and
arrangements perfected to put that Army ashore, lacking absolutely
nothing which might contribute to its efficiency and its mobility.

One morning at dawn Curzon's servant called him exceptionally early;
that same evening Curzon was on the quay at Le Havre supervising the
disembarkation of the horses. That day had for Curzon a sort of
dream-like quality; certain details stood out with extraordinary clarity
although the general effect was blurred and unreal. All his life Curzon
could remember the faces of the officers whom he had ordered to remain
with the dept squadron, looking on unhappily at the dawn parade, while
the band played "God Save the King," and the men cheered themselves
hoarse. He remembered the fussy self-importance of Carruthers, the
brigade-major, who came galloping up to the railway sidings at which the
regiment was entraining, to be greeted with cool self-confidence by
Valentine, the adjutant, who had every detail of the business at his
fingers' ends. There was the lunch on board the transport, interrupted
by the flight overhead of a non-rigid airship which formed part of the
escort. And then, finally, the landing at Le Havre, and the business of
getting men and horses into their billets, and someone here had done his
work again so efficiently that there was no need for Curzon to recall to
himself the cavalry colonel's active service maxim: "Feed the horses
before the men, and the men before the officers, and the officers before
yourself."

The feeling of unreality persisted during the long train journey which
followed. The conveyance of the three thousand horses which belonged to
the brigade was a business ineffably tedious. Feeding and watering the
horses took up much time, and the men needed to have a sharp eye kept on
them, because everyone in France seemed to have entered into a
conspiracy to make the men drunk--there was free wine for them wherever
they came in contact with civilians, and the young soldiers drank in
ignorance of its potency and the old soldiers drank with delighted
appreciation.

Curzon could not understand the French which the civilians talked with
such disconcerting readiness. He had early formed a theory that French
could only be spoken by people with a malformed larynx, and in his few
visits to Paris he had always managed very well without knowing French;
in fact he had been known to declare that "everyone in France knows
English." That this was not the case was speedily shown in frequent
contacts with village _maires_ and with French railway officers, but
Curzon did not allow the fact to distress him. Valentine spoke good
French, and so did half a dozen of the other officers. It was sufficient
for Curzon to give orders about what was to be said--in fact an
inattentive observer of Curzon's impassive countenance would never have
guessed at his ignorance of the language.

Then at last, on a day of sweltering sunshine, the regiment detrained in
some gloomy sidings in the heart of a manufacturing and mining district.
The brigade formed a column of sections two miles long on a dreary-paved
road and began to move along it, with halts and delays as orders came in
afresh. The officers were bubbling with excitement, looking keenly at
their maps and scanning the countryside eagerly to see if it would be
suitable for mounted action; and in that they were disappointed. There
were slag heaps and enclosures. There was barbed wire in the hedges, and
there were deep, muddy ditches--there could be no hell-for-leather
charging, ten squadrons together, on this terrain.

Curzon rode at the head of his regiment. Frequently he turned and looked
back along the long column of sections, the khaki-clad men and the
winding caterpillar of lance points. Try after self-control as he would,
his heart persisted in beating faster. He even noticed a slight
trembling of his hands as he held his reins, which was a symptom which
roused his self-contempt and made him spurn himself as being as
excitable as a woman. The Brigadier, riding along the column, reined in
beside him for a moment and dropped a compliment about the condition of
the regiment, but the brief conversation was suddenly interrupted by the
roar of artillery close ahead. The General galloped forward to be on
hand when orders should arrive, and Curzon was left riding wordlessly
with Valentine at his elbow, waiting with all his acquired taciturnity
for the moment for action.

Unhappily it was not given to the Twenty-second Lancers to distinguish
themselves at Mons. To this day, when Curzon can be induced to talk
about his experiences in the war, he always slurs over the opening
period. Other regiments, more fortunate, fought real cavalry
actions--but they were divisional cavalry or part of the brigade out on
the left, who were lucky in encountering German cavalry of like mind to
themselves, without wanton interference by cyclists or infantry.
Curzon's brigade stayed in reserve behind the line while the battle of
Mons was being fought. Twice during that dreary day, they were moved
hither and thither as the fortune of the battle in their front swayed
back and forth. They heard the wild roar of the firing; they saw the
river of wounded flowing back past them, and they saw the British
batteries in action, but that was all. Even the Brigadier knew no more
than they, until, towards evening, the wounded told them that Mons had
been lost to a converging attack by overwhelming numbers. Night fell
with the men in bivouac; the general opinion was that next day would see
a great counter-attack in which the cavalry would find its opportunity.

Curzon lay down to sleep in the shelter of a hedge; he did not share the
opinion of his officers, but neither could he oppose it. That feeling of
unreality still held him fast, numbing the action of his mind. It was
absurd to feel as he did, if these things were not really happening, as
if nothing would ever happen, and yet he could not shake himself free
from the feeling. Then he was wakened with a start in the darkness by
someone shaking his shoulder.

"Orders, sir," said Valentine's voice.

He read the scrap of paper by the light of the electric torch which
Valentine held. It told him briefly that the brigade was to form on the
road preparatory to a fresh march--nothing more.

"Get the regiment ready to move off at once," he said, forcing himself
into wakefulness.

There was a rush and bustle in the darkness, the whinnying of horses and
the clattering of hoofs as the troopers, stupid with cold and sleep,
prepared for the march. There was an interminable delay as the brigade
formed up on the road, and dawn was just breaking as the march began.
The march went on for eleven mortal days.

Curzon remembered little enough about those eleven days. At first there
was a sense of shame and disappointment, for the British Army was in
retreat, and the Twenty-second Lancers were near the head of the column,
while far in the rear the boom and volleying of the guns told how the
rearguard was still hotly engaged. But as the retreat went on the
artillery fire waned, and exhaustion increased. Every day was one of
blazing sun and suffocating dust. Sometimes the marches were prolonged
far into the night; sometimes they began long before day was come, so
that the men fell asleep in their saddles. The horses fell away in
condition until even Curzon's fine, black hunter could hardly be forced
into a trot by the stab of the sharpened spurs into his thick-coated
flanks. The trim khaki uniforms were stained and untidy; beards sprouted
on every cheek. Every day saw the number of absentees increase--two or
three one day, ten or twelve the next, twenty or thirty the next, as the
horses broke down and the regimental bad characters drank themselves
into stupor to forget their fatigue. In the rear of the regiment trailed
a little band of dismounted men, limping along with blistered feet under
the burden of as much of their cavalry equipment as they could carry.
Curzon scanned the nightly lists of missing with dumb horror. At the
halts he hobbled stiffly among the men, exhorting them to the best of
his limited ability to keep moving for the honour of the regiment, but
something more than dust dried up his throat, and he was not a good
enough actor to conceal entirely the despondency which was overpowering
him.

Then there came a blessed day when the orders to continue the retreat
were countermanded at the very moment when the brigade was formed up on
the road. A moment later the Brigadier himself came up. He could give
Curzon no reason for the change, but after half an hour's wait he gave
permission for the regiment to fall out. There were pleasant meadows
there, marshy presumably in winter, but hardly damp at the moment, by
the side of a little stream of black water. They had a whole day of rest
in those meadows. They cleaned and polished and shaved. As many as forty
stragglers came drifting in during the morning--they had not been
permanently lost, but, having fallen out for a moment, they had got
jammed in the column farther to the rear and had never been able to
rejoin. Everybody's spirits rose amazingly during those sunny hours. The
Quartermaster-General's department achieved its daily miracle and heaped
rations upon them, so that the men drank quarts of tea, brewed over
bivouac fires, and then slept in heaps all over the meadows.

Curzon was able to find time to sit in his portable bath in a screened
corner of the field, and to shave himself carefully and to cut his
ragged moustache into its trim Lancer shape again--it was that afternoon
that he first noticed grey hairs in it (there had been a few in his
temples for some time now) and characteristically it never occurred to
him to attribute their presence to the fatigues and anxieties of the
last month. One servant brushed his clothes, the other groomed his
horse, until by late afternoon Curzon, for the first time since he
landed in France, began to feel his old efficient clear-thinking self
again.

A motor-cyclist with a blue and white brassard came tearing along the
road and stopped his machine at the entrance to the field. Valentine
tore his dispatch from him and came running across the grass to Curzon.

"Are we going to advance, sir?" he asked eagerly, and Curzon nodded as
he read the orders.

"Trumpeter!" yelled Valentine, all on fire with excitement.

The whole regiment seemed to have caught the infection, for as soon as
the men saw that the column was headed back the way they had come they
began to cheer, and went on cheering madly for several minutes as they
got under way. They went back up the white road, over the little bridge
with its R.E. demolition party still waiting, and forward towards where
the distant low muttering of the guns was beginning to increase in
volume and rise in pitch.

And yet the advance soon became as wearisome as the retreat had been.
The regiment marched and marched and marched, at first in the familiar
choking white dust, and then, when the weather broke, in a chilly and
depressing rain. They saw signs of the fighting they had missed--wrecked
lorries in the ditches, occasional abandoned guns, and sometimes dead
Englishmen, dead Frenchmen, dead Germans. It seemed as if the
Twenty-second Lancers were doomed to be always too late. They had not
lost a man at Mons; the Marne had been fought while they were twenty
miles away; they arrived on the Aisne just as the attempt to push back
the German line farther still died away.

The Brigadier saw fit to rage in confidence to Curzon about this one
evening in Curzon's billet. He bore it as a personal grudge that his
brigade should have had no casualties save stragglers during a month's
active service. But before mid night that same evening the situation
changed. Curzon hurried round to brigade headquarters, his sword at his
side in response to a brief note summoning commanding officers. The
Brigadier greeted his three colonels with a smile of welcome.

"There's work for us now, gentlemen," he said eagerly, leading them to
the map spread on the table. "There's more marching ahead of us,
but----"

He poured out voluble explanations. It appeared that during the retreat
the Expeditionary Force's base had been transferred from Havre to St.
Nazaire, and now would be changed again to the Channel ports. The German
right flank was "in the air" somewhere here, at Armentires. Clearly it
would be best if it were the British Army which was dispatched to find
that flank and turn the German line so as to roll it back on the Rhine
and Berlin. The transfer was to begin next day, infantry and artillery
by rail, cavalry by road, and he, the Brigadier, had been given a
promise that the brigade would be in the advanced guard this time. It
would be _here_, said the General, pointing to Ypres, that the attack
would be delivered, up _this_ road, he went on, pointing to Menin. The
Belgian Army cavalry school was at Ypres, so that was dear proof that
the country roundabout was suitable for mounted action. There were six
men bending over that map--the General, three colonels, the
brigade-major, and some unknown staff officer, and five of them were to
find their graves at the point where the General's gnarled finger was
stabbing at the map. Yet with Curzon at the moment his only reaction at
this, his first hearing of the dread name of Ypres, was that it should
be spelt in such an odd fashion and pronounced in a still odder one.




CHAPTER FIVE


The weary marches were resumed, mostly in the rain. The brigade toiled
along by by-roads to the rear of the French line, crossing, often only
after long delays, one line of communication after the other. They saw
unsoldierly French territorial divisions, French coloured divisions,
French ammunition and supply columns. After the second day came the
order to hasten their march, with the result that they were on the move
now from dawn till dark, hurrying through the rain, while the list of
absent lengthened with each day.

For the flank of the allies was as much "in the air" as was that of the
Germans, and Falkenhayn was making a thrust at the weak point just as
was Joffre. The units which were gathering about Ypres were being pushed
forward hurriedly into action, and every reinforcement which could be
scraped together was being called upon to prolong the line. At
Hazebrouck the roar of battle round about Armentires was clearly to be
heard; it was the sight of British ammunition columns pouring up the
road from Poperinghe and the stream of English wounded down it which
first told Curzon that this was to be no case of heading an advance upon
an unprotected and sensitive German flank.

It had been soon after midnight that fresh orders came to call them out
of their muddy bivouac. Dawn found them plodding along the road through
the rain. There were motor-cars, motor-cycle despatch riders, mounted
orderlies hastening along the straight tree-lined road. An order came
back to Curzon to quicken his pace; before very long Carruthers, the
brigade-major, came back at the gallop to reiterate it. But the horses
were very weary. It was only a spiritless trot which could be got out of
them as the regiment with jingling of accoutrements and squeaking of
leather pounded heavily down the road.

The rain fell piteously, numbing the faculties. Suddenly there was a
roar like an express train overhead, a shattering explosion, and a
column of black smoke at the very edge of the road twenty yards behind
Curzon. Somebody yelped with dismay. A horse screamed. Curzon looked
back over his shoulder. There was a gap in the long column of dancing
lance points.

"Keep them closed up, Browning," he growled to the major at his side
commanding the squadron, and Browning swung his horse out of the column,
while Curzon rode on, Valentine at his side, jinglety-bump,
jinglety-bump, over the slippery _pav_.

More shells followed. Curzon found himself riding round the edge of a
gaping hole in the road. There was a horrible litter of fragments of men
and horses there, but Curzon found he was able to look at it without
sensation; he could even note that none of the dead men had lances, and
therefore belonged to the dragoon regiment at the head of the brigade,
of which two squadrons had sabres only. They were in among houses
now--several houses had shell-holes in walls or roof--and a pale staff
officer with his left sleeve missing and a bloodstained bandage round
his bare arm suddenly appeared and guided Curzon off by a by-road.

"Halt here, please, sir," he said. "You will receive orders in a
minute."

And the regiment stood still in the narrow street, the horses steaming
in the rain, while the shells burst round them and Curzon tugged at his
moustache. To judge by the noise, there was half a dozen batteries in
action close at hand; the regiment was in the heart of a battle greater
than Mons. The rain began to fall more heavily still, suddenly, just at
the moment when the Brigadier came round the corner with his staff and
the pale staff officer. Curzon moved to meet them, to be abruptly
greeted.

"What in hell are you doing, Curzon?" blazed the General. "Get your men
dismounted and horseholders told off. Quick!"

Generals, of course, had to be allowed their fits of bad temper. It was
only natural that a colonel of a cavalry regiment should keep his men
ready for mounted action in the absence of express orders to the
contrary. Curzon left Valentine to see to the dismounting of the men,
while he got off his horse and looked at the map which the brigade-major
help open.

"The brigade is to prolong the line _here_," said the brigade major.
"You will come up on the left of the Surreys _here_. The Dragoons will
be on your right."

Curzon stared at the map, on which the raindrops fell with a steady
pitter-patter. It was a featureless affair, with featureless names like
St. Eloi and Kemmel and Messines--he had one like it in his leather
map-case.

"Major Durrant, here, will guide you," went on the brigade-major. "Site
your machine-guns with a good field of fire and get your line entrenched
as quick as you can."

"Very good," said Curzon. It seemed incredible that Carruthers could be
talking to a cavalry colonel about machine-guns and entrenchments like
this--Carruthers, who, that very summer in England, had argued so
vehemently in favour of lance versus sabre. The words brought back that
nightmare feeling of unreality again, but the General dispelled it a
moment afterwards.

"Curzon," he said quietly. "We're the last troops that can arrive, and
we're going straight into the line. There's nothing behind us. Nothing
at all. If we give way, the war's lost. So there's nothing for you to do
except to hold your position to the last man. At all costs, Curzon."

"Yes, sir," said Curzon, and the mist lifted from his brain immediately.
That was the kind of order he could understand.

"Right," said the General, and then, to Carruthers: "Let's get along to
the Dragoons."

"Bring your regiment this way, sir," said the wounded staff officer, and
then, seeing the regimental officers still mounted, he added: "They
won't want their horses. You won't want your horse, sir, either."

They marched, already weary with much riding, through the streets.
Curzon took notice slightly of a long building which reminded him a
little of the Houses of Parliament, and then they were out of the town
again in flat green fields rising before them in the faintest of
elevations.

"There go the Surreys," said the staff officer, pointing over to their
left front. "You come up on their right."

As he said the words, the first Battle of Ypres engulfed the
Twenty-second Lancers. For two days now each successive parcel of
British troops, as it arrived, had just sufficed to patch or extend the
wavering front in face of the masses which the Germans were hurrying to
the same point. The arrival of the last cavalry brigade enabled the
British command to close the last gap with less than a quarter of an
hour to spare, for the German attack here was launched just as the
Twenty-second Lancers extended into line. There was no time for Curzon
to think about entrenchments or a good field of fire for his
machine-guns. A sudden hail of bullets and shells fell all about the
regiment, and then even as cavalry tradition evaporated and primeval
instinct asserted itself in a search for cover, monstrous grey masses
came looming through the rain over the slight crest half a mile in
front.

There was no time for orders or scientific fire control. It was every
man's business to seize his rifle and begin firing as rapidly as he
could at the advancing lines. They wavered and hesitated, came on again,
and finally shredded away. Immediately afterwards fresh masses came
pouring over the crest, gathering up with them the remains of their
predecessors. There were mounted officers in the front, waving swords
over their heads as if this were Malplaquet or Waterloo. Curzon,
standing staring through his glasses, watched them toppling down one by
one as the attack died away. He stared mesmerized until he suddenly
awoke to the realization that bullets were crackling all round him. The
enemy were lying down firing until fresh impetus could be gathered to
renew the attack.

He looked along the line of his regiment. There was no trace of order
there; half the men had established themselves in a drainage ditch which
miraculously ran roughly in the desired direction and afforded cover to
anyone who could bring himself to lie down in its thick black mud. That
meant the centre was as solidly established as one could hope to be.
Young Borthwick--Lieutenant the Honourable George Borthwick--was in an
angle of a tributary ditch to the front with his machine-gun section,
the men digging frantically with anything that came to hand, so as to
burrow into the bank for shelter. Borthwick had been given the
machine-guns, not as the most promising machine-gun officer in the
regiment (a distinction the whole mess scorned), but because he had the
most slovenly seat on a horse that had ever disgraced the ranks of the
Twenty-second Lancers. Curzon realized with a twinge of anxiety that the
reputation of the Regiment suddenly had come to depend to a remarkable
extent on how much efficiency young Borthwick had acquired at his job.

He strode over to inspect Borthwick's efforts, Valentine beside him. He
leaped the muddy ditch, in which the regiment was crouching, so as not
to soil his boots, and stood on the lip of the bank looking down at
where Borthwick was sitting in the mud with the lock of a machine-gun on
his lap.

"Are you all right, Borthwick?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Borthwick, sparing him just a glance, and then to his
sergeant. "Is that belt ready?"

Curzon left him to his own devices; this much was certain, that however
little Borthwick knew about machine-guns it was more than Curzon did.
They went back to the ditch.

"Better have a look at the flanks," said Curzon, and took his leisurely
way to the right. The men stared at him. In that pelting hail of bullets
they felt as if they could not get close enough to the ground, and yet
here was the Colonel standing up and walking about as cool as a
cucumber. It was not so much that Curzon was unafraid, but that in the
heat of action and under the burden of his responsibility he had not
stopped to realize that there was any cause for fear.

The right flank was not nearly as satisfactorily posted as the centre.
The little groups of men scattered along here were almost without cover.
They were cowering close to the ground behind casual inequalities of
level--several men were taking cover behind the dead bodies of their
comrades--and only the accident that there were three shell craters
close together at this point gave any semblance of solidity to the line.
Moreover, there was only a pretence of touch maintained with the
Dragoons on the right; there was a full hundred yards bare of defenders
between the Lancers' right and the beginning of the ditch wherein was
established the Dragoons' left.

"Not so good," said Curzon over his shoulder to Valentine, and received
no reply. He looked round. Ten yards back one of those bullets had
killed Valentine, silently, instantly, as Curzon saw when he bent over
the dead body.

And as he stooped, he heard all the rifles in the line redouble their
fire. Borthwick's two machine-guns began to stammer away on his left.
The Germans were renewing their advance; once more there were solid
masses of grey-clad figures pouring over the fields towards them. But
one man with a rifle can stop two hundred advancing in a crowd--more
still if he is helped by machine-guns. Curzon saw the columns reel under
the fire, and marvelled at their bravery as they strove to struggle on.
They bore terrible losses before they fell back again over the crest.

Curzon did not know--and he did not have either time or inclination at
the moment to ponder over the enemy's tactics--that the attacking troops
at this point were drawn from the six German divisions of volunteers,
men without any military training whatever, who were being sent forward
in these vicious formations because they simply could not manoeuvre in
any other. What he did realize was that as soon as the enemy realized
the hopelessness of these attacks, and turned his artillery against the
regiment, the latter would be blasted into nothingness in an hour of
bombardment unless it could contrive shelter. He walked along the line,
with the bullets still crackling round him.

"Get your men digging," he said to Captain Phelps, the first officer he
saw.

"Yes, sir," said Phelps. "Er--what are they going to dig with, sir?"

Curzon looked Phelps up and down from his cropped fair hair and pop-eyes
to his sword-belt and his boots. It was a question which might
reasonably have been asked on manoeuvres. Cavalry had no entrenching
tools, and the Twenty-second Lancers had, from motives of pride, evaded
throughout their corporate existence the annual two hours' instruction
in field fortification which the regulations prescribed for cavalry. But
this was war now. A battle would be lost, England would be endangered,
if the men did not entrench. Curzon boiled with contempt for Phelps at
that moment. He felt he could even see trembling on Phelps' lips a
protest about the chance of the men soiling their uniforms, and he was
angered because he suspected that he himself would have been stupid and
obstructive if his brain had not been activated by his urgent, imminent
responsibility.

"God damn it, man," he blazed. "Get your men digging, and don't ask
damn-fool questions."

The fear of death or dishonour will make even cavalry dig, even without
tools--especially when they were urged on by a man like Curzon, and when
they were helped by finding themselves in muddy fields whose soil
yielded beneath the most primitive makeshift tools. A man could dig in
that mud with his bare hands--many men did. The Twenty-second sank into
the earth just as will a mole released upon a lawn. The crudest,
shallowest grave and parapet quadrupled a man's chance of life.

The fortunate ditch which constituted the greater part of the regiment's
frontage, and the shallow holes dug on the rest of it, linked together
subsequently by succeeding garrisons, constituted for months afterwards
the front line of the British trench system in the Salient--a haphazard
line, its convolutions dictated by pure chance, and in it many men were
to lose their lives for the barren honour of retaining that worthless
ground, overlooked and searched out by observation from the slight
crests above (each of which, from Hill 60 round to Pilckem, was to
acquire a name of ill-omen) which the cavalry brigade had chanced to be
too late, by a quarter of an hour, to occupy.

For the moment there could be no question of readjustment of the line.
Some time in the late afternoon the bombardment began--a rain of shells
compared with which anything Curzon had seen in South Africa was as a
park lake to the ocean. It seemed impossible for anything to live
through it. The bombardment seemed to reduce men to the significance of
ants, but, like ants, they sought and found shelter in cracks in the
ground; the very pits the shells dug gave them protection, for this
bombardment, so colossal to their dazed minds, was not to be compared
with the later bombardments of the war when mathematical calculations
showed that every patch of ground must be hit by three separate shells.

When it was falling dark the bombardment ceased and the German
volunteers came forward in a new attack, climbing over their heaped
dead, to leave fresh swathes of corpses only a few yards further on. It
was the lifting of the bombardment and the roar of musketry from the
Surreys on the left which the dazed men huddled in the mud first
noticed, but it was Curzon who repelled that attack. There was no limit
to his savage energy in the execution of a clear-cut task. He had no
intention in the least of impressing his men with his ability to be
everywhere at once, but that was the impression which the weary troopers
formed of him. In his anxiety to see that every rifle was in action he
hurried about the line rasping out his orders. The wounded and the
faint-hearted alike brought their rifles to their shoulders again under
the stimulus of his presence. It was this kind of leadership for which
all his native talents, all his experience and all his training were
best suited. While Curzon was at hand not the most fleeting thought of
retreat could cross a man's mind.

The attack withered away, and darkness came, and the pitiless chilling
rain continued to fall. Curzon, with every nerve at strain with the
responsibility on his shoulders, felt no need for rest. There was much
to be done--ammunition to be gathered from the pouches of the dead,
patrols to be sent out to the front to guard against a night surprise,
wounded to be got out of the way, back to the shell-hole where the
medical officer crouched trying to save life by the last glimmerings of
a dying electric torch. The earth still shook to the guns, the sky was
still lighted by the flame of the explosions. Shells were still coming
over, and every little while a tremor of alarm ran down the attenuated
line and men grabbed their rifles and fired blindly into the darkness
while the patrols out in front fell flat on their faces and cursed their
own countrymen.

There was an alarm from the rear while Curzon was stumbling along
through the dark seeing that the line was evenly occupied. He heard the
well-remembered voice of the Brigadier saying: "Point that rifle the
other way, you fool," and he hastened back to where a trooper was
sheepishly allowing the General and a dozen looming forms behind him to
approach.

"Ah, Curzon," said the General when he heard his voice. "All well,
here?"

"Yes, sir," said Curzon.

"I've had to bring up the supply column myself," said the General.

A brighter flash than usual lit up the forms of the men in his train;
the leader was in R.E. uniform and bent under a load of spades.

"Thank God for those," said Curzon. He would not have believed, three
months back, that he would ever have thanked God for a gift of spades,
but now he saw no incongruity.

"I thought you'd be glad of 'em," chuckled the General. "I've got you
fifty spades. The rest's S.A.A. I suppose you can do with that, too?"

"My God, yes," said Curzon. The supply of small arm ammunition had
fallen away to less than a dozen rounds a man. He had not dared to think
what would happen when it was finished.

"Take it over, then," said the General. "I've got a lot more for these
men to do."

"Can't they stay here, sir?" said Curzon. He longed inexpressibly for a
reinforcement of a dozen riflemen.

"No," snapped the General, and then, to the carrying; party, "put that
stuff down and get back as quick as you can."

There was a bustle in the darkness as the regiment took charge of the
loads. The voice of Lieutenant Borthwick could be heard demanding
ammunition for his precious guns. Curzon left Major Browning to
supervise the distribution while, obedient to a plucked sleeve, he
followed the General away out of earshot of the men.

"I couldn't send you up any food," said the General. "But you're all
right until to-morrow for that, with your emergency rations. You'll have
two a man, I suppose, counting what you'll get off the dead."

"Pretty nearly, sir," said Curzon.

"You'll be able to hold on, I suppose?" went on the General, his voice
dropping still lower. His face was invisible in the darkness.

"Of course, sir," said Curzon.

"Speak the truth--lying's no use."

Curzon ran his mind's eye over the line, visualizing the improvements
those fifty spades would bring about, the new life the fresh ammunition
would bring to Borthwick's guns, the piled dead on the hill-top above,
the exhaustion of his troopers.

"Yes, we ought to get through to-morrow all right," he said.

"To-morrow? You'll have to hold on for a fortnight, perhaps. But let's
get through to-morrow first. You've got patrols out? You're
strengthening your line?"

"Yes, sir."

"I knew I could trust you all right. I couldn't get over here during the
day--had to stay with the Surreys. Browne's dead, you know."

"Not really, sir?"

"Yes. And so's Harvey of the Dragoons. You succeed to the brigade if I'm
hit."

"Don't say that, sir."

"Of course I must say it. But I've got no orders to give you in case I
am. It'll just mean holding on to the last man."

"Yes, sir."

"There's two hundred men in the brigade reserve. Horse holders. R.E.s.
A.S.C. Don't be lavish with 'em, because that's all there are between
here and Havre. And don't trust that major who's commanding the Surreys
now. You know who I mean--Carver's his name."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm getting a second line dug on the edge of the wood back there. But
it won't be any use if they break through. Not enough men to man it. So
you've got to hold on. That's all."

"Yes, sir."

"Good night, Curzon."

"Good night, sir."

The darkness engulfed the General as he plodded back alone across the
sodden earth, and Curzon went back into the trench, to goad the men into
more furious digging, to see that the sentries were alert. Yet even
despite Curzon's activity, despite the guns, and the shells, and the
pitiless rain, there were men who slept, half-buried in the mire--there
never was a time when at least a few British private soldiers in any
unit could not contrive an opportunity for sleep.




CHAPTER SIX


Perhaps it had been a premonition which had caused the Brigadier-General
to talk so freely to Curzon about what should be done should the latter
succeed to his command. It was no later than next morning, when the
German bombardment was searching for the shallow seam in the earth
wherein crouched the Twenty-second Lancers, that a mud-daubed runner
came crawling up the drainage ditch which had already assumed the
function of a communication trench in this section, and gave Curzon a
folded scrap of paper. The writing was blurred and shaky, and the
signature was indecipherable, but the meaning was clear. The General was
dead and Curzon was in command of the brigade. The runner was able to
supplement the information--a shell had hit the brigade headquarters and
had killed or wounded everyone there and left everything disorganized.
It was clearly necessary that Curzon should waste no time in taking over
his duties.

He passed the word for Major Browning, and briefly handed over the
command of the regiment to him.

"What are the orders, sir?" asked Browning.

A Frenchman would have shrugged his shoulders at that question. Curzon
could only eye Browning with a stony expressionless gaze.

"None, except to hold on to the last man," he said, not taking his eyes
off Browning's face. Perhaps this was as well, for he saw a flicker of
despair in Browning's eyes. "You understand, Browning?"

"Yes, sir," said Browning, but Curzon had already made a mental note
that Browning of the Twenty-second Lancers would need stiffening as much
as Carver of the Surreys.

"Those are positive orders, Browning," he said. "There's no chance of
their being modified, and you have no discretion."

"Yes, sir," said Browning. Whatever motives had led Browning to join the
Twenty-second Lancers as a pink-faced subaltern, twenty years ago, he
was being condemned for them now to mutilation or death, and Curzon did
not feel sorry for him, only irritated. Men who stopped to think about
their chances of being killed were a nuisance to their superior
officers.

"Right," said Curzon. "I'll come up again and inspect as soon as I can."

He picked his way along the ditch, the runner crawling behind him. But
such was his appreciation of the need for haste that Curzon ignored the
danger of exposing himself, and walked upright across the fields pitted
with shell-holes while the runner cursed him to himself. The cottage
beside the lane to which the runner guided him had been almost
completely demolished by a high-explosive shell. As Curzon approached
the first sound to strike his ear was a high-pitched, querulous stream
of groans and blasphemies. There were some dead bodies and fragments of
bodies lying on the edge of the lane, and the red tabs on one obscene
fragment showed what had happened to the Brigadier. The groans and
blasphemies came from Carruthers the brigade-major, or what was left of
him. There was an orderly bending over him, as he lay on the grass, but
the orderly was despairing of inducing this shrieking thing which had
graced so many race meetings ever to be silent. Five or six runners were
squatting stoically in the ditch near the cottage; there was an R.E.
detachment stumbling through the cabbages in the garden with a reel of
telephone wire.

Within the shattered walls, down in the cellar now exposed to the light
of day, lay Durrant, the staff officer, who yesterday had guided the
Twenty-second into action. His left arm was still bare, but the bandage
round it was no longer red, but black, and his tunic was torn open at
the breast showing white skin. He was putting a field telephone back on
its hook as Curzon arrived, and, catching sight of him, he snatched it
up again with a hasty----

"Hullo. Hold on. Here he is."

Then he looked up at Curzon and went on--

"We're through to the First Corps, sir. Just re-established
communication."

Curzon lowered himself into the cellar and took up the instrument. There
was a moment of murmurings and grumblings before the earpiece spoke.

"Commanding the Cavalry Brigade?" it asked.

"Yes. This is Colonel Curzon, Twenty-second Lancers, just taken over."

"Right. You'll go on reporting to us for the present. We've told your
division."

"Very well. Any orders?"

"You are to hold your position at all costs. At--all--costs. Good-bye."

Curzon put down the receiver and stood silent. The pain-extorted ravings
of Carruthers, twenty yards away, came pouring down to him, cutting
through the roar of the battle, but he heard neither sound. He was
tugging at his moustache; his rather full, rather loose lips were set
hard and straight. He was adjusting his mind to the business of
commanding a brigade; and he was ready for the responsibility in ten
seconds, and turned to the wounded staff officer.

"Any report from the Dragoons?" he demanded.

That was the beginning of eleven days of anxiety and danger and
responsibility and desperate hard work. Even if Curzon had the necessary
literary ability, he could never write an account of the First Battle of
Ypres in which he took so prominent a part, for his later recollections
of it could never be sorted out from the tangle into which they lapsed.
He could never recover the order in which events occurred. He could
never remember which day it was that the commander of the First Corps,
beautifully groomed, superbly mounted, came riding up the lane to see
for himself what were the chances of the Cavalry Brigade maintaining its
precarious hold upon its seemingly untenable position, nor which day it
was that he had spent in the trenches of the Surreys, leading the
counter-attack which caused the Germans to give back at the moment when
there were only a hundred or two exhausted Englishmen to oppose the
advance of an army corps.

Curzon's work during these eleven days resembled that of a man trying to
keep in repair a dam which is being undermined by an unusual flood. He
had to be here, there and everywhere plastering up weak points--the
materials at his disposal being the two hundred men of the brigade
reserve whom he had found ready to his hand, and the scrapings of other
units, reservists, L. of C. troops, which were sent up to him once or
twice from G.H.Q. There was the ammunition supply to be maintained, food
to be sent up into the line--for water the troops drank from the
stagnant pools in the shell-holes--and bombs to be doled out from the
niggardly supply which the R.E. detachments in the field were just
beginning to make.

He had to watch over his reserves like a miser, for he was pestered
every minute with pathetic appeals from his subordinates for aid--and in
this conservation of his resources his natural temperament was of use to
him, because he found no difficulty in saying "no," however urgently the
request was drafted, if his judgment decided against it. He put new
heart into the men by the way in which he disregarded danger, for to his
natural courage was added the mental pre-occupation which gave him no
chance to think about personal risks. No soldier in the world could have
remained unmoved by the nonchalant fashion in which he was always ready
to lead into danger. In every crisis his big arrogant nose and heavy
black moustache were to be seen as he came thrusting forward to judge
for himself. Over and over again during those eleven days it was his
arrival which turned the scale.

He was one of the fortunate ones. In the battle where the old British
Army found its grave, where more than two-thirds of the fighting men met
with wounds or death, he came through unscathed even though there were
bullet holes in his clothes. It was as unlikely that he should survive
as that a spun penny should come down heads ten times running, and yet
he did; it was only men with that amount of good fortune who could come
through long enough to make the tale of their lives worth the telling.

He was fortunate, too, in the chance of war which had put his brigade
into line separate from the rest of the cavalry corps. There was no
divisional general to reap the credit of the work done by his men, and
the corps headquarters under whose direction he was placed regarded with
approval the officer who carried out his orders with so little protest
or complaint or appeal for further assistance, and who was always ready
to try and wring another ounce of effort out of his exhausted men.

The old army died so gloriously at Ypres because the battle they had to
fight called for those qualities of unflinching courage and dogged
self-sacrifice in which they were pre-eminent. They were given the
opportunity of dying for their country and they died uncomplaining. It
occurred to no one that they had to die in that fashion because the men
responsible for their training had never learned any lessons from
history, had never realized what resources modern invention had opened
to them, with the consequence that men had to do at the cost of their
lives the work which could have been done with one quarter the losses
and at one tenth the risk of defeat if they had been adequately armed
and equipped. And of the surviving officers the ones who would be marked
out for promotion and high command in the new army to be formed were
naturally the ones who had proved themselves in the old-fashioned
battle--men like Curzon of the Twenty-second Lancers.

For there could be no doubt at all that the High Command looked with
approval on Curzon. When eventually the arrival of new units from
distant garrisons and of an army corps from India enabled the exhausted
front line troops to be withdrawn a very great general indeed sent for
Curzon at headquarters. The message arrived the very day that Curzon
brought the cavalry brigade out of the line. He saw the brigade into
billets--not much accommodation was necessary for those few score
survivors, filthy, vermin-ridden men who fell asleep every few
minutes--and did his best to smarten himself up. Then he got on his
horse--it was good to feel a horse again between his knees--and rode
slowly over in the dark of the late afternoon.

To Curzon there was something incredibly satisfying in his arrival at
that pleasant chateau. He had seen enough of ruin and desolation, of
haggard men in tatters, of deaths and wounds and misery, during the past
weeks. Some of his beliefs and convictions had been almost shaken
lately. It was a nightmare world from which he had emerged--a world in
which cavalry regiments had clamoured for barbed wire, reels and reels
of it, and in which horses had been left ungroomed and neglected so that
their holders could be sent into action with rifles and bayonets, and in
which he had almost begun to feel doubts as to England's ultimate
victory.

It was like emerging from a bad dream to ride in at the gates of the
chateau, to have a guard turn out to him all spick and span, and to have
his horse taken in charge by a groom whose uniform did not detract in
the least from his general appearance of an old family retainer. There
were beautiful horses looking out from loose-boxes; there were half a
dozen motor-cars polished to a dazzling glitter.

Then inside the house the atmosphere changed a little. Outside, it was
like a country house with a military flavour. Inside it was like a court
with a dash of monastery. There were the court functionaries moving
about here and there, suave, calm and with an air of unfathomable
discretion. There were the established favourites with a bit of swagger.
There were anxious hangers-on, wondering what sort of reception would be
accorded them to-day, and the rare visitors of Curzon's type who were
not in the court uniform--the red tabs--and who only knew by sight the
great ones who went to and fro.

The man who occupied the position corresponding to that of Grand
Chamberlain came up to greet Curzon. Anyone better acquainted with
courts would have been delighted with the cordiality of his reception,
but to Curzon it only appeared as if he were receiving the politeness
expected from a gentleman. It was good to drink whisky and soda
again--only yesterday he had been drinking army rum out of an enamelled
mug--and to exchange a few polite platitudes about the weather with no
bearing on the military situation. The nightmare feeling of desperate
novelty dropped away from Curzon as he stood and talked. This was life
as it should be. His very weariness and the ache in his temples from
lack of sleep was no more than he had often felt on his first return to
the mess after a night in town. He was inexpressibly glad that he had
recovered his kit at his billet and so had been able to change from his
muddy tunic with the bullet holes in the skirt. A junior chamberlain
came out of a blanket-hung door on the far side of the hall and came up
to them with a significant glance at his senior. The time had come for
Curzon's admission to the presence.

They went through the blanket-covered door into a long room, with
windows extending along the whole of one side giving a fine view over a
beautiful park. There were tables covered with papers; clerks at work
with typewriters; maps on the wall; more green baize tables; half a
dozen red-tabbed officers with telephones before them at work in a very
pleasant smell of cigars; and a door at the far end which gave entrance
to a smaller room with the same view, the same green baize tables, and a
chair which was politely offered to Curzon.

The actual interview was brief enough. Curzon had the impression that he
was being sized up, but he felt no resentment at this--after all, less
than four months ago he had been a mere major of cavalry, and his recent
tenure of the command of a brigade began to assume an unsubstantial form
in his mind in the presence of all this solid evidence of the existence
of another world. He conducted himself with the modesty of his humble
station. Nevertheless, he must have made a personal impression good
enough to support that given by his record, for he came out of that room
with a promise of his confirmation in a brigade command.

Not of his present brigade--that would be too much to expect, of course.
The command of a regular brigade of cavalry was not the sort of
appointment likely to be given to a newly promoted brigadier--and the
speaker hastened to point out the additional consolation that the
brigade would hardly be fit for action again for months after its recent
losses even though by the special dispensation of Providence it had lost
very few horses. But in England there were new armies being raised.
There seemed to be a growing conviction (and here the speaker was
elaborately non-committal) that the war would last long enough for them
to be used as new formations and not as drafts. A mere hint to the War
Office would ensure Curzon's appointment to a new army brigade. With his
regiment out of action as it was at present Curzon might just as well
take leave and go to London to see about it.

Curzon hesitated. There was not much attraction for him in the command
of four raw battalions of infantry. But he knew the Army well enough; a
man who declined a proffered promotion was likely to be left on the
shelf from that time onwards unless he had powerful friends; and
moreover he was only a temporary lieutenant-colonel. For all he knew, he
might at any moment have to revert to his substantive rank of major.
Better an infantry brigade than that. If good fortune came his way he
might have a chance of commanding the brigade in action during the
closing campaign of the war next summer. He left off tugging at his
moustache and accepted the offer.

"Good!" said his host. "And I think it's time for dinner now."




CHAPTER SEVEN


Outwardly the London to which Curzon returned was not very different
from the London he had always known. The streets were darker and there
were more uniforms to be seen, but that was all. After the first
paralysing blow of the declaration of war the city had made haste to
recover its balance to the cry of "Business as Usual." The theatres were
as gay as ever--gayer, if anything; the restaurants more crowded. Most
of the people in the streets were so convinced of England's approaching
victory in the war that now that the front was stabilised the war had
ceased to be a matter of more interest to them than their own personal
concerns.

But here and there were cases of interest. The Club, for instance. When
Curzon went in there he found the place crowded with men he did not
recognize. In addition to many men in the khaki which had scarcely ever
been seen in the Club in the old days, all the retired officers who
hardly set foot in the Club from year's end to year's end had now
crowded up to London to beseige the War Office for employment, and were
spending their time of waiting listening all agog for rumours. Curzon
had not realized the efficiency of the censorship until he found men
crowding round him all intent on acquiring first-hand information.
Birtles started it--Birtles had been a major in the regiment when Curzon
was only a subaltern.

"'Morning, Curzon," said Birtles when they encountered each other on the
stairs, and would have passed him by if he had not suddenly remembered
that Curzon must have come back from France on leave from the regiment;
he halted abruptly. "On leave, eh?"

"Yes," said Curzon.

"What--er," said Birtles, checking himself in the midst of a question as
he suddenly had a spasm of doubt lest Curzon had been "sent home." But
he reassured himself quickly on that point, because no man who had been
sent home would show his face in the Club--at least, not for years. So
he was able to continue. "What's the regiment doing?"

Curzon said what he could about the regiment's achievements.

"Dismounted action, eh?" said Birtles. "That's bad. Very bad. And what
about you? Short leave, or something?"

Curzon was in civilian clothes, so that Birtles had nothing to go on.
Yet he was obviously painfully anxious to ask questions. His old eyes
were watering with anxiety. Curzon said he was home to take up a fresh
command.

"Yeomanry or something?"

"No, an infantry brigade," said Curzon.

"A brigade? A brigade!" gasped Birtles, who, naturally, having once
known Curzon as a subaltern could not think of him as anything else.
"Here, come and have a drink. I mean--have you time for a drink?"

Curzon was in need of a drink after his busy morning. He had called at
the War Office and had had a very satisfactory interview, because a note
about him from G.H.Q. in France had already arrived; and he had been
told that his promotion, to the temporary rank of brigadier-general
would appear in the next _Gazette_. Not merely that, either. There would
undoubtedly be a brigade for him at the end of his fortnight's leave.
More still; besides his inevitable mention in despatches there would be
a decoration for him--most likely a commandership of the Most Honourable
Order of the Bath. Three eminent soldiers had cross-examined him in turn
about the state of affairs in Flanders--there was a general anxiety to
try and supplement the information doled out by telegram from
G.H.Q.--and he had answered questions as well as he knew how.

And from the War Office he had gone to his military tailor's. They did
not seem to remember him at first, which had annoyed him, and they had
expressed doubt about their ability in face of a torrent of orders, to
supply his demands in the next week. Their attitude had changed a little
when he told them who he was and still more when he gave his order for a
general's uniform with the red tabs and crossed sword and bton of his
rank. There had been more excitement than he had expected in giving that
order--Curzon was still conscious of a little thrill when he remembered
it, and he really badly needed his drink.

Yet by the time the drink had come to him he had precious little
opportunity of drinking it, because Birtles hastened to spread the news
that he was entertaining a brigadier-general home from the Front, and
from every corner of the Club men came crowding to hear his news and to
ask him questions, or merely to look at the man newly returned from a
European war. They were grey-headed old men, most of them, and they eyed
him with envy. With anxiety, too; they had been gathering their
information from the all-too-meagre communiqus and from the
all-too-extensive casualty lists. They feared to know the worst at the
same time as they asked, and they raised their voices in quavering
questions about this unit and that, and to every question Curzon could
only give a painful answer. There was not a unit in the Expeditionary
Force which had not poured out its best blood at Mons or at Le Cateau or
at Ypres.

For a long time Curzon dealt out death and despair among those old men;
it was fortunate that he did not feel the awkwardness which a more
sensitive man might have felt. After all, casualties were a perfectly
natural subject for a military man to discuss. It was need for his lunch
which caused him in the end to break off the conversation, and even at
lunch he was not free from interruption. Someone came up and spoke to
him as he began on his soup--a tall, heavily-built bald old man in the
uniform of a captain of a very notable regiment of infantry. He
displayed all the embarrassment of an English gentleman addressing a
stranger with an unconventional request.

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," he began. Curzon tried to be
polite, although it was a strain when he had hardly begun his lunch.

"The fact is"--went on the captain--"of course, I must apologize for
being unconventional--I was wondering if you had made any arrangements
for dinner to-night?"

Curzon stared at him. But his arrangements were of the vague sort an
officer home on leave without a relation in the world might be expected
to have.

"Well----" began Curzon. It was the fact that this stranger belonged to
that very crack regiment which caused him to temporize.

"You see," went on the captain hastily. "I was hoping--I know all this
sounds most impertinent--I was hoping that I could induce you to dine at
my brother's to-night."

He had fumbled out his card case by now, and proffered a card with
embarrassed fingers. Curzon read upon it the simple words: "Lord George
Winter-Willoughby." He only half heard what Lord George, voluble at
last, went on to say, while he co-ordinated in his mind what the name
meant to him. The Winter-Willoughbys were the Bude family, whose head
was the Duke of Bude with a score of other titles, who had held office
in the last Conservative Government. The courtesy title of Lord implied
that the present speaker was a son of a duke--more, it meant that he was
brother of the present Duke--in fact, it meant that the invitation now
being given was to dine with the Duke of Bude. Confirmation trickled
through into Curzon's consciousness from the bits of Lord George's
speech which Curzon heard--"Bude House"--"Eight o'clock"--"Quite
informal--war-time, you know"--"Telephone"--"The Duke and Duchess will
be delighted if you can come."

The self-control which had enabled Curzon for fifteen years to conceal
the part which chance had played in the battle of Volkslaagte made it
possible for him to accept an invitation to dine at one of the greatest
London houses as though he were thoroughly accustomed to such
invitations and Lord George displayed immense relief at not being
snubbed, apologized once more for the informality of his behaviour,
pleaded the present national crisis as his excuse, and withdrew
gracefully.

It was fortunate that Curzon was not a man given to analysis of
sociological conditions; if he had been he would certainly have wasted
the rest of that day in thinking about how extensive must be the present
upheaval if it resulted in hasty invitations to Bude House addressed to
men of no family at all--he was fully aware that six months ago there
would have been no perceptible difference between such an invitation and
a Royal Command. As it was, he merely savoured pleasantly of his success
and went out and bought a new set of buttons for his white waistcoat.

In December, 1914, "war-time informality" at Bude House implied
something quite different from what those words meant in, say,
Bloomsbury in 1918. There was a footman as well as a butler to open the
door to Curzon, but they were both over military age and the footman's
livery was inconspicuous. For the first time in his life Curzon
described himself as "General Curzon" for the butler to announce him.

"It's very good of you to come, General," said a tall woman with dyed
hair, offering her hand as he approached her across the deep carpet of
the not-too-large drawing-room.

"It's very good of you to ask me," Curzon managed to say. The bulky
figure of Lord George showed itself at the Duchess's side, and beside it
a bulkier counterpart of itself, as if the law of primogeniture ensured
that the holder of the title should be a size larger than the younger
son. There were introductions effected. The Duke was as bald as his
brother--only a wisp of grey hair remaining round his ears. Lady
Constance Winter-Willoughby was apparently Lord George's wife, and was
as lovely and as dignified as was to be expected of a daughter of an
earldom six generations older than the Dukedom of Bude.

Lady Emily Winter-Willoughby was the Duke's daughter; she was nearly as
tall as her father, but she was not conspicuous for beauty of feature or
of dress. For a fleeting moment Curzon, as his eyes wandered over her
face, was conscious of a likeness between her features and those of
Bingo, the best polo pony he ever had, but the thought vanished as
quickly as it came when he met her kindly grey eyes. Lady Emily,
especially now that she had left thirty behind, had always been a woman
who preferred the country to London, and felt more at home with horses
and dogs and flowers than with the politicians whom she was likely to
encounter at Bude House. A few more years might see her an embittered
spinster; but at the moment she only felt slightly the tediousness of
this life--just enough to sense the slight awkwardness Curzon was
careful not to display. When their eyes met they were both suddenly
conscious of a fellow feeling, and they smiled at each other almost as
if they were members of some secret society.

It was with an odd reluctance that Curzon left the warm glow of Lady
Emily's proximity to meet the other two guests, a Sir Henry Somebody
(Curzon did not catch the name) and his wife. They were a sharp-featured
pair, both of them. Curzon formed the impression that Sir Henry must be
some sort of lawyer, and that his wife had wits just as keen. There was
a depressing moment of impersonal conversation with them before dinner
was announced.

The advent of the war had accelerated the already noticeable decline
from the great days of the Edwardians; dinners were very different now
from the huge meals and elaborate service of ten years before; twelve
courses had diminished to six; there was some attempt to please by
simplicity instead of to impress by elaboration. The dining-room was lit
by candles so that it was hard to see the painted arched ceiling; there
was not a great deal of silver displayed upon the circular table. But
the food was perfection, and the wine marvellous--Bude House had not
seen fit to follow the example of Buckingham Palace and eschew all
alcoholic liquor for the duration of the war.

As the Vouvray was being served Lady Constance on Curzon's right
recounted how, a short time before, at another dinner-party, where the
hostess had tried to do like Queen Mary and confine her guests to
lemonade and barley water, the guests had one and all produced pocket
flasks to make up for the absence of liquor. With eight people at a
circular table general conversation was easy, and the Duchess on
Curzon's left announced incisively that if she had been the hostess in
question she would never receive one of those guests again, but she went
on to agree that only the dear Queen could expect people to dine without
drinking.

"It's bad enough having to do without German wines," she said. "We had
some Hock that the Duke was very proud of, but of course we can't drink
it _now_, can we?"

Curzon agreed with her, and not out of deference, either. He was quite
as convinced as she was that there was no virtue left in Hock or in
Wagner or in Goethe or in Drer. From the innate badness of German art
to the recent deeds of the German Government was but a step in the
conversation--a step easily taken as at least seven of the eight people
present were anxious to take it. Before very long Curzon found himself
talking about his recent experiences, and he was listened to with rapt
attention. It was generally a question either from Sir Henry (on the
other side of the Duchess) or from Sir Henry's wife (on the other side
of the Duke) which moved him steadily on from one point to the next--at
one moment Curzon noted to himself that Sir Henry simply must be a
lawyer of some sort, as he had already surmised, because the tone of his
questions had a ring of the law courts about it.

The conversation had a different trend from that at the Club in the
morning. There was not so much anxiety displayed as to the fates of
regiments and battalions. The party seemed to be far more interested in
the general conduct of the war--Sir Henry, in particular, seemed to know
a good deal more already about Mons and Le Cateau than Curzon did.
Curzon almost began to form the idea that they would have relished
criticism of the Higher Command, but he put the notion away before it
crystallized. That was inconceivable; moreover, there was no chance of
his disparaging his superiors to anyone--to say nothing of the fact that
he had only the haziest ideas about the conduct of a great deal of the
war. The British Army had been pitted against superior numbers over and
over again, and had emerged each time from the ordeal with honour. Of
crisis at headquarters he knew no more than any subaltern, and he denied
their existence with all his soldier's pride. Besides, no soldier who
had served under Kitchener could lightly give away anything approaching
a military secret.

If the company, as it appeared reasonable to suppose, had been expecting
any juicy bits of scandal, they were doomed to disappointment. In fact,
the disappointment on the faces of the Duchess, Lady Constance, and Sir
Henry's wife was almost noticeable even to Curzon, who got as far as
feeling that his conversation was not as brilliant as it should have
been--a feeling which did not surprise him in the least. It only made
him take more notice of Lady Emily, who showed no disappointment at all.

When the conversation moved from the general to the particular, Curzon
was still rather at sea. All his life he had been a regimental officer;
these people were far more familiar with individuals on the General
Staff than he was--to him they were only surnames, while at this table
they were spoken of as "Bertie" and "Harry" and "Arthur." There was only
one moment of tense reality, and that was when young Carruthers was
mentioned. For a tiny interval Curzon forgot where he was; he forgot the
polished table, and the glittering silver, and the exquisite food within
him, and the butler brooding over his shoulder like a benevolent deity.
It seemed as if he was back at brigade headquarters again, with the
tortured screams of Carruthers sounding in his ears. A flood of memories
followed--of Major Browning combating the deadly fear which was shaking
him like a leaf, of the four headless troopers lying in a huddled heap
in one bay of the trench, of the mud and the stench and the
sleeplessness.

It was only for a moment. The extraordinary feeling that these men and
women here should be forced somehow to realize that these things were
part of the same framework as Arthur's appointment to the
Adjutant-General's department passed away, killed by its own absurdity,
before the others had finished their kind words about Carruthers' fate
and had passed on to the discussion of someone still alive. After all,
it would be as bad taste to force these inevitable details of war upon
the notice of these women and civilians as it would be to do the same
with the details of digestive processes or any other natural occurrence.

Then the women rose to leave the table and gave Curzon a further
opportunity to come back to normal again, as the men closed up round the
Duke. The war tended to disappear from the conversation from that
moment, while later in the vast drawing-room where they rejoined the
ladies, Lady Constance played the piano very brilliantly indeed so that
conversation was not necessary. The music was a little over Curzon's
head, but he had a very good dinner inside him and some excellent port,
and he was quite content to sit beside Lady Emily and listen vaguely. It
was with a shock that he found himself nodding in his chair--it was
typical of Curzon not to realize what enormous demands those eleven days
of furious action and eleven nights of little sleep at Ypres had made
upon his strength.

So that it was with relief that he saw Lord George and Lady Constance
rise to take their leave, making it possible for him to go immediately
afterwards. And Sir Henry's wife said to him as he said good-bye to her:
"Perhaps you'll come and dine with _us_ if you can spare another evening
of your leave?" so that he felt he had not been quite a failure in
society.




CHAPTER EIGHT


The same morning that Curzon's promotion to the temporary rank of
Brigadier-General appeared in the Press, there arrived the invitation to
dinner, which enabled Curzon to confirm his suspicion that Sir Henry was
really Sir Henry Cross, the barrister and Conservative Member of
Parliament; and the other letter which the waiter brought him was a note
from the War Office:

    DEAR CURZON,

    Sorry to interrupt your leave, but could you possibly come and
    see me here in room 231 at your earliest convenience?

                                 Yours,
                                           G. MACKENZIE, Major-Gen.

Curzon puzzled over this note as he ate his kidneys and bacon solitary
in the hotel dining-room--his early-rising habit persisted even in a
West End hotel, so that he was bound to be the only one having breakfast
at that gloomy hour. It was a surprise to him to be addressed as "Dear
Curzon" by General Mackenzie. Mackenzie had been one of the eminent
officers who had discussed the war with him two days before, but half an
hour's conversation did not seem sufficient reason for the
Director-General of Tactical Services to address him without a prefix
and to preface with an apology what might just as well have been a
simple order. It was possible that now that he was a General himself he
was being admitted into the confraternity of Generals who might have
their own conventions of behaviour among themselves, but Curzon did not
think that very likely.

He smoked a comfortable cigar while he read _The Times_--he could not
help reading the announcement of his promotion three times over--and
then he walked across St. James's Park and the Horse Guards to the War
Office. Relays of commissionaires and Boy Scouts led him through the
corridors to Room 231. There was only the briefest of delays before he
was brought into the office of the Director-General of Tactical
Services, and Mackenzie offered him a chair and a cigar and made three
remarks about the weather before he began to say what he meant to say.

"I didn't know you were acquainted with the Budes, Curzon?" he began.

"I know them slightly," replied Curzon cautiously. "I dined there a
night or two ago."

"Yes, I know that," was the surprising rejoinder. Mackenzie drummed with
his fingers, and looked across his desk at Curzon with a hint of
embarrassment on his large pink face. His ginger hair was horribly out
of harmony with the red tabs on his collar. "That fellow Cross was
there, too."

"Yes," said Curzon.

"You've never had anything to do with politicians, Curzon," went on
Mackenzie. "You've no idea how gossip spreads."

"I don't gossip, sir," said Curzon indignantly.

"No," said Mackenzie. "Of course not."

He looked meditatively at his finger-nails before he spoke again.

"Cross has put down a question to ask in the House to-day--the House of
Commons, I mean. It's about Le Cateau."

"That's nothing to do with me," said Curzon, more indignantly still, as
the implication became obvious to him.

"That was all I wanted to know," said Mackenzie, simply. His bright
eyes, of a pale grey, were scrutinizing Curzon very closely, all the
same. Mackenzie could not make up his mind as to whether or not this was
yet another example of the plain blunt soldier with secret political
affiliations.

"We can put the lid on friend Cross all right," he went on. "We can
always say that it is opposed to public interest to answer his question,
if we want to."

"I suppose so," agreed Curzon.

"But the House of Commons is not a very important place just now, thank
God," said Mackenzie. "It isn't there that things happen."

Curzon felt bewildered at that. If Mackenzie was not accusing him of
betraying military secrets he could not imagine what he was driving at.
He had no conception of the power residing in the casual conversation of
about fifty or so luncheon and dinner tables in London. He did not
realize that high position in the Army--even the post of
Director-General of Tactical Services--was, if not exactly at the mercy
of, at any rate profoundly influenced by, whispers which might circulate
in a particular stratum of society. More especially was this the case
when a rigid censorship left public opinion unable to distribute praise
or blame except under the influence of gossip or of prejudice. All these
circumstances were aggravated by the fact that England had entered upon
the war under a government not at all representative of the class
accustomed to the dispensing of military patronage; there were already
hints and signs that to prolong its existence the government must allow
some of the opposition to enter its ranks, and in that case the foolish
ones who had staked their careers on its continuance unchanged in power
would be called upon to pay forfeit.

Mackenzie felt strongly opposed to explaining all this to Curzon. It
might be construed as a confession of weakness. Instead, he harked back
to the original subject.

"The Bude House set," he said, "--the women, I mean, not the men--want a
finger in every pie."

"I didn't know that," said Curzon perfectly truthfully. Of course,
throughout his life, he had heard gossip about petticoat influence. But
he had not believed--in fact, he still did not believe--that people
played at politics as at a game, in which the amount of patronage
dispensed acted as a useful measure of the score, so that to have
brought about the appointment of one's own particular nominee to an
Under-Secretaryship of State was like bringing off a little slam at
bridge.

Now that the war had become such a prominent feature in the news, and
friends and relations were taking commissions or returning from
retirement the value of military appointments as counters in the game
was higher than ever before. And at the moment the Army was especially
entangled in politics, thanks to the Irish business. When certain people
returned to power there would be a good many old scores to pay off.
There would be distinctions drawn between the men who had declared their
unwillingness to obey orders and the men who had not seen fit to make a
similar declaration. Besides, in some strange way the fact that there
was a war in progress accentuated the intensity of this hidden strife
between the Ins and the Outs, and made it more of a cut-and-thrust
business than ever before.

"Well, you know now," said Mackenzie grimly.

"Yes," said Curzon. He was no fool. He could see that he was in a strong
position, even if he could not guess what it was that constituted its
strength. "I'm due to dine with Cross next week, too."

"Really?" said Mackenzie, contriving to give no hint of meaning at all
in his intonation, but drumming with his fingers all the same. He was
convinced now that if the man he was talking to was not yet a political
soldier, he would be quite soon, and one with very valuable connections.
In fact, he did not feel strong enough to nip the development in the bud
by commanding Curzon, on pain of losing his promised brigade, to have
nothing to do with the Bude House set.

"Cross gives damned good dinners," he said. "I don't know why these
lawyer sharks should always be able to get the best chefs. More money, I
suppose."

"I suppose so," agreed Curzon, and Mackenzie changed the subject.

"By the way, the Foreign Office has just been through to us on the
telephone," he said. "The Belgian Government wants to present
decorations to some English officers, and I have to give my opinion
about their distribution. Seeing what you did at Ypres it would be
appropriate if one came to you, don't you think? I suppose you wouldn't
mind?"

"Of course not," said Curzon.

"Right," said Mackenzie, making a note on a memorandum tablet. "I expect
it will be the Order of Leopold--a nice watered red ribbon. It'll look
well with your C.M.G. and D.S.O."

"Thank you very much," said Curzon.

"Don't thank me," said Mackenzie, with a certain peculiar emphasis in
his tone. "It's yourself you have to thank."

Curzon came away from that momentous interview with no very clear idea
of what had happened. He was delighted, of course, with the offer of the
Belgian decoration. Including his two South African medals he would have
five ribbons on his breast now; it would not be long before he could
start a second row. Ribbons and promotion were the two signs of success
in his profession and now he had both. Success was sweet; he swung his
walking stick light-heartedly as he strode across the park. He even
laughed when a spiteful old lady said to him as he passed: "Why aren't
you in the army?"

That Curzon could perceive the humour of a situation and laugh at it was
a remarkable state of affairs in itself. As he walked, he debated with
himself as to whether or not he should telephone Cissie Barnes and see
if he could spend the afternoon with her--Cissie Barnes was a lady with
whom he had often spent afternoons and week-ends before the war began.
If Curzon had been given to self-analysis he might have been seriously
alarmed at finding that he was not specially anxious to go and see
Cissie.

And then although he was quite sure what he wanted to do he ran through
in his mind the other ways open to him of spending the afternoon. He
might go round to the Club, and at the Club he might talk or play
bridge--the latter, more likely. There would be more than a chance that
at the Club he might run across an acquaintance with whom he could share
a couple of stalls at a musical comedy or at one of these revues which
seemed to have suddenly become fashionable. That might serve very well
for the evening. He was not so sure about the afternoon.

There were a few houses at which he might call--he ran over them in his
mind and decided against each one in turn. He could go down into
Leicestershire so as to hunt next day; presumably Clayton could be
relied upon to produce a hireling, and he could stay at the Somerset
Arms. The illustrated papers he had read yesterday had informed him
that, of course, hunting was still being carried on in the Shires. He
could do that to-morrow, though. This afternoon--he admitted it to
himself now, having decided that there was a good reason to put forward
against all the other courses--he would call at Bude House. It was
growing a little old-fashioned to pay a call two days after dinner, but,
damn it, he was content to be old-fashioned. Lady Emily might be there.
Once he had formed this decision the hours seemed to drag as he ate his
lunch and waited for the earliest possible moment at which he could ring
the bell at Bude House.

"Her Grace is not at home, sir," said the butler at the door. By a
miracle of elocution he managed to drop just enough of each aitch to
prove himself a butler without dropping the rest.

"Is Lady Emily at home?" asked Curzon.

"I will inquire, sir."

Lady Emily was glad to see the General. She gave him her hand and a
smile. She offered him tea, which he declined and a whisky and soda
which he accepted.

Lady Emily had been brought up very strictly, in the way a child should
be during the 'eighties and 'nineties, especially when she had had the
impertinence to be a girl instead of the boy who would inherit the
title. Men, she had been taught, were the lords of the universe, under
God. With regard to the subjection of women an important exception was
to be made in the case of her mother--the Duchess undoubtedly occupied a
place between men and God. What with her parents' ill-concealed
disappointment at the accident of her sex, and the prevailing doctrine
of the unimportance of women, and her mother's rapacious personality,
and the homeliness of her own looks, there was not much
self-assertiveness about Lady Emily. To such a pitch had her conviction
of innate sin been raised that she even felt vaguely guilty that Lloyd
George's pestilent budgets from 1911 onwards had weighed so heavily upon
the ducal income.

It was no wonder she had never married. Of course, there were plenty of
men who would have been glad of the opportunity of marrying a Duke's
only child, but, being a Duke's only child, it had been easy to make
sure that she never met that kind of man, and suitable matches had never
been attracted. It might be said that Curzon was the first adventurer
she had ever met--Curzon would have been furious if anyone had called
him an adventurer, but such he was to pay his respects to Lady Emily
when he had no more than seven hundred a year of private means, however
ample might be his prospects of professional eminence.

Curzon's motives were hardly susceptible to analysis. There could be no
denying that for some very obscure reason he liked Lady Emily very much
indeed. When her eyes met his as she drank her tea he felt a warm
unusual pleasure inside him--but there is nothing that so defies
examination as the mutual attraction of two apparently not very
attractive people. He was glad to be near her, in a fashion whose like
he could not remember regarding any of his light loves or the wives of
brother-officers with whom he had exchanged glances.

Women had never paid much attention to Curzon; it was gratifying to find
one who did, and especially gratifying (there is no shirking this point)
in that she was the daughter of a Duke. Success was a stimulating thing.
He had risen in four months from Major to Brigadier-General. He had
always fully intended to marry at forty, and here he was at forty-one
with nothing impossible to him--why should a Duke's daughter be
impossible to him? The daring of the thought was part of the attraction;
and that business with Mackenzie this morning added to the feeling of
daring.

He was so much above himself that he was able to talk more readily than
he had ever been able to talk to a woman in his life, and Lady Emily
listened and nodded and smiled until they both of them felt very much
the better for each other's company. They talked about horses and dogs.
Lady Emily had much experience of one kind of sport which Curzon had
never sampled--stag-hunting in Somersetshire, where lay the greater part
of the Duke's estates. She actually found herself talking about this
with animation, and Curzon, fox-hunting man though he was, found himself
listening with something more than toleration. They exchanged
reminiscences, and Curzon told his two tall fox-hunting stories (the
regimental mess had grown tired of them away back in 1912) with complete
success. They found, of course, that they had friends in common in the
Shires, and they were talking about them when the Duchess came in with a
fragile old gentleman trailing behind her.

Her Grace was mildly surprised at finding Curzon in her house, and she
endeavoured to freeze him by displaying exactly that mildness of
surprise which could not be construed as rudeness but which most
definitely could not be called overwhelming hospitality. It was all very
well to have a successful general to dinner at a time when successful
generals were more fashionable than poets or pianists, but that gave him
no excuse for presuming on his position--especially when he promised to
be of no use at all in her political manoeuvres. But before Curzon had
time to take note of the drop in temperature and to take his leave Lady
Emily had interposed--unconsciously, perhaps.

"Tea, Mr. Anstey?" she asked.

"Thank you, yes," said the frail old gentleman. "I shall be glad of some
tea. My work at the Palace is unusually tiring nowadays in consequence
of the war."

The Duchess made the introductions:

"General Curzon--Mr. Anstey."

"Curzon?" repeated Mr. Anstey with mild animation. "Brigadier-General
Herbert Curzon?"

"Yes," said Curzon.

"Then you are one of the people responsible for my present fatigue."

"I'm sorry to hear you say that, sir," said Curzon.

"Oh, there's no need to be sorry, I assure you. I am only too delighted
to have the honour of doing the work I do. It is only to-day that I made
out two warrants for you."

"Indeed, sir?" said Curzon vaguely.

"Yes. There is, of course, no harm in my telling you about them, seeing
that they are already in the post and will be delivered to you
to-morrow. One of them deals with the Companionship of the Bath and the
other with the Belgian Order of Leopold--I must explain that I combine
in my humble person official positions both in the department of the
Lord-Chamberlain and in the registry of the Order of the Bath. You will
find you have been commanded to be present at an investiture to be held
next week."

"Thank you," said Curzon. He remembered vaguely having heard of the
Ansteys as one of the "Court families" who occupied positions at the
Palace from one generation to the next.

"The Order of Leopold," went on Mr. Anstey, "is a very distinguished
order indeed. It is the Second Class which is being awarded to you,
General--the First Class is generally reserved for reigning monarchs and
people in corresponding positions. Of course, it is not an order with a
very lengthy history--it can hardly be that, can it?--but I think an
order presented by a crowned head far more distinguished than any
decoration a republic can award. I hope you agree with me, General?"

"Oh yes, of course," said Curzon, perfectly sincerely.

The Duchess merely nodded. The orders her husband wore were such as no
mere general could ever hope to attain, and possessed the further
recommendation (as has frequently been pointed out) that there was no
"damned nonsense about merit" attached to them. The Duke's ribbons and
stars were given him, if a reason must be assigned, because his
great-great-great-great grandfather had come over in the train of
William of Orange--certainly not because ten years ago he had been
chivvied by his wife into accepting minor office under a tottering
Conservative Government. Her Grace was sublimely confident in her share
of the universal opinion that it was far better to receive distinctions
for being someone than for doing something.

"You are one of the Derbyshire Curzons, I suppose, General?" said Mr.
Anstey.

Curzon was ready for that. He had been an officer in India during Lord
Curzon's vice-royalty and had grown accustomed to having the
relationship suggested--in the course of years even his unimaginative
mind had been able to hammer out a suitable answer.

"Yes, but a long way back," he said. "My branch has been settled in
Staffordshire for some time, and I am the only representative now."

Curzon always remembered that his father had a vague notion that _his_
father had come to London from the Potteries as a boy; moreover he
thought it quite unnecessary to add that these mystic Staffordshire
Curzons had progressed from Staffordshire to the Twenty-second Lancers
via Mincing Lane.

"That is extremely interesting," said Mr. Anstey. "Even though the
Scarsdale peerage is of comparatively recent creation the Curzons are
one of the few English families of undoubtedly Norman descent."

Mr. Anstey checked himself with a jerk. Despite his Court tact, he had
allowed himself to mention Norman descent from a follower of William the
Conqueror in the presence of a representative of a family of Dutch
descent from a follower of William of Orange. To his mind the difference
was abysmal and the gaffe he had committed inexcusable. He glanced with
apprehension at the Duchess, but he need not have worried. Coronets
meant far more to her than did Norman blood.

"How very interesting," said the Duchess, coldly.

"Yes, isn't it?" said Lady Emily eagerly, and attracted every eye by the
warmth with which she said it.

The Duchess ran a cold glance over every inch of her thirty-year-old
daughter's shrinking form.

"There are a great number of fresh letters arrived," she said, "about
the Belgian Relief Clothing Association. You will find them in the
library, Emily. I think they had better be answered at once."

Curzon saw Lady Emily's face fall a little, and it was that which made
him take the plunge. He cut in with what he had to say just as Lady
Emily, with the obedience resulting from years of subjection, was rising
from her arm-chair.

"I was wondering, Lady Emily," he said, "if I might have the pleasure of
your company at the theatre this evening?"

Lady Emily looked at her mother, as ingrained instinct directed. Mr.
Anstey sensed an awkwardness, and hastened to try and smooth it over
with his well-known tact.

"We all of us need a little relaxation in these strenuous days," he
said.

"Thank you, I should very much like to come," said Lady Emily--perhaps
she, too, was infected by the surge of revolt against convention and
parental control which the newspapers had noted as a concomitant of
war-time. The Duchess could hardly countermand a decision publicly
reached by a daughter of full age and more.

"What is the play to which you are proposing so kindly to take my
daughter?" she asked icily, which was all she could do.

"I was going to leave the choice to Lady Emily," said Curzon--a reply,
made from sheer ignorance, which left the Duchess with no objection to
raise, and that emboldened Curzon still farther.

"Shall we dine together first?" he asked.

"That would be very nice," said Lady Emily, her bonnet soaring clean
over the windmill in this, her first flourish of emancipation.

"Seven o'clock?" said Curzon. "It's a pity having to dine so early, but
it's hard to avoid it. Shall I call for you?"

"Yes," said Lady Emily.




CHAPTER NINE


"Damn it all, Maud," said the Duke of Bude to the Duchess, a week after
Curzon had gone to the theatre with Lady Emily. "Anyone would think you
didn't want the girl to get married."

That was so true that the Duchess had to deny it.

"I don't want Emily to marry a man of no family at all--a mere
adventurer," said she, and the Duke chuckled as he made one of his
irritating silly jokes.

"As long as he's got no family it doesn't matter. We won't have to
invite his Kensington cousins to the Hall, then. The man assured us only
yesterday that he hasn't a relation in the world. And as for being an
adventurer--well, a man can't help having adventures in time of war, can
he?"

"Tcha!" said the Duchess. "You know perfectly well what I mean."

"He's a perfectly presentable man. He's Haileybury, after all--everyone
can't be an Etonian. Colonel of a good regiment----"

"The Twenty-second Lancers," sneered the Duchess.

"It might have been black infantry," said the Duke. "He's got a C.B. and
a D.S.O., and Borthwick at the Lords was telling me that his boy wrote
reams about him from the Front. He's a man with a future."

"But they hardly know each other," said the Duchess.

"Well, they're old enough to be able to make up their minds. Emily's
thirty-two, isn't she, or is it thirty-three? And he's turned forty. I
think it's very suitable. I can't imagine why you're objecting so much."

That, of course, was a lie. The Duke knew perfectly well why the Duchess
was objecting, and in his heart of hearts he objected, too. But he could
bow gracefully to the inevitable, in a way his stiff-necked wife found
more difficult.

"Marrying's in the air these war-time days," went on the Duke. "There'll
be no stopping 'em if they set their minds on it. Much better start
getting used to the idea now. Besides, we may as well be in the
fashion."

"Fashion, indeed!" said the Duchess. Her disregard for fashion was one
of the things about her which no one who saw her even once could
possibly avoid remarking.

"Besides," said the Duchess, unanswerably. "He's got no money."

"M'yes," said the Duke, undoubtedly shaken. "That's a point I shall have
to go into very carefully when the time comes."

The time came no later than the day after to-morrow. The courtship had
blossomed with extraordinary rapidity in the hot-house air of war-time
London. So high above the windmill had Lady Emily's bonnet soared that
she had actually accompanied Curzon to a night-club so as to dance. They
had shuffled and stumbled through the ultra-modern one-steps and
two-steps until the pampered orchestra had at last consented to play a
waltz. Curzon certainly could waltz; he had learned the art in the great
days of waltzing. And it might have been the extra glass of rather poor
champagne which she had drunk at dinner which made Lady Emily's feet so
light and her eyes so bright. As the last heart-broken wail of the
violins died away and they stopped and looked at each other the thing
was as good as settled. No sooner had they sat down than Curzon was able
to stumble through a proposal of marriage with less difficulty that he
had found in the one-step; and to his delighted surprise he found
himself accepted.

Lady Emily's eyes were like stars. They made Curzon's head swim a
little. His heart had plunged so madly after his inclinations that never
again, not once, did it occur to him that her face was not unlike a
horse's. To Curzon Lady Emily's gaunt figure, stiffly corseted--almost
an old maid's figure--was a miracle of willowy grace, and her capable
ugly hands, when he kissed them in the taxicab on the way home, were
more beautiful than the white hands of Lancelot's Yseult.

The interview with the Duke in the morning was not too terrible. It was
a relief to the Duke to discover that the General actually had seven
hundred pounds a year--especially as under the stimulus of war-time
demands some of the dividends which contributed to make up this sum
showed an undoubted tendency to expand. It might have been a much
smaller income and still not have been incompatible with Curzon's
position in life. Besides, the General offered, in the most handsome
fashion, to settle every penny of his means upon his future wife. No one
could make a fairer offer than that, after all. And when one came to
total up his general's pay, and his allowances, under the new scale just
published, and his forage allowances, and so forth, it did not fall far
short of twelve hundred a year, without reckoning on the possibility of
promotion or command pay or the less likely sources of income. A
general's widow's pension (after all, every contingency must be
considered) was only a small amount, of course, but it was as good as
any investment in the Funds.

And two thousand a year (for so the Duke, in an expansive moment,
generously estimated Curzon's income) really could not be called
poverty, not even by a Duke with thirty thousand a year, especially when
the Duke belonged to a generation whose young men about town had often
contrived to make a passable appearance on eight hundred. The Duke
proposed to supplement the newly married couple's income with two
thousand a year from his private purse, and they ought to be able to
manage very well, especially while the General was on active service.

"I think you've been weak, Gilbert," said the Duchess, later.

"Oh, for goodness' sake, Maud!" said the Duke. "I don't see that at all.
We owe our national existence at present to the Army. And we can spare
the money all right. You know that. It'll only go to George and his boys
if Emily doesn't get it. That is, if these blasted death duties leave
anything over at all."

"I don't think," said the Duchess, "that there is any need for you to
use disgusting language to me even though your daughter is marrying
beneath her."

The Duchess grew more reconciled to her daughter's marriage when she
came to realize that at least while Curzon was on active service she
would still be able to tyrannize over her daughter, and the public
interest in the wedding reconciled her still more. The formal
announcement was very formal, of course. "A marriage has been arranged
and will shortly take place between Lady Emily Gertrude Maud
Winter-Willoughby, only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Bude, and
Brigadier-General Herbert Curzon, C.B., D.S.O., Twenty-second Lancers."

The newspapers built a marvellous edifice upon this bare foundation.
"Duke's Daughter to Wed War Hero" they said, "Lightning Wooing." It was
not every day of the week, by any manner of means, that a duke's
daughter married; and war news, now that the campaign in Flanders had
dwindled away into a stalemate in the mud and rain, was not likely to
stimulate sales. There was something piquant about the union of a Winter
of the bluest blood with a Curzon whose relationship to Lord Curzon of
Kedleston was at best only ill-defined. All the same, the Press played
up nobly. The daily Press had a great deal to say about the future
bridegroom's military achievements--although the exigencies of the
censorship compelled them to say more about Volkslaagte than about
Ypres--and the snobbish weekly papers laid stress upon the splendours of
Bude Hall in Somersetshire, and the interest the Royal Family was taking
in the wedding; there were dozens of photographs taken showing the happy
pair walking in the Park or at some party in aid of something. A
war-time bride had more popular appeal, undoubtedly, than a war-time
widow, or than those other ladies underneath whose photograph the papers
could only publish the already hackneyed caption, "Takes great interest
in war work"--Lady Emily and her mother the Duchess were always
represented as the hardest workers in the Belgian Relief Clothing
Association, and perhaps they were. And because a duke's daughter at the
time of her betrothal could not possibly be other than young and
beautiful, all the Press loyally forbore to mention the fact that Emily
was thirty-two years old, and no one dreamed of mentioning that her
features were large and irregular, nor that her clothes always had a
look of the second-hand about them.

Meanwhile a Field-Marshal and a General and a Major-General were in
conference at the War Office.

"The man's on the verge of senile decay," said the General. "Over the
verge, I should say. He's no more fit to be trusted with a division than
to darn the Alhambra chorus's tights."

"Who are his brigadiers?" asked the Field-Marshal.

"Watson and Webb," said the Major-General, apologetically. "Yes, sir, I
know they're no good, but where am I to get three hundred good
brigadiers from?"

"That's your pigeon," said the Field-Marshal.

"I'm sending Curzon down there to-morrow," said the Major-General. "The
third brigade of the division has never had a general yet. I think he'll
stiffen them up all right."

"He'll have his work cut out, from what I've seen of that lot," said the
General.

"Curzon?" said the Field-Marshal. "That's the Volkslaagte fellow, isn't
it?"

"Yes, sir," said the Major-General. "You read the letter a fortnight ago
which G.H.Q. wrote about him."

"I remember," said the Field-Marshal. He raised his big heavy face to
the window, and stared out contemplatively with squinting blue eyes,
while he called up isolated recollections out of a packed memory.
Volkslaagte had been fought before he went to South Africa, but he
remembered reading the despatches about it very plainly indeed--it was
in this very room in the War Office. There was that race meeting in
India, and the mob of horses all coming over the last hurdle together,
and a Lancer officer doing a brilliant bit of riding in shouldering off
a riderless horse which got in the way and might have caused a nasty
accident. That was Curzon. That was not the first time he had been
pointed out to him, though. Where was that? Oh yes, at the Aldershot
review in the old days before India. That was the chap. A big-nosed
fellow with the centre squadron.

"How old is he now?" asked the Field-Marshal.

"Forty-one, sir," said the Major-General.

At forty-one the Field-Marshal had been Sirdar of the Egyptian Army. He
would like to be forty-one again, instead of sixty-five with a game
leg--but that was nothing to do with the business under discussion. It
was this Curzon fellow he was thinking about. He had never put in any
time holding a regimental command, apparently, except for a few weeks in
France. But that was nothing against him, except that it made it a bit
harder to judge him by ordinary standards. The Field-Marshal had done no
regimental duty in his life, and it hadn't hurt him.

But there was something else he had heard, or read, about Curzon,
somewhere, quite recently. He could not remember what it was, and was
vaguely puzzled.

"Is there anything against this Curzon fellow?" he asked, tentatively.
It was a little pathetic to see him labouring under the burden of all
the work he had been doing during these months of war.

"No, sir," said the Major-General, and because Curzon was obviously
allied by now to the Bude House set, and would be a valuable friend in
the approaching Government reshuffle, he added, "He's a man of very
decided character."

That turned the scale. What the Field-Marshal had seen, of course, had
been the flaming headlines that very morning announcing Curzon's
betrothal. He had put the triviality aside, and yet the memory lingered
in his subconscious mind. It was because of that that he had pricked up
his ears at the first mention of Curzon's name. Neither the General nor
the Major-General saw fit to waste the Field-Marshal's time by a mention
of to-day's newspaper gossip, and the vague memory remained to tease him
into action. His mind was not fully made up when he began to speak, but
he was positive in his decision by the time the sentence was completed.

"You must unstick Coppinger-Brown," he said. "Shunt him off gracefully,
though. There's no need to be too hard on him. He's done good work in
his time. And Watson'll have to go, too. He's no good. I never thought
he was. Give Webb another chance. He can still turn out all right if
he's properly looked after. You'll have to give the division to Curzon,
though. He ought to make a good job of it."

"Yes, sir," said the Major-General. He was reluctant to continue,
because it was not safe to pester his chief with a request for further
instructions once a decision had been reached, but in this case the
Service regulations left him no option. "He's junior to Webb as
brigadier, of course."

"Then you'll have to promote him major-general. Get the orders out
to-day."

A wave of the Field-Marshal's massive hand told the General and the
Major-General that their presence was no longer required, and they left
the Field-Marshal to plunge once more into the mass of work piled before
him--into the business of constructing a modern army out of the few
antiquated remains left over after the departure of the Expeditionary
Force.

That was how Curzon obtained his appointment to the command of the
Ninety-first Division and his promotion to the temporary rank of
Major-General. There were not wanting unkind people who hinted that he
owed his new rank to his prospective father-in-law, but the Duke had not
raised a finger in the matter. There had been no scheming or bargaining,
not even by the little scheming group which centred round the Duke and
Lady Constance. He had been selected out of a hundred possible officers
who could have filled the vacancy because, while their capacities were
all equally unexplored, an adventitious circumstance had singled him out
for particular notice. Without that the Major-General would never have
had the opportunity of putting in the single sentence which ultimately
turned the scale. And it must be specially noticed that the
Major-General had not the slightest hint that he might receive favours
in return; neither Curzon nor his new relations had been parties to
anything underhand of that sort.




CHAPTER TEN


Curzon was at Bude House when the butler came in to announce--the tone
of his voice indicating that he realized the importance of this official
business--that the War Office was asking on the telephone if they could
speak to General Curzon. Curzon left his lady's side and went out to the
telephone.

"Hullo?" he said.

"Is that General Curzon?" asked a sharp-tongued female voice.

"Speaking."

"Hold on a minute, please. General Mackenzie would like to speak to
you."

There was a click and a gurgle and then Mackenzie's voice.

"Hullo, Curzon. I thought I'd find you at Bude House when you weren't at
your hotel. Hope I'm not disturbing you?"

"Not very much."

"I think you'll find it's worth being disturbed for. You've been given
the Ninety-first Division."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You've been given the Ninety-first Division--the one you were going to
have a brigade in. And you're promoted to Major-General with seniority
from to-day."

"That's very good news."

"I said you'd think so, didn't I? When can you take up your command?"

"Whenever you like."

"To-morrow?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Call here in the morning. I want to hear your ideas about a
staff. It'll be a pretty makeshift one, anyway, I'm afraid, but that
can't be helped."

"I suppose not."

"But there's a good house as headquarters, with stabling just as it
should be. Trust old Coppinger-Brown for that. You'll have a use for the
house, won't you?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"That reminds me. I haven't congratulated you on your engagement yet. My
very best wishes."

"Thanks very much."

"I was wondering when you were going to offer me thanks. You haven't
sounded very grateful up to now."

"Oh, thank you very much."

"That's better. You remember this, Curzon; the closer you and I stay by
each other, the better it will be for both of us. That's a word to the
wise."

"Er--yes."

"But that can wait a bit. I'll be seeing you to-morrow morning. Nine
o'clock?"

"Very well."

"All right, then. Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

Back in Emily's sitting-room he told the glad news, his eyes bright with
pleasure and excitement, and, because of that, Emily's eyes shone, too.
Until a week or two ago Emily had hardly known that such things as
brigades and divisions existed, and she had been decidedly vague about
the difference between them, but already she was beginning to grasp the
essentials of this Army business. The Duke's valet was sent out
hurriedly to buy stars at a military tailor's, and then, with a note to
the hotel management admitting him to Curzon's room, he was sent on to
sew those stars above the crossed swords and btons on the
shoulder-straps of Curzon's tunics all ready for the morning, while
Curzon and Emily carried on a muddled conversation in which Army
promotion and houses and horses and future domesticity were all
intermingled.

But next day had its awkward moments. A War Office motor-car took Curzon
and his kit down into Hampshire, where the division was scattered in
billets or under canvas over a five-mile radius, and stopped at the end
of the long gravelled drive outside Narling Priory, the headquarters of
the Ninety-first Division. A young red-tabbed subaltern led Curzon round
the side of the house through french windows into a spacious room
wherein stood a group of khaki-clad figures with a tall, thin officer,
bent and feeble, the sword of ceremony hanging from his belt, standing
in advance of them.

"Good morning," he said, standing very stiff and still.

Curzon nodded.

"General Coppinger-Brown?" he asked in return.

"Yes."

It was then that Curzon realized what an embarrassing business it was to
relieve a man of his command, because Coppinger-Brown made no effort to
put him at ease, but merely stood and waited.

"I have been sent down by the War Office," began Curzon, hesitantly; he
waited for help, received none, and had to continue without it. "I am to
take command of the division."

"So I understood from orders I received this morning," said
Coppinger-Brown. There was the faintest of accents upon the last two
words. Curzon realized that it was dashed hard luck on the old chap to
be flung out of his command like this at an hour's notice. He wanted for
a moment to say "I'm sorry," but one man can hardly say that to another,
especially in the presence of inferiors. He could only stand and feel
awkward while Coppinger-Brown left him to drink the cup of his
embarrassment to the full. By the time Coppinger-Brown relented Curzon
was decidedly uncomfortable.

"I must introduce," said Coppinger-Brown at last, "the officers of my
staff--of your staff, I mean; I beg your pardon, General."

He waved his hand at the group behind him, and each officer in turn came
up to attention as his name was spoken.

"General Webb, commanding the Three-hundredth Brigade. General Webb is
the only brigadier in the division at present. I made so bold as to give
General Watson immediate leave of absence, as I wished to spare him the
humiliation of having to leave under orders."

There was something very acid in Coppinger-Brown's tone as he made this
speech, but Curzon did not notice it, as he was too busy sizing-up his
second-in-command, a beefy, red-faced infantryman, of whom Mackenzie at
the War Office that morning had said that he was being given one more
chance.

"Colonel Miller, my G.S.O.1. Captain Frobisher, G.S.O.3. Colonel Hill,
C.R.A. Colonel Septimus, A.D.M.S.----"

For a space it simply rained initials in a manner which would have left
a civilian gasping, but Curzon was more accustomed to hearing these
initials used than to the words they stood for. He nodded formally to
each in turn, to the officers of the General Staff, to the Officer
commanding Royal Artillery, to the Assistant Director of Medical
Services, and the Deputy Assistant Quartermaster-General, and the
Assistant Provost-Marshal, and the Officer commanding Royal Engineers,
and the rag-tag and bobtail of aides-de-camp.

Mackenzie at the War Office had given him thumbnail character portraits
of each of these officers; Curzon himself had no knowledge of most of
them, and only a hearsay acquaintance with the rest. Hill the Gunner had
won a D.S.O. in the Tirah. Webb had commanded a battalion before Curzon
had been given a squadron. Runcorn the Sapper had left the Army before
the war on account of some scandal about drink and women, which was a
very remarkable thing to have occurred to a Sapper, so that Runcorn had
better be watched with all the attention a freak merited. Miller of the
General Staff had been described by Mackenzie as "a bloke with twice the
brains of you and me put together," and had left it to Curzon to form
his own opinion after this somewhat ominous beginning.

"What's been the matter down there," Mackenzie had said, "as far as I
can make out from what Somerset says--he's just been inspecting
them--it's just sheer dam' laziness on someone's part or other. They've
had their troubles, of course. We've let 'em down badly from here once
or twice, but you couldn't have run the old Army, let alone a new one
ten times the size, on the staff I've got left to me here. But old
Coppinger-Brown's the real cause of the trouble. He's too old. You can't
expect an old boy of seventy-two with bronchial tubes or something to go
out in all weathers in the sort of winter we're having, and go charging
about on a horse keeping an eye on twelve raw battalions an' two dozen
other units. It's not in human nature. Coppinger-Brown swore he was all
right when he came here after a job--he produced all sorts of chits from
doctors to that effect. And he looked all right, too. But you know how
it is, Curzon. You've got to work like a blasted nigger to get anything
done with new formations. Otherwise everything's held up while
everyone's waiting for something else to get done which they think they
can't do without. Or else somebody's getting in everybody else's way,
and'll go on doing it until you come down on 'em. Doesn't matter how
good a staff you've got when you're in that kind of muddle. It's only
the boss who can put it straight. Nobody gives a hoot for what a staff
officer says when they know the general won't take action. But you'll
put ginger into them, Curzon, I know."

That had been all very well at the War Office, but it was rather
different by the time General Coppinger-Brown had finished the
introductions and had shuffled out of the room with his aides-de-camp
beside him. Curzon stood and faced his staff--nearly all of them ten or
twenty years his senior, and most of them until a few weeks back
immeasurably his senior in military rank. He felt as awkward and
embarrassed as at the time of General Coppinger-Brown's first greeting
of him. It was not in him to be conciliatory. His whole instinct in a
time of difficulty was to be unbending and expressionless. It was a
natural reaction that there should creep into his voice the tone he
employed on parade--he felt as if he were on parade for the first time
with some new recalcitrant unit.

"Gentlemen," he rasped, and paused. He had not anticipated having to
make a speech. He tugged at his moustache until he saw the light; he had
felt at a loss at remembering that there was no regimental _esprit de
corps_ to which to appeal. But he could, at any rate, appeal to the
spirit of the Division. "Gentlemen, it is my responsibility now to
prepare the Ninety-first Division in readiness to go to France. We can
never have it said that our Division, one of the earliest to be raised,
was the last to be sent overseas. That would be too bad. We must make up
our minds that we are not going to be left behind by the other
divisions. We must work hard to catch up on them and pass them. I am
quite sure we can."

His expression hardened as he remembered the precariousness of his own
temporary rank. It flashed through his mind that the Duchess's elegant
friends would sneer delightedly if he were to be unstuck like poor old
Coppinger-Brown.

"I am going to see that we do," he added grimly, looking round the group
from one to another. Each pair of eyes dropped as they met his, such was
the savage force of his glance as he thought of Emily and the urgency of
the need to justify himself to her. And the mention of the corporate
existence of the Ninety-first Division had served its purpose in
starting him off in what he had to say. He was able to wind up his
little speech on the note he wanted.

"This is war-time," he said. "A time of great emergency. There will be
no mercy at all in this Division for officers who are not up to their
work."

It was a speech which served its purpose as well as any other might have
done, and better than some. Some generals might have appealed to their
subordinates' loyalty, or might have put new vigour into them by force
of personality, but Curzon, if such suggestions had been put forward to
him, would have dismissed them as "claptrap" or "idealism." As it was, a
subdued and impressed staff crept quietly out of the room, all quite
decided to work a great deal harder for the new major-general with the
scowl on his face, and the barely concealed threat in his speech.

The pink-cheeked aide-de-camp came back into the room. General
Coppinger-Brown would be very much obliged if General Curzon could spare
him a few minutes for the discussion of private business. Curzon
followed the aide-de-camp out of the headquarters office and across the
tiled hall to the wing of the house, which still remained furnished as a
private residence. There was an old, old, lady sitting in an arm-chair
in the drawing-room with Coppinger-Brown standing beside her.

"Lucy," said Coppinger-Brown. "This is my successor, General Curzon.
Curzon, may I introduce my wife?"

Curzon bowed, and the old lady nodded icily to him across the room,
while the aide-de-camp retired with the tact expected of aides-de-camp.

"The first thing we wanted to say," said Coppinger-Brown, "was whether
we might expect the pleasure of your company at lunch? It is one o'clock
now, and lunch can be served at any time to suit you."

"Thank you," said Curzon, "but I have just arranged to lunch in the
staff officers' mess."

He forbore from adding that he was itching to start work with his chief
of staff, and make up for the time lost by Coppinger-Brown, and intended
to start as soon as lunch began.

"What a pity," replied Coppinger-Brown. "I hope you can spare us a few
minutes, all the same, so that we can settle our private arrangements."

"I am at your service now," said Curzon.

"That's very good of you," said Coppinger-Brown. "Because we are anxious
to hear from you how soon we must vacate this house."

Coppinger-Brown and his wife stared at Curzon with an unvoiced appeal in
their eyes. The house was one taken over furnished by the War Office;
half of it had been adapted as Staff Offices, and the other half was
retained as a residence for the Major-General commanding the division.
The last two months had been a wonderful time for the old couple. It had
been an end of retirement; they had turned their backs on the Cheltenham
boarding-house; there had been a future once more ahead of them; they
were back again in the Army in which he had served for forty-five years.
Now they were being condemned once more to exile, with all the added
bitterness of disappointment and consciousness of failure. Until this
morning they had felt secure in the pomp and power of their official
position. It was a shock for old people to be flung out like this
without warning. They were loth to leave the substantial comfort of the
Priory; they shrank from the last open acknowledgment of failure implied
by their leaving, as they might shrink from an icy bath. With the
tenacity of very old people for the good things of life they wanted to
spin out their stay here, even for only a few days.

Curzon, unsympathetic though he was, had a glimpse of these emotions,
and stopped for a moment to think. The Coppinger-Browns might be
considered harmless old folk, and to allow them to remain for a week or
two longer at the Priory might be a kindness which would do no one any
harm. But he knew he must not; he felt it in his bones. Coppinger-Brown
would never be able to resist the temptation to put his nose into the
new organization of the division. Young officers could hardly be
expected to order off a Major-General, under whom they had only recently
been serving, even though he was again retired. There would be hitches,
perhaps nasty scenes. And for all he knew Mrs. Coppinger-Brown might
make trouble among the women--Curzon had all an unmarried man's
suspicions of army women's capacity for making trouble. There must be no
chance, not the faintest possibility, of trouble in his division.
Moreover, it might weaken his authority a little if people assumed that
Coppinger-Brown was staying on to see him firmly in the saddle. He was
not going to run the least risk of any of these unpleasant contingencies
when a little firmness at the start would obviate them.

"I am afraid," he said, slowly, "that I need the house myself. It would
be convenient if you could see your way to leaving at the earliest
possible moment. Perhaps if I put the divisional motor-car at your
disposal to-morrow morning you would have your kit and luggage ready?"

They looked at each other, all three of them.

"Very well, since you insist," said Coppinger-Brown--Curzon had made no
show of insisting. "We had better not keep you any longer from your
lunch. We shall be ready to leave at ten o'clock to-morrow. Is that all
right, Lucy?"

Mrs. Coppinger-Brown nodded; from beginning to end of the interview she
had said no word, but even a wooden-headed man like Curzon was conscious
of the hatred she felt towards him as the supplanter of her husband, the
man who was driving her out once more into the lonely, pitiable exile of
the Cheltenham boarding-house. Curzon withdrew as quickly as he could,
and he comforted himself as he walked back across the hall by telling
himself that after all a soldier's wife should be reconciled by now to
having to make sudden migrations, while Coppinger-Brown was a doddering
old fool who should never have been entrusted with a division. Which was
all perfectly true.




CHAPTER ELEVEN


The Ninety-first Division was composed of troops of a sort Curzon had
never even thought of. They were the first flower of England; of a
standard of education, enthusiasm and physique far superior to anything
the recruits of the old regiments of the line could show. In the old
days, for every man who joined the Army because he actively wanted to,
there were ten who did so because they could find nothing better to do;
but in the new units of 1914 every single man had joined because he felt
it to be his duty. To Curzon and his like (who in the old days had
thoroughly appreciated the value of the occasional "born soldier" in the
ranks) the merit of the new material should have been obvious. These
were no unemployable riff-raff, no uneducable boys, but men who had made
some part of their way already in the world, men of some experience and
education, quicker witted, more accustomed to think for themselves, and
filled with the desire to avenge Belgium and to give of their best for
England--the same stuff as Cromwell (who in an early speech had pointed
out its virtues) had employed when he had made of the Ironsides the
finest troops in Europe.

But Cromwell had not been a regular soldier, nor--save for the presence
of an occasional veteran of the Thirty Years' War--was there any
framework of a regular army, any procrustean bed of tradition, to which
the Ironside army was compelled to adapt itself as in 1914. Kitchener's
army was organized by a War Office which had already forgotten the Boer
War and clung to the ideals of the Peninsula; but that statement is only
correct in a very limited degree, because most of the great body of
rules and precedents dealt not with the training of an army for war, but
with keeping it inexpensive and out of the way in time of peace. The
system was, moreover, adapted to the needs of an army recruited from the
very young and the very stupid, officered by men of uniform ideas and
training; what the system did for the new armies has been told over and
over again.

Besides all this, the War Office was found wanting (perhaps not through
its own fault) even in the very elementary duties it might have been
expected to perform efficiently. The new armies were left unclothed,
unhoused, and unarmed. Units rotted through the winter of 1914-15 under
canvas on the bleak exposed hills and plains which had been passed as
suitable for a summer camp. They shivered in tents pitched in seas of
mud; they ate food prepared by inefficient cooks on inefficient
apparatus; they were practised in the evolutions of 1870 by sexagenarian
non-commissioned officers, and they used make-believe rifles and
make-believe guns under the co-ordination of make-believe staffs.

Of such good stuff, nevertheless, were the new armies that they came
through the ordeal successfully, their spirits unimpaired by what had
been done to them, and made of themselves, despite the efforts of their
commanders, the finest fighting force ever seen, and able to carry that
reputation through years of slaughter and mismanagement, despite the
constant filling up with drafts whose quality steadily and persistently
declined as the war continued.

By a fortunate combination of circumstances Curzon was able to prove
himself during these months of training one of the best generals
appointed to the new armies. He was full of energy, so that the curse of
inertia was not allowed to settle down over the Ninety-first Division.
He had no preconceived ideas about the employment of infantry in the
field. His barrack traditions were confined to cavalry, and in young
Frobisher, his third-grade General Staff Officer, he found an assistant
whose desperate laziness had no play under his supervision, and who came
of a family in which revolutionary ideas were traditional, so that he
did not badger the infantrymen with peace-time regulations nearly as
much as occurred in some units.

That very first day at Narling, Curzon showed the stuff he was made of.
He had no personal staff at all--no aides-de-camp, no servants, no
grooms; until to-morrow he had no home, for that matter. It never
occurred to him to attend to the very important business of settling
himself in first. He sent his kit to the local hotel, and made Frobisher
telephone to the nearest unit to find him a servant. Before this
concession to his immediate needs was fulfilled he was calling for the
regimental returns, reading the lists of sick and of those found guilty
recently of military crime so as to form his first estimate of the
quality of the troops under his command, and half-way through the
afternoon, finding this office-work unsatisfying, he borrowed a horse
from Miller and set off, with Frobisher riding beside him in the rain,
in his anxiety to see things for himself.

He dropped like a bolt from the blue into the troops he had been given
to command, trotting in over the rolling downs into the camps of the
Three hundred-and-first Brigade, the rain streaming from his cap brim
and the hem of his cape. There was a moment of hesitation when he
confronted his work face to face for the first time--when he realized
how extraordinarily little he knew about infantry. But he knew something
about men in uniform, at least. There were certain things he could
inspect--six months ago he had been inspecting similar arrangements from
a regimental aspect. There were the cookhouses; he went stalking into
the battalion cooking-huts, to be appalled by their filth and squalor.
Frightened cooking staffs stood shivering at attention while he
blistered them with his tongue, and startled commanding officers,
summoned by flying orderlies, stood scared at his shoulder while he
peered into dixies and cauldrons, and sampled the contents.

General Coppinger-Brown had not been seen in a cookhouse since the
weather broke six weeks ago; here was the new general inspecting them
before even the rumour of his appointment had run round the regimental
headquarters. Curzon plodded through the mud down the lines of tents
with the icy wind blowing through his burberry--it was that walk which
first gave him an insight into the quality of his men, for any regular
unit before the war compelled to submit to such conditions would have
shown its resentment by going sick in hundreds. Startled soldiers,
huddled under blankets, turned out hastily to stare at him. That morning
the bugles had blown "no parade," for no soldiers' work could have been
done in those dreadful conditions, and they had settled down to another
day of shivering idleness. The sight of a major-general come to see how
they were getting on was a most welcome break in the day, reviving hope
in breasts where hope of anything was fast dying altogether.

Far more was this the case with the wretched Special Service battalion
of Fusiliers who were farther out still--moved there when cerebro-spinal
meningitis had appeared in their ranks, to endure the life of outcasts
during their period of quarantine. The sense of isolation and guilt had
been bad for the Fusiliers, huddled in their tents waiting for the
spotted fever. Frobisher had ventured to protest when Curzon announced
his intention of visiting the Fusiliers, but Curzon was heedless.

"There's no quarantine for generals," said Curzon. He had no intention
of being epigrammatic, either.

He got on his horse again and rode furiously along the slippery chalk
track over the summit of the downs to where the Fusiliers languished. A
spiritless guard, besodden with misery, turned out to present arms to
this extraordinary spectacle of a brass hat in the icy rain, and Curzon,
without waiting for the arrival of the commanding officer, began his
inspection. Three weeks of quarantine, of isolation, of rain and spotted
fever, had taken the heart nearly out of the Fusiliers, but it was the
sight of Curzon which put it back. Someone raised a faint cheer, even,
when he rode out of the entrance afterwards, in the gathering darkness.

And the word passed round the division, from battalion to battalion,
that the new general was crazy on the subject of military cookery.
Generals, as the army had long ago resigned itself to believe, are
always crazy on some point or other. Coppinger-Brown's particular
weakness (as far as anyone had been able to guess from the little seen
of him) had been bootlaces. Under Coppinger-Brown's rgime colonels had
chivvied captains and captains had chivvied sergeants, into seeing that
every man had two pairs at least of spare bootlaces, and had quoted
Coppinger-Brown's dictum that "a division might be held up any day on
the march if a man's bootlace broke." Nowadays it was cookery instead,
and no one knew when the General's big nose and moustache might not be
seen coming round the cookhouse corner as he demanded to taste whatever
indescribable mess was to be found in the dixies. It was a matter which
the men in the ranks, after the food they had been enduring for the last
two months, could thoroughly appreciate.

There seemed to be no limit to Curzon's abounding energy in those days
when he took over the command of the Ninety-first Division. Mason, the
soldier-servant whom Miller found for him in the infantry, was under
orders always to call him at five--and usually found him awake at that
time. Officers, sleepy eyed and weary, crawling into the divisional
headquarters at seven o'clock, found Curzon at his desk running through
the pile of returns and "states" which previously had been seen by no
other eye than theirs. Isolated companies on the downs, practising the
open-order advance in alternate rushes which none of them was to live to
see employed in action, were surprised to find him riding up to watch
them at their work.

After ten days of it Curzon had himself whirled up to London in the
divisional motor-car and had his presence announced to General Mackenzie
with an urgent request for an interview. Mackenzie had him sent up, and
blenched a little at the comprehensive sequence of demands which Curzon
made on behalf of his division.

"My dear fellow," said Mackenzie, "it's not me whom you should ask for
all this. It's all the Q.M.G.'s department, most of it, except for this
officer question, and I've promised already to see to that for you. Go
round and look up the Q.M.G.--I'll give you a chit to the right quarter,
if you like."

Curzon shook his head. He knew a great deal about the army method of
passing on inconvenient requests to the next man.

"No," he said, "they don't know me there. I wouldn't be able to get
anything done. I'd far rather you saw about it; unofficially, for that
matter, if you like. You could get it done in no time, even though it's
not your department."

Mackenzie began to show some signs of irritation at this upstart young
general's behaviour. The fellow was certainly growing too big for his
boots. He took a breath preparatory to administering a proper "telling
off."

"You see," said Curzon, eyeing him attentively as he made his first
essay in diplomatic converse. "I've got a lot to do, and I could only
spare one day away from the Division. I've got an appointment to lunch
with Lady Cross and one or two other people--newspaper editors or
something, I think they are."

"H'm," said Mackenzie. The struggle behind the scenes for power was
rising to a climax, and he knew it. "All right, I'll see what I can do."

When Mackenzie said that, Curzon knew that he could expect immediate
attention to be paid to the sweeping indents he had sent in--demands for
duckboards and all the other things to make life bearable for the
Ninety-first Division in the chalky downland mud, huts and stoves and so
on, of which the War Office had such a meagre store. Curzon could leave
the War Office now with a clear conscience. He was not lunching with
Lady Cross, of course. That had been a blank lie just to apply pressure
on Mackenzie. It was his Emily, naturally, with whom he had his next
appointment. The big Vauxhall car rolled him smoothly round to Bude
House, and the butler showed Curzon in to Emily's sitting-room.

Curzon's heart was beating fast, for it was ten days since he had last
seen Emily, and she might have changed her mind in that long time. He
came into the room stiffly and formally, ready to meet his fate if need
be, but all doubts were instantly dispelled on his entrance, and it was
as though they had never been separated, as Emily came to him with both
hands out and a murmur of "My dear, my dear." She came into his arms as
if she were no duke's daughter. With her head on his shoulder she
fingered his row of medal ribbons, and he caught her hand and raised it
to his lips, pressing his cruel black moustache upon her fingers. Even
if Curzon had taken care to give his affections to a suitable person,
there was no doubt that he had given them thoroughly enough. He was head
over ears in love with her, just as she was with him.

When sanity came back to them, Curzon spoke straight to the point, as
might be expected of him. To him, love was not a thing to be soiled by
roundabout ways of approach, or delicate diplomacy.

"Dear," he said, "can we be married on Christmas Eve?"

"Christmas Eve?" Emily's eyes opened a little wider, for Christmas Eve
was only five days off.

"Yes," said Curzon. He made no attempt to mask his reasons. "I've had to
take this morning away from the Division, which I didn't want to. I
can't spare another one, except Christmas morning. There won't be a lot
to do on that day. I could come up the afternoon before, and we could
get married and go down to Narling the same evenings. I mustn't be away
from the Division."

"Of course not, dear," said Emily. She was rather dazed. She had not
seen the house she would have to live in; she knew nothing about it, in
fact, except that Curzon's brief notes had assured her that it was quite
a nice one. She had made no preparations for housekeeping there--in fact
she had made no preparations for being married at all. But she knew
quite well that there was nobody and nothing in the world as important
as the General and the Division he commanded.

"We'll do whatever you think we ought to do, dear," said Emily, and
Curzon kissed her hard on the lips in a way he had never kissed her
before. Her head swam and her knees went weak so that she leaned against
him and clung to him trembling, and they kissed again until the
trembling passed and her kind eyes were bright with a passion she had
never known before. She found--what she had never expected--that when
the world obtruded itself upon them again she was able to meet it boldly
face to face, encountering her mother and father across the luncheon
table as though a quarter of an hour before she had not been in a man's
arms and glad to be there.

At lunch they had to discuss practical details regarding the servants
Emily must find for Narling Priory, housekeeper and cook and parlourmaid
and kitchenmaid. Curzon's three soldier servants (the regulation number
allotted to a Major-General) could be relied upon to do the other work.
The Duchess was perturbed when she heard how hurried was the wedding
they had decided upon, but she raised no objection. The Duke took on the
responsibility of making the arrangements regarding the licence; the
Duchess said she would see to it that St. Margaret's was available for
the ceremony--it had to be St. Margaret's, of course. In return, Curzon
was able to tell the Duke and Duchess that he had applied for the
services of Captain Horatio Winter-Willoughby and Mr. Bertram Greven as
his aides-de-camp, and that his application had been approved and orders
issued for the officers in question to join him. The Duke and Duchess
were undoubtedly grateful to him. Horatio Winter-Willoughby was Lord
George's son and the ultimate heir to the title, while Greven was a
nephew of the Duchess, and somehow no one had as yet made application
for his services on the staff. Curzon felt remarkably pleased with
himself when he received the thanks of the Duke and the Duchess. Even
though they were about to become his parents-in-law it was gratifying to
be able to do them favours.

Then when lunch was finished there was only time for one last embrace
before Curzon tore himself away to get into the Vauxhall and be driven
away through Guildford and Petersfield back to the Division. There was
this to be said in favour of war-time conditions, that there was no time
for shilly-shallying argument.




CHAPTER TWELVE


So the next two or three days witnessed a whole sequence of arrivals at
Narling Priory. There came the grim under-housekeeper from Bude Hall,
Somersetshire--the Duchess had made a present of her to her daughter,
and with her the trio of servants selected from the staff of the three
ducal houses. It had rather frightened the Duchess to hear that her
daughter would have to be lady's-maided by the parlourmaid; it was not
so easy for her to reconcile herself to that as one of the necessary
sacrifices of war-time, but as the Priory was only a medium-sized house
and half of it was occupied by the divisional headquarters there had to
be a line drawn somewhere, and this was Emily's own suggestion.

Curzon's soldier servants regarded the arrival of the women with
unconcealed interest, but they were disappointed in the reception
accorded their advances. Not even the kitchen maid--at any rate, with
the cook's eye on her--would allow mere grooms and private soldiers any
liberties with one who represented the fifth greatest house in all
England. Curzon handed over house and keys to the housekeeper--he was
living with the headquarters' mess at the moment--and went on with his
work for the Division.

The two brigadiers for whom he had been clamouring turned up next. One
was Challis, who as a battalion commander had lost half a hand at Mons
and had miraculously escaped capture during the retreat; the other was
Daunt, brought home from some South Africa colony, Nigeria or somewhere.
Curzon looked them over and was pleased with them both, although he
deferred final judgment. Men had to be good before he could be assured
of their suitability for the Ninety-first Division. He was not nearly so
satisfied with his two aides-de-camp, who turned up unfeignedly glad at
having been released by this miracle from the rigours of service in the
Guards' dept at Caterham. Winter-Willoughby was nearly as bald as his
father, Lord George, and nearly as fat. Despite the fact that he was
indebted to Curzon for this staff appointment he was inclined to be a
little resentful and patronizing towards the bounder who was marrying
his cousin. And Greven had no forehead and no chin and wore riding
breeches whose khaki dye carried the particular admixture of pink which
was growing fashionable among the younger officers and for which Curzon
had a peculiar dislike. Curzon began to see that there were some special
disadvantages about marrying into a ducal family.

He disliked his two aides-de-camp at sight the afternoon on which they
reported themselves, and the very next day they deepened his prejudice
farther still, for they were both of them ten minutes late, on the very
first morning on which they were on duty. Curzon had to sit fretting in
his office while the horses were being walked up and down outside.
Curzon told them off furiously as he got into the saddle, and they
sulked as they cantered through the rain over the downs to where there
was an artillery brigade to be inspected.

Curzon was a little more at home inspecting artillery than infantry. An
infantry battalion's horse-lines were so small and insignificant that
one could not in decency spend much time over them, but it was different
with artillery. Horses were as important as gunners, and Curzon felt
justified in devoting most of his attention to the horses, which he knew
something about, rather than to the artillery technicalities, about
which he knew nothing at all. The inspection was long and meticulous,
and Curzon found fault with everything he saw. The battery commanders
wilted under the lash of his tongue, the sergeant-majors flinched, the
veterinary surgeons trembled.

When Curzon rode away the rumour was ready to circulate through the
Division that "Curzon was just as mad about horse-lines as about
cookhouses." Yet nobody knew the reason of this savage bad temper which
he had displayed--those who were in the secret of the General's private
life were inclined to attribute it to the fact that he was being married
that afternoon, but they were wrong. A letter had come to Curzon that
morning, in a cheap shabby envelope, addressed originally to the
regimental dept, and readdressed three times before it had reached him.
Curzon had read it while he ate his breakfast, and the sight of it had
spoiled his day.

                                                 117, Shoesmith St.,
                                                          Brixton.
                                              _16th December, 1914._

    MY DEAR BERTIE,

    I suppose I must call you that still although you are a General
    now and going to marry a great Lady. We are all of us here very
    pleased to see how well you are getting on. Your Uncle Stanley
    reads the papers a great deal and has shown us lots about you in
    them. He did not approve of the war at first but when he heard
    about what the Germans did in Belgium he feels differently about
    it now. Maud has just got married, too, to a gentleman in a very
    good way of business as a tailor. It seems only like yesterday
    since she was a little girl like when you saw her last. Gertie
    is in a government office and doing very well, and our Dick has
    just made up his mind that he must do his bit and he is going to
    join the army as soon as Christmas is over. Your Uncle Stanley
    is very well considering although his chest troubles him a lot,
    and of course I am all right as usual except for my leg. This is
    just a line to wish you much joy and happiness in your new life
    with your bride and to say that if ever you are in Brixton again
    we shall be glad the same as ever, although you are so grand
    now, if you would pop in and see us just for a minute.

                                                      Your loving
                                                         AUNT KATE.

    P.S.--We saw your photograph in the paper and you look just the
    same as ever which is why I wrote to you dear.

That was a very disturbing letter for a man about to marry a Duke's
daughter to receive on his wedding morning, Curzon's flesh had crept as
he read it. He had been perfectly sincere when he told Emily and the
Duchess that he had not a relation in the world--he had forgotten all
about the Coles of Brixton, honestly and sincerely forgotten all about
them. It was a shock to be reminded of their existence. If any word
about them should reach the Duchess's ears it would make her into his
deadly enemy, for she would never forgive him the deception. Even now
she was hardly a benevolent neutral. Any revelation would turn the
scale. It would lose him Emily's good opinion and regard. Probably it
would ruin his life and his career as well, and that was an important
although a minor consideration. Curzon felt slightly sick, like a man
with no head for heights looking over the edge of a precipice. Why in
the world had Aunt Kate married beneath her station, instead of above it
as his own mother had very sensibly seen fit to do?

He had plenty of time to think about it during the long motor journey up
to London. There had been no time for lunch after the artillery
inspection, and he and Horatio Winter-Willoughby and Greven ate
sandwiches in the stuffy saloon car as they raced along past the Devil's
Punchbowl and on to Guildford. They were cumbered with their greatcoats
and swords. Curzon actually found himself thankful that he had been
compelled to put aside the Duchess's suggestion that he should be
married in all the glory of his Lancer full dress. He simply had not
been able to make allowance in the day's time-table for that change of
clothing, and he was glad now, swaying about in the motor-car, feeling
slightly sick, what with the motion, and the sandwiches, and the
imminence of marriage, and that letter from Aunt Kate. From Guildford
onwards he was looking at his watch. It was going to be a near-run
thing. There were only a few minutes left when they ran though Esher,
and he called on the driver for yet more speed. Kingston--Putney
Bridge--King's Road, crowded with people shopping industriously on this,
the first Christmas Eve of the war.

Big Ben showed one minute to two as they swung out of Victoria Street.
The paragraphs in the newspapers about the romantic war wedding of a
Duke's daughter, and the sight of the carpet and awning outside St.
Margaret's, had called together a big crowd on the pavement. The
Vauxhall stopped at the end of the awning, and Curzon and his two aides
got out while the crowd surged under the control of the police. They had
hardly sat down up by the chancel rails when the organ changed its tune
and up the aisle came Emily in her bridal white, her bridesmaids and her
pages behind her, and the Duke in support.

As the Duchess had said, the fact that Emily was marrying a General was
a very adequate excuse for so much ceremony at the wedding, when
otherwise it might not be quite good taste in war-time. The Bishop (he
was a Winter-Willoughby, too; by common report the only one with any
brains, and he had too many) went through the service, while Curzon
rasped out the responses and Emily whispered them. Then the signing of
the register, and the march out through the church, while the guests
stood up on their seats to catch a better glimpse of the bride and the
be-ribboned bridegroom.

While Curzon was waiting for Emily, encumbered with train and veil, to
get into the motor-car, the crowd surged more violently than ever. He
looked round. Between two policemen, and waving violently, was Aunt
Kate--there was no mistaking her; and the two women beside her were
presumably Maud and Gertie. It was only for a second that their eyes
met. Aunt Kate had the decency and the common sense not to call out
"Bertie!" although for an idiotic second Curzon was filled with fear in
case she should say something about her sore leg. He had not time to
betray recognition, as he had to climb in at once beside Emily. Next
instant they were off, with Curzon sitting shaken beside Emily, who for
some woman's reason or other had tears on her face.

So that on the way to Bude House Curzon had time to reflect that there
were some relatives of his at his wedding. The church had been crammed
with Winter-Willoughbys and Grevens, hordes of them. There had not been
more than half a dozen people invited at Curzon's request--three or four
members of the Cavalry Club, and Mackenzie, who (perhaps for reasons of
his own) had intimated that he might be able to get away from his duties
at the War Office for an hour. Curzon had not even been able to find a
friend close enough to be asked to be groom's man--the one or two
possibles were in France, which was why the egregious Horatio had had to
fulfil that duty.

There was an hour's torment in Bude House, where even those colossal
rooms were not big enough to shelter all the seething horde without
crushing. The sparse khaki amidst the morning coats and the elaborate
dresses would have been significant to an attentive observer. Those
uniforms were like the secret seeds of decay in the midst of an
apparently healthy body. They were significant of the end of a great
era. The decline had set in, although those most intimately concerned
(despite the fact that they already were talking sorrowfully about the
good old days, and lamenting the changes all about them) obstinately
refused to recognize it. In ten years' time the world would have no room
for Bude House. It would be torn to pieces; the British public would be
blackmailed into buying its paintings by the threat of selling them to
America; its Adams fireplaces would be sold with less advertisement to
the same country; and the people who thronged its rooms would be
stockbroking on half-commission or opening little hat shops in side
streets.

But nobody cared to think about all this at the moment, least of all
Curzon, the most significant figure present, with his hand nervously
resting on his sword hilt and the letter from Aunt Kate in his pocket.
He greeted starchily the people who came up to wish him happiness and to
look him over covertly; he did not feel in the least complimented when
he overheard withered little Mr. Anstey whispering to an aged female
crony, "Most romantic. A real cloak and sword wedding just like
Napoleon's"; he had not even found any real pleasure in the
contemplation of the inkstand which was a present from the King. The
longer the reception lasted, the stiffer and more formal he became, and
the attempts at boisterousness made by the few younger people (among
whom should be reckoned his two aides-de-camp) irritated him unbearably.

By the time Emily appeared again in a sober travelling costume, and
still in unaccountable tears, his nerves were on edge--although Curzon
would have indignantly denied the possession of any nerves at all if
anyone had been rash enough to impute them to him. The premature evening
had already fallen as he climbed after Emily into the big Vauxhall. They
slid through the darkened streets (the A.S.C. driver keeping his eye
rigidly to the front) and Curzon still sat cold and formal in his
corner, while Emily drooped from her stiff uprightness in hers. From the
darkness that surrounded her there came at intervals something
suspiciously like a sniff--unbelievable though it might be that a Duke's
daughter, and one moreover of her Spartan upbringing, should ever sniff.

Curzon was not given to self-contemplation. He would have seen nothing
incongruous in the spectacle of the Major-General, who that morning had
reduced an artillery brigade to a condition of gibbering terror,
caressing his bride on their bridal journey. When he held aloof from her
during that first hour was merely because he did not feel like doing
otherwise. The events of the day had left him unfitted for love. Emily
was like a stranger to him at present.

Later on, as the headlights tore lanes through the darkness, and the car
weaved its way precariously round the curves at Hindhead, he put his
hand out and groped for hers. He touched it, and she leaped in panic.
Her nerves were in as bad a state as his, and for all this hour she had
been expecting and dreading this contact. She was consumed with
misgivings regarding the unbelievable things that men do to women when
they are married to them, and to which the woman has to submit--the
half-knowledge she had gained of these matters during her cloistered
existence made the future absolutely terrifying to her. It was five days
since she had last had the comfort and stimulus of Curzon's presence,
and during those five days she had lapsed from her mood of reckless
passion into one more consonant with an upbringing dating from the
'eighties. She was brooding darkly over the prospect of "that kind of
thing"; and this new, wordless, reserved, cold, formal Curzon beside her
was of no help to her. From the way she jumped at his touch one might
have guessed that she feared lest he should begin at once.

There was no fear of that, nor of the least resemblance to it. When
Curzon felt the gloved hand snatched away from him he withdrew further
into himself than ever. They sat stiffly silent, one in each corner,
while the Vauxhall nosed its way through Petersfield, out into the main
road beyond, and then swung aside into the by-roads which led to Narling
Priory. The servants came out to welcome them--the grim housekeeper, and
the prim elderly parlourmaid, and Curzon's groom and soldier servant.
The A.S.C. driver was left to unstrap the trunks from the grid at the
back, while the housekeeper walked up the stairs to the bridal chamber
with the bride, while Curzon trailed behind. They found themselves alone
together at last in her bedroom. Emily looked round for comfort, and
found none in the unpleasant furniture which the War Office had taken
over at a thumping rental along with the house. She saw Curzon standing
waiting, with the predatory nose and cruel moustache.

"I--I want to lie down," she said wildly. "I--I'm tired."

The arrival of the parlourmaid and servant with the trunks eased the
situation for a moment. As the servant withdrew the parlourmaid
addressed herself with decision to the business of unpacking. Curzon was
glad that in the circumstances he could be expected to say nothing
beyond pure formalities.

"I shall see you at dinner, then," he said, backing away with his spurs
clinking.

Dinner was an ordeal, too, with the elderly parlourmaid breathing
discretion at every pore. They looked at each other across the little
table and tried to make conversation, but it was not easy. Both of them
would have been interested if they had told each other the stories of
their lives, for they were still extraordinarily ignorant of each
other's past, but it hardly became a husband and wife to tell facts
about themselves to the other. In the absence of that resource, and
after the inevitable comments about the dreariness of the weather,
conversation came to a standstill. Lady Emily looked with bewilderment
at the spruce dinner-jacketed man with the red face whom she had
married. She told herself that he did not look in the least like the man
she had fallen in love with. And Curzon looked at Emily, a little drawn
and haggard, and marvelled to himself at the contrariness of women, and
felt ill at ease because on the other occasions when he had dined with a
woman previous to sleeping with her the circumstances had not been in
the least like these.

As soon as dinner was over Emily withdrew to the drawing-room, leaving
Curzon alone to his port and his brandy, and when Curzon came into the
drawing-room she shrank down nervously in her chair and fluttered the
weekly newspaper she had been pretending to read. Curzon sat on the edge
of his chair and tugged at his moustache; the clock ticked away
inexorably on the mantelpiece while he stared into the fire. Emily kept
her eyes on the page before her although she could read no word of its
print; she was making an effort now at this late hour to rally her
self-control as became one of her blue blood and to go stoically through
the ordeal before her without a sign of weakness, like a French
aristocrat on the way to the guillotine. It was not easy, all the same.

She put down her paper and got to her feet.

"I think I shall go to bed now," she said; only the acutest ear could
have caught the quaver in her voice.

"Yes," said Curzon. He could not help drawling on occasions like the
present of extreme nervous tension. "You've had a tiring day, m'dear."

By an effort of rigid self-control Emily kept her upper lip from
trembling. Curzon's face was blank and expressionless, like a block of
wood, as though he were playing at poker, and when he looked at her he
looked right through her--he could not help it; it was only a natural
reaction to his shyness. He opened the door for her, and she cast one
more glance at that wooden countenance before she fled up the stairs.

Curzon went back beside the fire and drew deeply on a fresh cigar. He
stared again into the fire. Somehow his thoughts were jumbled. He tried
to think about the Division, that hotchpotch of jarring personalities
which he had to straighten out, but he could not think about it for
long. For some reason other mental pictures obtruded themselves. For the
first time for years he found himself thinking about Manningtree-Field,
his captain at Volkslaagte, lying in a mess of blood and brains at his
feet. Then his thoughts leaped back a dozen years more, until he was a
small boy coming home from preparatory school, being met at Victoria
Station by his mother. He thought of Mackenzie with his pink face and
sandy hair. He thought of Miss Cissie Barnes, the lady with whom he had
spent many joyful evenings. Miss Barnes wore decorative garters whose
clasps were miniature five-barred gates with "trespassers will be
prosecuted" engraved upon them. Curzon remembered vividly how they had
looked encircling the black-stockinged leg with the luscious white thigh
showing above the stocking. Curzon flung the cigar into the fire and
strode twice up and down the room. Then he went out, up the stairs, to
the upper landing. On the right was the door into his small bedroom and
dressing-room. On the left was the door into Emily's room--there was a
connecting door between the two, but he did not consider that. He stood
still for a moment before he knocked on the door on the left and entered
abruptly.

Emily stood by the fire. There were candles alight on the
dressing-table, on the mantelpiece, beside the wardrobe, so that the
room was brightly illuminated. Emily's clothes, save for her evening
frock, lay neatly on the chair where her maid had placed them; the long
formidable corset was on the top, with the suspenders hanging down.
Emily was wearing a nightdress of the kind considered by orthodox people
in 1914 as the most frivolous possible (the kind of nightdress worn by
suburban housewives thirty years later was at that time only worn by
prostitutes) and she stood there by the fire with a cataract of lace
falling over her breast and her long hair in a rope down her back.

She saw him come in, his face a little flushed, the cruel mouth and the
big nose much in evidence, and she saw him shut and lock the door.

"Bertie," she said, and she wanted to add: "be kind to me," but she
could say no more than the one word, because pride on the one hand and
passion on the other dried up in her throat. Curzon came slowly over to
her, his face wearing the expression of stony calm which always
characterized it at tense moments. He put out his hands to her, and she
came towards him, fascinated.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN


Perhaps it was Emily's stoic upbringing which made that marriage a
success. Certainly she knew more misery in the opening few weeks of her
married life than she had ever known before--the misery of loneliness,
and the misery of doubt. But she had long been taught to bear her
troubles uncomplaining, along with the doctrine, comforting in its
fatalism, that the ways of mankind (as compared with those of womankind)
are inscrutable. Thanks to her patience and powers of endurance they
learned after a short interval to live together as happy as two people
of their limited capacity for happiness could expect to be.

Miss Cissie Barnes had much to answer for. The memory of joyous
unrepressed evenings with her influenced Curzon profoundly. He could not
dream of treating his wife in the same way as he had once treated Cissie
Barnes, with the unfortunate result that he made love to Emily with a
stern aloofness that could raise no response in her virginal body. As
Emily never expected anything else, however, not so much harm was done
as might have been the case. Emily went through that part of the
business as her necessary duty, like opening Girl Guides' displays or
going to church. It was her duty, something it was incumbent upon her to
do, so she did it with the best grace possible short of taking an active
interest in it--women were not supposed to do that.

For the rest, she was everything a General's wife should be. On
Christmas morning, the very day after her wedding, she breakfasted with
him with every appearance of cheerfulness, and saw him off on his tour
of inspection with a wave of her hand that told the inquisitive world
that they were absolutely happy. There were not many generals of
division in England who spent that Christmas Day with the troops, but
Curzon was one of them. He managed to visit every one of the twenty
units under his command. For nearly all the men it was their first
Christmas in the Army; for a great number of them it would also be their
last, but no one--certainly not Curzon and not even Emily--stopped to
think about that. Curzon had not the time to visit the men in the ranks,
but he called in to every officers' mess, and the surprise and delight
of the regimental officers at this condescension on the part of high
authority filtered in the end down to the men in the ranks and did its
part in tuning up the Ninety-first Division to the pitch of excellence
which it eventually displayed.

It did Curzon no harm that everyone knew he was newly married, nor that
regimental wits were busy producing obscene jokes about him and his
wife. It made him known, gave him a personality for the private
soldiers, just as did his acquisition of the nickname of "Bertie"--which
reached the troops or the line from the Staff, who had heard Lady Emily
address him by that name. Neither Emily nor Curzon saw anything comic or
undignified about the name of "Bertie," and to the army the irony of the
name's suggestion of weak good fellowship as contrasted with his
reputation for savage energy and discipline appealed to the wry sense of
humour of the sufferers, making a deeper impression still. The catchword
"Bertie's the boy" was current in the Ninety-first Division long before
it spread among the troops in France.

Everyone knew that Bertie would tolerate no inefficiency or slackness.
The whole Army was aware of the reasons why Lieutenant-Colonel Ringer of
the Fusiliers was removed from his command and sent into retirement, and
of the energy of Bertie's representations to the War Office which
brought this about. Yet not so many people knew that the leakage of
gossip regarding this affair was the cause of the return of Lieutenant
Horatio Winter-Willoughby to regimental duty. The information regarding
the leakage reached Curzon through Emily. Emily had plunged in
duty-bound into the business of leading Army society locally--most of
the senior officers of the division had brought down their wives to be
near them, and installed them at exorbitant prices in hotels and
cottages round about. Sooner or later someone told her how much they
knew about the Ringer scandal, and what was the source of the
information.

Emily told Curzon in all innocence--she had not yet learned what a crime
gossip was in Curzon's eyes. Curzon struck at once. That same day a
report went into the War Office saying that Major-General Curzon much
regretted being under the necessity of informing the Director-General of
Staff Personnel that Lieutenant Horatio Winter-Willoughby had been found
unsuitable for work on the Staff, and of requesting that he be ordered
to return to his unit. There was a wail of despair from Horatio when the
news reached him--a wail expressed in indignant letters to London, which
brought down the Duchess of Bude and Lady Constance Winter-Willoughby,
simply seething with indignation.

The Duchess was angry largely because this upstart son-in-law of hers
was betraying the family which had condescended to admit him into its
circle. What was the good of having a general in the family if he did
not find places on the staff for the nephews? And the suggestion that a
Winter-Willoughby was not up to his work was perfectly
preposterous--more preposterous still, because the Duchess could never
imagine that it mattered a rap which man did which work as long as she
had a finger in the pie. There was the question of the succession of the
title, too. If Horatio was sent back into the Guards as a result of this
ridiculous notion of Curzon's it was possible that he might be
killed--not likely, of course, because Winter-Willoughbys were not
killed, but possible--and that would make the continued existence of the
title almost precarious.

"So you see," said the Duchess, putting down her teacup, "you simply
can't go on with this wicked idea. You must write to the War Office _at
once_--or it would be better to telephone to them perhaps--and tell them
that you have made a mistake and you want Horatio to stay here with
you."

Curzon would have found it difficult to have answered politely if he had
cast about for words with which to tell his mother-in-law that he was
not going to do what she said. But as it was he did not stop to try to
be polite. He was not going to have the efficiency of his Division
interfered with by anyone not in authority, least of all a woman.

"I'm not going to do anything of the sort," he said, briefly.

"Bertie!" said the Duchess, scandalized.

"No," said Curzon. "This isn't the first time I've had to find fault
with Horatio. I'm sorry, he's no good, but I can't have him on my Staff.
I hope he will find regimental duty more--more congenial."

"Do you mean," said the Duchess, "that you're not going to do what I
ask--what the Family ask you to do?"

"I'm not going to keep him as my A.D.C.," said Curzon sturdily.

"I think," said Lady Constance, "that is perfectly horrible of you."

Lady Constance happened to be more moved by anxiety for her son than by
Curzon's blasphemous denial of the family.

"I'm sorry," said Curzon, "but I can't help it. I have the Division to
think about."

"Division fiddlesticks," said the Duchess, which made Curzon exceedingly
angry. Lady Constance saw the look in his eye, and did her best to
soothe him.

"Perhaps Horatio was a little indiscreet," she said, "but he's only
young. I think he will have learned his lesson after this. Don't you
think you might give him another chance?"

Lady Constance made play with all her beauty and all her elegance as she
spoke. Curzon would certainly have wavered if it had not been the
concern of the Division. He was suddenly able to visualize with
appalling clarity Horatio, lazy, casual, and unpunctual, confronted
suddenly with a crisis like any one of the fifty which had occurred
during the eleven days at Ypres. If the existence of the Division should
at any time depend on Horatio, which was perfectly possible, the
Division would cease to exist. It was unthinkable that Horatio should
continue in a position of potential responsibility.

"No," said Curzon. "I can't have him."

Lady Constance and the Duchess looked at each other and with one accord
they turned to Emily, who had been sitting mute beside the tea things.

"Emily," said Lady Constance. "Can't you persuade him?"

"Horatio is your first cousin," said the Duchess. "He's a future Duke of
Bude."

Emily looked in distress, first at her mother and her aunt, and then at
her husband in his khaki and red tabs beside the fire. Anyone--even a
woman only three weeks married to him--could see by his stiff attitude
that the matter was very near to his heart, that his mind was made up,
and that his temper was growing short. In the last two months the family
had declined in importance in her eyes; it was her husband who mattered.
Yet it was frightening that they should be debating a matter on which
Horatio's very life might depend--it was that thought which distressed
her more than the need to oppose her mother.

"Don't ask me," she said. "I can't interfere with the Division. I don't
think you ought to ask me."

The Duchess snapped her handbag shut with a vicious click and rose to
her feet.

"It appears to me," she said, "as if we were unwelcome even in my
daughter's house."

She rose superbly to her feet, carrying Lady Constance along with her by
sheer force of personality.

"I can see no profit," she went on, "in continuing this subject.
Perhaps, Bertie, you will be good enough to send and have my car brought
round?"

Curzon tugged at the bell-rope and gave the order to the parlourmaid; it
is just possible that the Duchess had not expected to be taken quite so
readily at her word. At any rate, Lady Constance made a last appeal.

"I don't want to have to part in anger like this," she said. "Can't
something be arranged, Emily--Bertie?"

"Something will doubtless be arranged," said the Duchess, with a
venomous glance at her daughter and son-in-law. "Please do not be too
distressed, Constance."

Curzon and Emily walked out to the door with them, but the Duchess so
far forgot her good manners as to climb into the car without saying
good-bye. Enough had happened that afternoon to make her angry; that a
Winter-Willoughby should be denied something apparently desirable, and
that a Duchess of Bude should be forced to plead with an upstart little
General and then be refused was a state of affairs calculated to make
her perfectly furious.

The sequel followed promptly, materializing in the arrival of the Duke
the next day, preceded by a telegram. Curzon talked with him alone, at
his special request, Emily withdrawing after receiving his fatherly
greetings. They sat one each side of the fire and pulled at their cigars
in silence for several minutes until the Duke began on the inevitable
subject.

"You've made my wife a bit annoyed over this business of young Horatio,
Curzon, you know," said the Duke. "As a matter of fact I've never seen
her so angry before in my life."

The tone of the Duke's voice suggested that he had frequently seen her
fairly angry.

"I'm sorry," said Curzon.

"Trouble is, with women," went on the Duke, "they never know when to
stop. And they don't draw any distinctions between a man's private life
and his official one--they don't render unto Csar the things that are
Csar's, you know. My wife's determined to put the screw on you somehow
or other--you know what women are like. You can guess what she made me
do last night--first shot in the campaign, so to speak?"

"No," said Curzon.

"She made me sit down there and then, with dinner half an hour late
already, and write an order to Coutt's. Dash it all, you can guess what
that was about, can't you?"

"I suppose so," said Curzon.

"It was to countermand my previous order to pay one-seventy a month into
your account. Women never know what's good form, and what isn't."

Curzon said nothing. The prospect of losing the Duke's two thousand a
year was disturbing; it would mean altering the whole scale of his
domestic arrangements, but it did absolutely nothing towards making him
incline again in the direction of retaining Horatio's services.

"I suppose," said the Duke, nervously, "there isn't any chance of your
changing your mind about Horatio?"

"Not the least," snapped Curzon. "And I don't think we had better
discuss the subject."

"Quite right," said the Duke. "I was sure you would say that. Dam' good
thing you didn't kick me out of the house the minute I said what I did.
Of course, I wrote another order to Coutt's this morning, saying that
they were to continue paying that one-seventy. But I'd rather you didn't
let the Duchess know, all the same."

"Thank you," said Curzon.

"Now," said the Duke, with enormous relief, "is there any way out of
this mess? Can you think of any job Horatio _could_ do?"

"He might make a good regimental officer," said Curzon. Most of the
regimental officers he had known had not been much more distinguished
for capacity than Horatio. The Duke nodded.

"I suppose so," he said. "There aren't many brains in us Winters, when
all is said and done. Fact is, I don't think we'd be very important
people if the first Winter hadn't married William of Orange's lady
friend. But it's not much good telling the Duchess that. I've got to do
something about it."

The Duke looked quite pathetic.

"There are some staff positions," said Curzon, "where he couldn't do
much harm."

Curzon was quite incapable of expressing that awkward truth any less
awkwardly.

"M'm," said the Duke. "And none of them in your gift, I suppose?"

"No."

"It's awkward," said the Duke. "But I'll have to see what I can do up in
town. I suppose you know that I'll be in office again soon?"

"No," said Curzon. Despite the revelations of the last few weeks he was
still abysmally ignorant of the behind-the-scenes moves in politics.

"Yes," said the Duke. "I don't think it matters if I tell you. The
Radicals won't be able to keep us out much longer. Then I may be able to
do a bit more for Horatio and satisfy the Duchess. There's a good many
points I want your advice about, too. What's this man Mackenzie like?
Any good?"

"First rate," said Curzon without any hesitation. Had not Mackenzie been
instrumental in promoting him to Major-General, in giving him the
Ninety-first Division, and in supplying that Division with material far
beyond its quota? Quite apart from that, it would have needed a very
serious deficiency indeed to induce Curzon not to give the simple
loyalty which he in turn expected from his subordinates.

"You really mean that?" asked the Duke anxiously.

"Of course," said Curzon. "He's one of the best soldiers we've got.
Works like a nigger and plenty of brains."

"M'm," said the Duke meditatively, pulling at his long fleshy chin. "You
see--well, it doesn't matter. If you think he's satisfactory and you
ought to know, I don't think I ought--anyway, that's all right."

Having made this cryptic speech the Duke fell silent again, transferring
his attentions from his chin to his cigar, while Curzon smoked opposite
to him, silent also, for the adequate enough reason that he had nothing
more to say. Finally, the Duke got to his feet.

"Well," he said. "There's going to be a hot reception awaiting me when I
get back to London again, but it's no use putting it off. I'll start
back now, I think. No, thank you very much, I won't stay to dinner. It
won't be very late by the time I'm home. Good-bye, Curzon. Don't be too
gloomy."

Captain Horatio Winter-Willoughby did not serve his country at the risk
of his life despite Curzon's adverse report upon him. It only needed the
War Office's attention to be seriously drawn to the reference to him in
the Peerage for him to be found a safe position on the staff of the
military attach to a neutral Government--the War Office was quite well
aware of the importance of safeguarding the ultimate heir to a dukedom,
just as when the threat of air raids became more than a threat they sent
the masterpieces of the National Gallery into safe storage in Wales.

Yet in one respect the Duke's conversation bore fruit. The inevitable
spy who tries to serve both sides was able to report a discussion which
had been held among the prospective Ins, and his report had come to the
knowledge of General Mackenzie. The spy had had a respectable education,
and he was able to compare that discussion with the famous debate among
the Triumvirate in Julius Csar, when they pick off the prospective
victims.

"No," the Duke had said. "I can't say I agree with you about this fellow
Mackenzie. My son-in-law, who's in command of a Division--I've told you
about him before, haven't I?--well, he says that Mackenzie's all right.
Swears by him, in fact. And my son-in-law's got his head screwed on the
right way. He wouldn't say a thing like that if he didn't think it was
true, either. I don't think Mackenzie ought to go. Hang it, someone's
got to do the brainwork."

That was why--and Mackenzie knew it--that when the Liberal Government at
last yielded to the overwhelming pressure and admitted some of the
Opposition to the sweets of office, while men in high position fell
right and left, General Mackenzie remained Director-General of Tactical
Services. Others greater than he--among them the greatest Minister of
War that England ever had--were flung out of office, but Mackenzie
remained despite his very unsound attitude in the Ulster crisis. Perhaps
that is the most important contribution Curzon ever made to the history
of England.

In addition, as a born intriguer, Mackenzie could not possibly credit
Curzon with ordinary honesty, but considered him as just a fellow
intriguer, an ally worth having and especially a potential enemy worth
placating.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN


The training of the Ninety-first Division proceeded apace, even though
every day added to the total amount to be learned. A good many wounded
and convalescent officers rejoined its ranks, and regarded with quiet
amusement the parade movements and formal battle tactics which the
Division was slowly learning to perform. Their recent experience of
Flanders mud, and barbed wire, and German machine-guns had deprived them
of their faith in rigid attacking movements.

Besides these informal ambassadors, the War Office began to send
instructors with more explicit credentials--trench warfare experts,
barbed wire maniacs, bombing officers, machine-gun enthusiasts,
and--after the second battle of Ypres--gas warfare specialists. These
men were attached to Curzon's staff with orders to teach the
Ninety-first Division all they knew, and every one of them was quite
convinced that his particular speciality was the vital necessity in the
new kind of warfare which was being waged, and clamoured for wider and
wider powers to be given them.

Curzon had to listen to them patiently and arbitrate among them;
sometimes, under the urging of express orders from the War Office, he
had to acquiesce in the teaching of doctrines which to him were only a
shade less than heretical. He had no sooner made arrangements for an
intensive instruction in bayonet fighting than he had to coerce his
colonels into submitting to an enlargement of the battalion machine-gun
establishments which would diminish very seriously the number of
bayonets that could be put in line. He had to see to it that the
artillery brigades received instruction regarding the new but already
highly technical business of spotting from the air. He had to let the
sappers have their way and try to make every infantryman an expert in
matters which before the war had been strictly left to the engineers.

Curzon himself had small belief still in the theories of a long war to
be conducted exclusively in trenches. That would leave such small scope
for the kind of soldiering he appreciated that he simply could not
believe in it. Even in the spring of 1915, when the line in France
reeled under the blow dealt it at Ypres, he was in a fever of
apprehension lest the Allied victory should come too quickly, before the
Ninety-first Division could arrive to take its share of the glory. In
March the first reports of the battle of Neuve Chapelle were construed
by him as indicating a great victory, the first step in the advance to
Berlin, and he was left puzzled, even after the circulation of the War
Office confidential memoranda on the battle, by the subsequent
inactivity.

He threw himself more ardently than ever into his duty of preparing the
Ninety-first Division for active service. His brigadiers--Daunt and
Challis and Webb--needed no goading. They were prepared to work until
they dropped. The main part of Curzon's work consisted in co-ordinating
the activities of all the officers under him. It would have called for a
Solomon to adjudicate between the conflicting claims put before him.
Curzon was able to keep the peace not by the ingenuity or justice of his
decisions, but solely by the strictness of the discipline maintained.
There was no one who dared to dispute or evade his orders. He was the
terror of the shirkers and of the wrigglers. His reputation as a
relentless disciplinarian stood him in good stead, and after he had made
an example of Colonel Ringer he had no more trouble with his
subordinates.

The paper work which all this involved was a sore trial to him. Despite
the growth of the Headquarters Staff, of the introduction of clerks, of
the multiplication of specialist officers, the office-work which he
personally had to attend to increased inordinately. His anxiety
regarding his Division prevented him from delegating more of his
authority than he was compelled to, and early morning and late night
found him patiently reading Court Martial records and confidential
reports on junior officers. He signed no indents or statements which he
had not read; he set himself painfully to learn all about the
idiosyncrasies and strengths and weaknesses of every officer and unit
with which he came in contact. He exercised his mind over the Rifles'
regrettable tendency to absence without leave, and the proneness of the
Seventh (Service) Battalion of the Cumberland Light Infantry to acquire
sore feet on route marches.

It was his duty to make the Division efficient; that was why he slaved
and toiled over the business. His desire for his own professional
advancement, his anxiety to stand well in Emily's eyes and in those of
her family, were undoubtedly acute, but they were not the motives which
guided him. He had been given a job of work to do, and he did it to the
best of his ability, although the desk work made him thin and irritable
and spoilt his digestion and his eyesight, and although he could never
find time now to have all the exercise for which he craved.

He usually had to leave Lady Emily to hunt by herself, or under the
escort of either Greven or Follett, his aides-de-camp--there was a good
deal of fox-hunting to be enjoyed, because various patriotic people had
decided that hunting must go on, so that when the boys returned from the
trenches they would find this essential characteristic of England still
flourishing, while officers in England should be provided with sport;
nor might foxes be allowed to diminish the food supply of England; nor
might the breed of English horses, so essential in war-time, be allowed
to decline; nor might the hunt servants be thrown out of
employment--there were dozens of reasons put forward for the maintenance
of fox-hunting besides the real one that the hunters did not believe a
war to be nearly as serious as the suspension of fox-hunting. It was
highly convenient for all concerned that their patriotic feelings should
run so closely parallel to their own desires.

Yet it is possible that fox-hunting played its part in welding the
Ninety-first Division into a living, active whole, for every officer did
his best to hunt, and the friendships formed in the hunting field may
have influenced subsequent events in No Man's Land. At any rate, the
Major-General commanding the Division gave his approval and his blessing
to fox-hunting, and when the season came to an end at the approach of
summer he condoled with his wife on the subject. Emily looked at him a
little queerly--they were dining, at the time, alone for once in the
absence of any guests from the Division, but the parlourmaid was in the
room and her presence caused Lady Emily not to say immediately what she
was going to say. Later on, when they sat in the drawing-room with their
coffee beside them, Emily reverted to the subject, nervously.

"You were saying I must be sorry that hunting was coming to an end,
Bertie," said Emily.

"That's right," said Curzon. "I always think it's a pity."

"Well," said Emily, "it doesn't matter to me now. I couldn't go on
hunting in any case."

Curzon looked across at Emily with surprise in his face. He had
naturally, like any sane newly married man, thought occasionally of the
possibility of his wife having a child, but now that she was trying to
tell him about it that was the last idea to occur to him.

"Why, m'dear," he asked, "is anything the matter?"

"Not really the _matter_," said Emily. Her eyes were wide and she made
herself meet Curzon's glance without flinching.

"But--but----" said Curzon. "What is it, then?"

Emily went on looking at him without speaking, and yet still he would
not jump to the right conclusion. For a moment he was honestly worried
lest Emily should have decided that fox-hunting was unpatriotic or
cruel. And Emily was not at all deterred at the thought of saying she
was pregnant (although that was not the word she would use). What was
holding her back was the thought that after that announcement she would
have to tell her husband her reasons for thinking herself to be in that
condition, and that would involve discussion of matters she had never
mentioned to any men at all, not even (as yet) to a doctor. Curzon and
she had skated safely (only those of Victorian upbringing can guess how)
during three months of married life over the thin ice of feminine
weaknesses without crashing through into revelations.

"But, my good girl," protested Curzon, and then the truth dawned upon
him.

"God bless my soul," said Curzon, his coffee cup clattering into its
saucer. He grinned with surprised delight; already, in this his early
middle-age, there was just noticeable the old-maidish quality about his
smile which was later to become so pronounced.

For some unaccountable reason Emily found tears in her eyes; they were
soon rolling down her cheeks.

"Oh, my dear, my darling," said Curzon, hurrying across the room to her.
Words of endearment did not come too easily to him; in part that was
because of lurking memories of having used them to Cissie Barnes. He
patted her on the shoulder, and then, as that did not avail, he knelt in
stiff dinner-jacketed awkwardness beside her in her low chair. Emily
wiped her eyes and smiled at him, tear-dazzled.

"You're--you're not sorry, m'dear, are you?" said Curzon.

"No," replied Emily boldly. "I'm glad. I'm glad."

"So am I," endorsed Curzon, and his imagination awoke.

"My son. I shall have a son," he said. Mental pictures were steaming
through his mind like a cinematograph--he thought of the boy at school;
later on in Sandhurst uniform; he could picture all the triumphs which
would come the boy's way and which he would enjoy vicariously. As a
young man he had envied the representatives of military families, with a
long record of service from generation to generation. His son would be
one of a military family now, General Curzon's eldest boy, and after him
there would be a long unbroken succession of military Curzons. It was as
good to be an ancestor as to have ancestors.

"He'll be a fine little chap," said Curzon, gazing into the future.

Emily was able to smile at the light in his face even though she had no
intention of bringing a son into the world--her wish was for a daughter
to whom she had already promised a childhood far happier than ever she
had enjoyed.

"Darling," she said to Curzon, taking the lapels of his coat in her
hands.

"Darling," said Curzon to her, his face empurpling as he craned over his
stiff collar to kiss her hands. He toppled forward against her, and her
arms went round him, and his about her, and they kissed, and Emily's
cheek was wet against his, and Curzon's eyes did not remain absolutely
dry. Curzon went to bed that night without having read through the
Deputy Judge Advocate-General's comments on the conflicting evidence in
the court martial on Sergeant-Major Robinson, accused of having been
drunk on parade. But he got up early next morning to read them, all the
same.

The news brought the Duke and Duchess swooping down upon the Priory
despite the fact that the crisis in the Cabinet was at its height.
Curzon found that his mother-in-law, while almost ignoring him as a mere
male in this exclusively feminine business, had practically forgiven him
for his obstinacy with regard to Horatio Winter-Willoughby--time, the
finding of a new appointment for the young man, and Emily's pregnancy
had between them taken the sting out of her enmity. Yet she irritated
Curzon inexpressibly by the way in which she took charge of Emily. Emily
must leave this old-fashioned house _at once_, and come to London where
the finest professional advice was to be obtained. She had already
retained the services of Sir Trevor Choape for the event. Bude House
would of course be open to Emily all this summer; Sir Trevor had
recommended a nurse to whom she had written that very day. The child
must have all the care a Winter deserved.

At that even the Duke ventured a mild protest.

"Hang it all, my dear," he said. "The child's a Curzon, not a Winter,
when all is said and done."

The Duchess only shot a glance of freezing contempt at him.

"The child will be my grandchild, and yours," she said--but what she
left unspoken about the infant's other grand-parents was far more
weighty. The Duchess went on to declare, either expressly or by
implication, her distrust of Curzon in a crisis of this sort, her doubts
as to the suitability of Hampshire as a pre-natal environment, and her
certainty of the undesirability of Narling Priory as a home for a
pregnant woman. She made such skilful play with the most obvious points
of her argument that it was difficult to pick up the weak ones. Narling
Priory was a hideously old-fashioned house; it was lit by oil lamps and
candles; it had only two bathrooms, and its hot water system was a
mid-Victorian relic in the last stages of senility. The Duchess did not
say that it was indecent for a woman to be pregnant in a house half of
which was occupied by a horde of staff officers, but she implied it. The
nearest doctor of any reputation was at Petersfield or Southampton,
miles away--the Duchess brushed aside Curzon's tentative reminder that
there were fifty regimental doctors within five miles.

The Duchess had taken it for granted that they would take Emily back to
London with them that very day, leaving Curzon to revert to his
primitive bachelorhood; she was quite surprised when both Emily and
Curzon protested against his separation. In the end they compromised on
a decision that Emily was to return to London with them so as to keep
the appointment with Sir Trevor, but was to come back to Narling Priory
for as long as Sir Trevor gave permission.

"As a matter of fact," said the Duke to Curzon, when Lady Emily and the
Duchess had left them to themselves while they retired to discuss
women's secrets, "as a matter of fact, I suppose neither of us will be
much surprised if Emily has to be put in charge of the Duchess and me
quite soon."

He looked across at Curzon significantly, and Curzon was instantly all
attention.

"You haven't heard anything about going to France?" went on the Duke.

"No," said Curzon. "Nothing more than rumours."

"I don't know what's been settled about your Division," went on the
Duke, "even although I am in office again. I don't hear everything, you
know."

"Have any new formations gone to France already, then?" demanded Curzon,
sick at heart.

"Yes," said the Duke. "Two divisions went this week. There's no harm in
your knowing, after all. There are two more earmarked for the
Mediterranean, too--I don't know which. The news will be public property
in a week."

Curzon sat tugging at his moustache. He knew how rapidly the Army had
expanded. There were fifteen divisions in England which had been created
after the Ninety-first. In France the expansion, thanks to the arrival
of the Indian Corps and other units, had been such that a new
sub-division of a nature never previously contemplated had been
devised--the Expeditionary Force was divided into three armies now, each
comprising several army corps. After his flying start he was being left
behind again in the race for promotion. He was shocked to hear that
other new divisions had preceded his to France. He had not the least
wish to be ordered to the Mediterranean--and in that he displayed
intuition, even though the Dardanelles landing had not yet taken place.
The whole opinion of the Army, expressed in all the discussions in which
he had taken part, was emphatically that France was the decisive area.
It was in France that glory and promotion, therefore, were to be won. It
was essential to his career that the Ninety-first Division should be
despatched to France, and quickly.

"There's a good deal of talk," went on the Duke, "about a big offensive
soon. One that will win the war at a blow. They've got to accumulate a
big reserve of munitions, and have all the available troops to hand
first, of course, but I don't think it will be long. Everybody's talking
about it in London, especially the women, though God knows how these
things leak out."

This final speech made up Curzon's mind for him, definitely. The
Ninety-first Division must take part in this knock-out blow. Something
very decided must be done to ensure that.

"Do you know," said Curzon meditatively, "I think I'll come back to town
with you to-night, as well? You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not, my dear fellow," said the Duke. "Of course, we shall
have to be starting soon."

"I shall be ready when you are," said Curzon, getting out of his chair
with astonishing rapidity. His mind was already racing through the
programme he had planned with his staff for the morrow, and devising
means whereby it could be carried through without his presence.

"I'll just go through and give orders to my staff, if you will excuse
me," said Curzon.

"Of course," said the Duke once more, and, left alone, he gazed into the
fire and called up memories of his own prospective fatherhood, and how
jumpy he had been, and how unwilling he would have been to allow his
wife out of his sight for twenty-four hours. It did not occur to the
Duke that Curzon's decision to travel to London was not influenced by
his wife's condition, but was simply caused by the gossip he had been
retailing about the military situation.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN


A deferential staff-captain came quietly into Major-General Mackenzie's
room at the War Office--there was a notice on the door saying, "Don't
knock."

"It's General Curzon speaking on the telephone, sir," said the captain.
"He says he would be glad if you could spare the time to see him for a
few minutes to-day."

"Oh, hell," said Mackenzie irritably. "Tell him I'm just off to York on
a tour of inspection."

Two minutes later the captain was back again.

"General Curzon says it is a matter of great importance, and he would be
very much obliged if you could see him before you go to York."

"Blast the man," said Mackenzie.

"He said that he was only in town for to-day, and must return to his
division to-night, sir. But he asked me to tell you that he was lunching
with the Duke of Bude and that it would be more convenient if he could
see you first."

"Damn his eyes," said Mackenzie. "Oh, all right. Tell him to come round
now. Have him sent straight in."

Despite the language Mackenzie had used about him, there was cordiality
in his reception of Curzon, in his offering of a chair and a cigar.
Curzon smoked and waited for Mackenzie to open the conversation.

"Well," said Mackenzie, "what do you want this time?"

Curzon pulled at his cigar. He was doing his best to keep himself calm
and well in hand while playing this unaccustomed game of diplomacy.

"I want," he said eventually, "orders for France."

"For France?"

"Yes, for me and my division."

"The hell you do," said Mackenzie. "Who's been talking?"

Curzon said nothing in reply to that; he judged that in his case silence
would be more effective than speech.

"It's blasted impertinence on your part," said Mackenzie, "to come in
like this asking for the earth. You're a temporary major-general, but
you're only a substantive major. It wouldn't be hard to gazette you back
to your substantive rank."

Curzon had faced this possibility; he was well aware of the risk he was
running, but the prize before him was worth the risk. He pulled at his
cigar while weighing his words.

"I dare say," he said, "but I was hoping you wouldn't do that."

Curzon's mind was seething with memories, despite his outward calm. He
remembered Mackenzie's words on his appointment to his division: "The
closer you and I stay by each other, the better it will be for both of
us." That necessarily implied that Mackenzie credited him with the
ability to do him harm if he wanted to. There was that question the Duke
had asked only a short time ago, about whether Mackenzie was "any good."
That had been more than a hint that the Duke could influence Mackenzie's
dismissal from office. There had been Mackenzie's pliability with regard
to special issues for the Ninety-first Division in the early winter
days. That had not been a matter of any great importance, but it
constituted good confirmatory evidence.

"You're asking for trouble, you know," said Mackenzie, with a warning
note in his voice.

"What, in asking to go to France?" said Curzon.

"Your division's told off to join Hamilton's command in the
Mediterranean, and you know it," said Mackenzie. Curzon judged it best
not to say he did not know it. "How it's got out I can't imagine. These
bloody women, I suppose. Of course you don't want to go there. Of course
you want to go to France. So does everybody else. D'you think I'm going
to listen to every little poop of a temporary major-general who doesn't
want to do what he's told? You'd have had your orders next week, and
you'd have been out of England in three shakes of a duck's tail where
you couldn't have made this fuss. Somebody's got to go, haven't they?
Don't you start thinking I'm in love with this Constantinople idea,
because I'm not. It hurts me just as much to have to find troops for it
as it does you to go. But I've got my duty to do, the same as the rest
of us."

"There are other divisions besides the Ninety-first," said Curzon. This
was the first he had ever heard about any venture being made against
Constantinople, and his opinion was against it from the start. It
appeared to him to involve an unmilitary dispersal of force, and now he
was more anxious than ever for his division to go to France where the
real fighting was to be had.

"Yes," admitted Mackenzie. "There _are_ other divisions. But yours was
the one I had selected as the most suitable."

"On what grounds?" asked Curzon, and his interest nearly betrayed his
ignorance.

There was a struggle on Mackenzie's face as he looked back at the
variety of motives which had influenced his choice, some military, some
not. Curzon's lack of seniority as a major-general had played its part,
as making it easy to fit him into the hierarchy of a small army; so had
the fact that Miller, his G.S.O.1, had had experience in Egypt and
Cyprus. But also there was the wish to get someone who might be a
dangerous enemy and had served most of his purpose as a friend removed
well away from London. Incidentally, there were other generals
commanding divisions who also had influential connections in need of
propitiation. Mackenzie much regretted the failure of his original plan
to order Curzon off without leaving him time to protest. He would have
to send someone else now--a decision which would cause him further
trouble but which must be adhered to, he was afraid. A man whose
father-in-law held office with the certain prospect of a seat in the
Cabinet, and who was hand in glove with the Bude House women, must not
be offended, the more so because Mackenzie had sure and certain
knowledge that Curzon had saved him once from annihilation.

"It's too long a story for me to tell you now," said Mackenzie. "Anyway,
since you're so damned keen about it, I'll see what I can do about
France for you."

Mackenzie allowed no indication to creep into his tone of his fervent
wish that as soon as the Ninety-first Division arrived in France some
bomb or shell would relieve him of this Old Man of the Sea who was
clinging so tightly to his shoulders.

"Thank you very much," said Curzon. "I'm very much obliged to you. And
I'd better not take up any more of your time. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Mackenzie, resignedly.

Curzon ran down the War Office stairs like a school-boy, without waiting
for the lift. The bathchair on Bournemouth promenade had been brought
appreciably nearer by that interview, but no thought of bathchairs had
ever crossed his mind. He walked briskly back across war-time London;
his red tabs and his row of ribbons brought him the salutes of every
uniform he passed. At Bude House the butler opened the door for him with
all the reverence to be accorded to one who was nearly a son of the
house and who had the additional merit of being a General. He sat down
and fidgeted as he re-read _The Times_ and waited for Emily to return
with her mother from her visit to Sir Trevor Choape.

The women came back soon enough, and the moment Curzon heard the subdued
noise of their arrival in the hall he hastened down to greet them. Emily
put off her furs with a little gesture of weariness; she had vomited
badly that morning and still felt slightly upset, and Sir Trevor's
brusque treatment of her had not helped to make her more comfortable.

"Well?" said Curzon, smiling at her, but for the moment Emily could only
nod to him as a sign that her suspicions had been confirmed--there were
too many servants about, relieving her and the Duchess of their coats,
for her to say more at present. And later the Duchess was still very
much in charge of her daughter. It was she who told Curzon about what
Sir Trevor had said.

"Everything's quite all right, Bertie," said the Duchess. "Sir Trevor
agrees with me that it will be about the end of October. He says we must
take care of her, of course."

"What about this sickness?" asked Curzon, consumed with the anxiety
which was only natural to him as an inexperienced prospective father.

"Oh, that's only to be expected," said the Duchess, echoing Sir Trevor's
bluff words--Sir Trevor was one of the old school who took it for
granted that a pregnant woman must always vomit her heart out every
morning.

"I suppose so," said Curzon, feebly. From the little he had heard about
pregnancy he found it easy to believe the same, although some instinct
or intuition inspired him with tiny doubts which he naturally put aside.

"At the same time, Bertie," said the Duchess, clearing for action, "I
think it would be _most unwise_ for Emily to make the journey to Narling
to-day, as I believe you were intending."

The Duchess clearly anticipated violent opposition to this suggestion.

"I certainly must get back," said Curzon. "I can't be away from the
Division any longer."

He glanced at Emily, lying back lax in her chair.

"I should like to come, too," said Emily, "but--but I think I'm going to
be sick again."

There was an immediate bustle and upheaval.

"I'll have that nurse here to-day or know the reason why," said the
Duchess, decisively, when the excitement passed. "You see, it's
impossible for Emily to come with you, Bertie."

Curzon could only agree, weakly.

"At the same time----" he began, hesitantly, and paused, looking first
at Emily and then at the Duchess, wondering whether he ought to
continue.

"Well?" said the Duchess. Now that she had gained her point she had
little more attention to spare for this mere man. "Speak up, and don't
dither like that. You'll upset Emily again."

The fact that a man like Curzon should dither ought to have made her
believe that he had something important to say, but it did not.

"I expect I shall be receiving orders for France very shortly," Curzon
managed to blurt out in the end.

"Indeed?" said the Duchess. She did not feel that her son-in-law's
prospective re-entry into active service was a tiny bit as important as
her daughter's pregnancy.

"Oh, Bertie," said Emily. She was feeling too limp to say more.

But Emily had known for months that Curzon's greatest wish was to
command a division in France; she was glad that his ambition was going
to be gratified so soon. And she felt little fear for him. The war had
not yet lasted long enough for the fear of death to their best loved to
have crept into every heart, and she had so much confidence in him that
she felt it to be impossible for him to come to any harm--and, beyond
all these considerations there was the fact that he was a general. No
one, not even a loving wife, can be quite as afraid for a general as for
a subaltern. She would miss him sadly, but not so much now that her
mother was reasserting her old dominion over her. There might perhaps
even be the slightest suspicion of pique in her attitude, that he should
be going off on his own concerns and leave her to bear her troubles
alone.

"When do you think you will be going?" asked the Duchess, as a
concession to politeness.

Curzon came as near to a shrug of his shoulders as a man of his
upbringing can.

"I don't know for certain," he said. "Next week, perhaps. Any time."

"Then," said the Duchess. "Emily need not worry any more about this
house of yours. I suppose you will have to give it back to the War
Office when you go?"

"Yes."

"That's all right then. You can trust Thompson, my dear, to settle about
the inventories and so on, of course. Perhaps you will be good enough,
Bertie, when you reach Narling, to instruct Hammett to return to us here
and bring Emily's clothes with her?"

For a moment Curzon was on the verge of acquiescence. The domineering
woman who was addressing him seemed to exert a spell on all who came
into contact with her, by virtue of her calm assumption that no one
could deny her. And then Curzon braced himself up. He was nettled that
his announcement that he was shortly going to risk his life for King and
Country should be received as calmly as if he had said he was going
shooting in Scotland. He wanted to have his wife with him for his last
few days in England.

"No," he said. "I don't think I want to do that."

"I beg your pardon?" said the Duchess, in a tone which left a doubt as
to whether she did anything of the kind.

"I should like Emily to come back to Narling as soon as she's well
enough to travel. I think to-morrow she might be, easily."

The Duchess turned on Emily.

"I think so, too," said Emily. "That's what we settled yesterday, wasn't
it, mother?"

Curzon had only to speak to bring Emily back to his side again, and the
Duchess had the perspicacity to see it.

"Just as you like," she said, washing her hands of them. "I have already
expressed my opinion, and if you two wish to act in a manner contrary to
it I cannot say more."

So that although Curzon dined that night in the headquarters mess, the
next afternoon as he sat discussing with Hill the newest instructions
from France regarding liaison between infantry and artillery, there was
a sound of wheels on the gravel outside, and Curzon just had time to see
the ducal motor-car come slowly past the window with Emily inside. It
was typical of Curzon that after glancing up he was able, despite the
throb of excitement in his breast, to go on in an even tone with what he
was saying. Curzon had the feeling that it would be harmful to
discipline if a Major-General were to admit to his subordinates that he
had human attributes--that he was capable of making a woman pregnant, or
of being anxious about her afterwards. He prided himself on the way in
which he brought the discussion to an end without apparently cutting it
short, and on the unhurried and disinterested manner in which he said
good-bye to Hill and walked calmly out of the office towards the private
half of the house.

He might have been disconcerted if he had seen the quiet wink which Hill
exchanged with Runcorn the C.R.E.--in a headquarters which buzzed with
rumours like a hive of bees no one could hope to have any private life
at all. Headquarters knew of Emily's little secret already--although it
would be difficult to discover how. Any private in the Ninety-first
Division who might be interested would know of it before a week was out,
but as Curzon would not know he knew, there was no harm in it.

Curzon ran with clinking spurs up the stairs to Emily's bedroom,
reaching the door just as Hammett, the parlourmaid and lady's maid, was
coming out. Inside, Emily, without her frock, was lying down on the ugly
Victorian bed. She smiled with pleasure at sight of him.

"All safe and sound?" asked Curzon, bluffly.

"Yes, dear," said Emily, and then she stretched out her thin arms to him
and drew him to her. That brought about the new miracle, whereby Curzon
forgot the self-consciousness and the formality acquired during forty
years of bachelorhood, and felt surging up within him the wave of hot
passion which submerged his cold manner so that he kissed his wife with
an ardour which otherwise he would have felt to sit incongruously upon a
Major-General.

In this fashion there began a second instalment of their honeymoon, into
which in a few days they managed to cram as much happiness as they had
succeeded in finding in the previous three months--and this despite the
handicaps under which they laboured, of Curzon's increasing work and the
wretchedness which Emily experienced each morning when sickness overtook
her. It might have been the fault of the long formidable corset which
Emily had worn since her childhood, or it may have been the result of a
faulty heredity, but Emily's pregnancy was highly uncomfortable to her,
and Curzon found himself tortured with apprehension and remorse even
while he rejoiced in the coming of that son for whom he was making such
lofty plans.

Not very long after the last interview with Mackenzie there came a large
official envelope for Major-General H. Curzon, C.B., D.S.O., and Curzon
read its contents with a grimly neutral expression. They were his orders
for France. Curzon was instructed temporarily to hand over the command
of the Ninety-first Division to Brigadier-General J. Webb, D.S.O., and
proceed with his personal staff and Colonel Miller to the headquarters
of the Forty-second Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Wayland-Leigh,
K.C.M.G., D.S.O. His division was to follow in accordance with the
orders enclosed.

Emily felt a sudden pang when Curzon told her the news, and brought her
face to face with the reality instead of merely the possibility. In that
first spring of the war the passing of every month altered the attitude
of the civilians towards it. It was growing usual now for families, who
in 1914 had no military connections whatever, to have relations killed.
Even in the last month Emily had developed a fear lest Curzon, although
he was her invulnerable husband and a General to boot, might soon be
lost to her for more than just a few weeks.

"Now the boy's on his way, m'dear," said Curzon, "it almost makes me
wish I wasn't going. But there it is. And with any luck the war'll be
won and I'll be back with you before he's born."

Curzon's pathetic faith in the sex of the child to be born raised a wan
smile on Emily's face--she had never yet had the courage to break the
news to him of her perfect certainty that she was going to bear a
daughter.

"I hope you will," she said bravely, and then, her tone altering, "I
_do_ hope you will, dear."

"Why, are you going to miss me?" said Curzon.

"Yes."

No one had ever said that to Curzon before in his life. It gave him a
sudden thrill; it brought reality to his statement that he almost wished
that he had not been ordered to France. He kissed her desperately.

But there was small time for love-making for a General anxious about his
professional success, who was shortly due to lose sight of his division
completely until he next saw it under conditions of active service.
Curzon spent his last days reassuring himself about his division. Time
and again the sweating battalions, plodding along the dusty roads on the
route marches which were getting them finally into condition, received
the order "March at attention. Eyes left," and gazed with interest at
the stiffly erect figure at the roadside who controlled their destinies.
The red and gold on his cap and the ribbons on his breast marked him off
as one far different from themselves, and to those amateur soldiers, who
never yet had experienced the muddle and slaughter of battle, a general
was an object of interest, about whom they felt curiosity but little
else.

During those glorious spring days of 1915, the Hampshire lanes echoed
with the music of bands (Curzon had laboured long and hard to see that
every battalion had its band) as the finest division in the finest army
England had ever raised put a final polish on its training under the
anxious eyes of its general. Strangely, he, a cavalry man, had come to
love the long-ordered ranks of infantry. He could thrill to the squeal
of the fifes and the roar of the sidedrums where once the sweetest music
to his ears had been kettledrums and trumpets. He loved this division of
his now, with the love the single-minded and the simple-minded can give
so readily to what they have laboured over. He could not feel the least
doubt but that these big battalions of weatherbeaten men would crash
their way almost unimpeded through the German line. He looked forward
with confidence now to riding with them across the Rhine to Berlin.

The thought of his wonderful division sustained him when he kissed Emily
good-bye, which was as well, for the parting was an even bigger wrench
than he had feared. He had no doubt about himself; but there was the
coming of the child, and Emily's constant sickness (about which his
fears were steadily increasing) and his apprehension lest his
mother-in-law should succeed in alienating his wife from him.

"Look after yourself, dear," he said, his old-time brusqueness
concealing his anxiety as he patted her on the shoulder with the gesture
which seems universal among departing husbands.

"You must do the same," said Emily, trying to smile, and he tore himself
away and climbed into the waiting Vauxhall where his chief-of-staff and
his two aides-de-camp (the latter perched uncomfortably on the stools of
repentance with their backs to the driver) sat waiting for him. The
tyres tore up the gravel, and they had started for Southampton and
France.

Two days later the party, four officers, eight horses, and eight grooms
and servants, reached St. Crisy, the headquarters of the Forty-second
Corps, and Curzon reported his arrival to Lieutenant-General Sir Charles
Wayland-Leigh. The Lieutenant-General was a huge man with a face the
colour of mahogany and a suspicion of corpulence.

"Glad to see you, Curzon," he said, although he showed no signs of it at
all and made no attempt to shake hands. He ran his eyes up and down
Curzon, from his military crop to his glittering field-boots, sizing-up
with cold, green eyes the new subordinate upon whose capacity depended
in part his own reputation.

Curzon felt no inclination to resent his manner, for Wayland-Leigh was a
much more eminent general than he was himself--he had been a general in
the original expeditionary force of 1914. He stood stiffly to attention
and submitted to scrutiny.

"Ha!" said Wayland-Leigh, abruptly and without committing himself--or he
might even have been merely clearing his throat. "Here, Norton. This is
Norton, my B.G.G.S. I expect you'll know him better quite soon. General
Curzon."

The Brigadier-General, General Staff--chief staff officer of the
Corps--was dark and pale, but his face was stamped with the same
truculent and imperious expression as his Chief's, as befitted a man
whose word swayed the destinies of forty thousand men. There was the
same cold eye, the same slight scowl between the eyebrows, the same
thrust-forward jaw and cruel mouth. Yet despite Curzon's more modest
attitude as a newcomer, his face had just the same trade-marks,
curiously enough. He met the stare of the two generals without
flinching. No observer could have witnessed that encounter without
thinking of the proverb about the meeting of Greek with Greek.

"What's your Division like?" said Wayland-Leigh suddenly.

"All right," said Curzon, and then, throwing traditional modesty to the
winds, "first rate. As good as anyone could hope for."

"Let's hope you're right," said Wayland-Leigh. "Don't think much of
these New Army divisions myself. We've seen a couple of 'em, haven't we,
Norton?"

"Mine's good stuff," persisted Curzon, refusing to be browbeaten.

"We'll see for ourselves soon enough," said Wayland-Leigh brutally. "And
look here, Curzon, we may as well begin as we mean to go on. There are
certain standing orders in this Corps which you'd better hear about
now--they're not written orders. In this Corps there are no excuses. A
man who's got to find excuses--goes, just like that."

His thick hand cut the air with an abrupt gesture.

"Yes, sir," said Curzon.

"This Corps does not retire," went on Wayland-Leigh. "It never gives up
ground. And in the same way if it is given an objective to reach, it
reaches it. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"We don't have any bloody weak-kneed hanky-panky. You've never commanded
a Division in action, have you, Curzon?"

"No, sir."

"Well, you'll find that the commanders of units are always looking out
for a chance to dodge the dirty work and pass it on to someone
else--anxious to spare their own men and all that. Take my advice and
don't listen to 'em. It'll be a dam' sight better for you, believe me."

"Yes, sir."

"Most of the officers in this army want _driving_, God knows why--the
Army's changed since I was a regimental officer. You drive 'em, and
you're all right. _I'll_ back you up. And if you don't--I'll have to
find someone who will."

"I understand."

"I hope you do. What about a drink before dinner? Norton, you can look
after him. I'll see you at dinner, Curzon."

Dinner at Corps Headquarters was a stiffly military function. It was
served at a long table in what had once been the state bedroom of the
jewel-like little chateau. There were silver candlesticks on the table,
and a fair show of other silver--somehow St. Crisy had escaped being
looted by any of the three armies which had fought in its streets. The
Lieutenant-General sat at the head of the table, huge and silent, with
Curzon as the newest arrived guest on his right. Looking down the table
Curzon saw a long double row of red-tabbed officers whose rank dwindled
in accordance with their distance from him as though in
perspective--generals and colonels at the head, and aides-de-camp and
signal officers at the foot. There was small attempt at conversation at
the far end. The brooding immobility of the Lieutenant-General seemed to
crush the young men into awed silence. Even their requests to the mess
waiters were couched in half-whispers.

On Curzon's right was another major-general commanding a division.
Bewly, his name was, and he reminded Curzon of Coppinger-Brown, his
predecessor in command of the Ninety-first Division. Bewly was able to
talk despite the presence of his corps commander; he spent dinner-time
complaining unnecessarily to Curzon about the lack of social position of
the officers of the New Army.

"I should have thought," said Bewly, "that they would have drawn the
line _somewhere_, but they haven't. There's a battalion of my old
regiment in my division. The subalterns come from _anywhere_, literally
_anywhere_. I suppose we had to have stockbrokers and schoolmasters. But
there are _clerks_ in the regiment now, no better than office boys. And
that's not all. There's a _linen draper_! It's enough to make one weep.
What was your regiment?"

Curzon told him.

"Ah!" said Bewly, and there crept into his voice the slight deference
which Curzon was accustomed to hear from infantrymen. "I don't expect it
has happened in your regiment? You can keep that kind of thing out of
the cavalry."

"I suppose so," said Curzon. He was not very interested in this question
of the introduction of the lower orders into the commissioned ranks of
the infantry. Partly that may have been because he was a cavalry man,
but partly it must have been because he was conscious of his own Mincing
Lane parentage. As regards his own division he would have wished for no
change in its present constitution, and being without blue blood
himself, he failed to see the necessity of blue blood as a qualification
for leadership.

At the same time he found himself wondering vaguely how long Bewly would
last under Wayland-Leigh's command, and he guessed it would not be long.
Bewly's division was a New Army formation which had been in France for
three weeks. The other two divisions in the Corps besides the
Ninety-first were of an older pedigree, although as Bewly
pessimistically informed Curzon, they had lost so many men and had been
filled up so often with drafts that they retained precious little
likeness to their originals.

The dinner was admirable and the service more efficient than that of any
mess Curzon had ever known. This was due--Bewly was his informant again,
speaking with dropped voice, and with nods and winks at Curzon's
left-hand neighbour--to the fact that Wayland-Leigh systematically
combed his Corps for ex-waiters and ex-cooks. The mess sergeant was
lately a _matre d'htel_; the cook had been an assistant chef in a
famous restaurant.

"Trust the Buffalo to have the best of everything," murmured Bewly, and
Curzon suddenly remembered that far back in the old Indian Army days
Wayland-Leigh had been nicknamed "the Buffalo." The original reason for
the name had long been forgotten, but the name remained, distinguished
by its appropriateness.

As soon as dinner was over the Buffalo rose abruptly from his chair
without a glance either to left or to right, and strode away from the
table to vanish through an inconspicuous door behind him. A second later
Curzon heard another door slam in the farther depths of the house.

"He's settled for the night, thank God," said Bewly, heaving a sigh of
relief. Curzon was reminded (until he put the similarity out of his mind
as ludicrous) of the attitude of a small boy at school at the
disappearance of a dreaded master.




CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Next morning Curzon formed one of a select party sent round a section of
the front line to be initiated into the new developments of trench
warfare. Their guide was a tall lean captain named Hodge, who occupied
some ill-defined position on the Corps Headquarters' staff, and who wore
not merely the blue and red ribbon of the Distinguished Service Order,
but the purple and white one of the new-fangled Military Cross. More
noticeable than his ribbons was his air of weary lackadaisical tolerance
towards his seniors, even major-generals. His uninterested apathy made a
bad impression on Curzon, but Bewly took no notice of it, and with Bewly
present and senior to him he could not pull him up for it. Life seemed
to hold no more secrets and no more attraction for Captain Hodge, who
lounged in front of the party along the winding trenches with a weary
indifference in striking contrast to the keen interest of the newcomers.

Motor-cars had brought them to a cross-roads close behind the line; on
the journey up Captain Hodge condescended to point out to them all sorts
of things which were new to Curzon, in the way of ammunition dumps (tiny
ones, the mere microcosm of their successors, but an innovation as far
as Curzon was concerned) and rest billets for troops out of the line,
and all the other unheard-of accessories of static warfare.

At the cross-roads Hodge actually was sufficiently awake to say:
"Dangerous place for shelling here," and to display some sign of haste
as he walked across with the staff officers scuttling behind him. But
the sky was blue and peace seemed to have settled down upon the tortured
landscape. There was hardly a sound of firing to be heard. The armies of
both sides seemed to be basking like lizards in the unwonted sunshine. A
tiny breath of wind fanned Curzon's face, and brought with it the stink
of the front line trenches, compounded of carrion and mud and latrines
ripened by the present warmth. When Curzon had last quitted the trenches
after the First Battle of Ypres that stink had been in its immaturity,
only just beginning, but the present whiff called up a torrent of
memories of those wild days, of the peril and the fatigue and the
excitement. Curzon felt vaguely irritated by the prevailing tranquility.
First Ypres had been real fighting; this was nothing of the sort.

The road they were on had ceased to be a road at the cross-roads, where
the red-hatted military policeman had stopped the cars. A vague
indication of a trench had grown up around them as they progressed, and
soon it was quite definitely a trench, floored with mud in which they
sank ankle deep--the warm weather had not dried it--crumbling and
slipshod in appearance for lack of revetting. They floundered in single
file along the trench. Twice Hodge turned and said: "Keep low here.
They've got a fixed rifle on this point." Hodge made no bones at all at
bending himself double, despite his lackadaisical air, as he made his
way round the dangerous bay. Curzon stooped, but could not bring himself
to adopt Hodge's cowardly and undignified attitude. He heard a sharp
_zzick_ and felt the breath of a bullet past the back of his neck.

"Better be careful," said Hodge.

A little later they had to crowd themselves against the side of the
trench to allow a stretcher to go by; the stretcher bearers were
breathing deeply, and on the stretcher lay a soldier deathly pale, his
boots protruding beyond the blanket which covered him. That was all the
traffic they met in the communication trench.

They reached the support line and went along it. There were soldiers
here, lounging about, sleeping in the sun, making tea over little
smokeless flames of solid methylated spirit. They came up to attention
not very promptly at sight of the string of brass hats making their way
along the trench. Battalion headquarters was established in a dug-out
burrowed into the front of the trench; not a very good dug-out, a mere
rabbit scrape compared with the dug-outs of the future, but the first
Curzon had seen. A worn-looking colonel greeted them, and offered them
drinks, which all of them except Curzon drank thirstily; Curzon had no
desire at all to drink whisky and water at ten in the morning. The
battalion runners were waiting on duty in a smaller dug-out still, next
door; in the headquarters dug-out was the telephone which linked
precariously the battalion to brigade, and thence through Division and
Corps and Army to G.H.Q.

They went on by a muddy communication trench to the front line. Here
there was the same idleness, the same lack of promptitude in
acknowledging the General's presence. There were men asleep squatting on
the firestep who had to be wakened for discipline's sake. There were
certain concessions made to active service conditions; the sentries
peering into the periscopes were rigidly attentive and stirred not at
all at the bustle passing them by; the shell cases hung inverted in
every bay to act as gongs for a gas warning should gas come over.

Curzon took a periscope and gazed eagerly over the parapet. He saw a few
strands of barbed wire with a tattered dead man--a sort of parody of a
corpse--hanging on the farthest one. Then there was a strip of mud
pocked with shell craters, more barbed wire beyond, and then the enemy's
front line, whose sand-bagged parapet, although neater and more
substantial than the British, showed no more sign of life. It was hard
to believe that a wave of disciplined men could not sweep across that
frail barrier, and as Curzon began to think of that he found himself
believing that it would be better even that they should try and fail
than moulder here in unsoldierly idleness--it would be the more
appropriate, the more correct thing.

The other generals, and Captain Hodge, waited patiently while he peered
and stared, twisting the periscope this way and that--it was not easy to
form a military estimate of a landscape while using a periscope for the
first time--and were clearly relieved when at last his curiosity was
satisfied and he handed back the periscope to the platoon officer from
whom he had taken it.

"We shall be late for lunch if we don't hurry on our way back, Hodge,"
said Bewly.

"Yes, sir," said Hodge. "I'll try and get you back in time."

Bewly's anxiety about lunch irritated Curzon--there was a good deal
about Bewly which had begun to irritate him. He almost sympathized with
Hodge in his attitude of scarcely concealed contempt for Bewly, even
though it was reprehensible in a junior officer. They pushed on along
the front line trench, round bays and traverses innumerable; one bit of
trench was very like another, and everywhere the men seemed half asleep,
as might have been expected of soldiers who had spent five nights in the
trenches--except by Curzon, who could not imagine the physical and still
less the moral effects of experiences he had not shared and which were
not noticed in the military text-books.

The sparseness of the garrison of the trenches made a profound effect on
him; it was a continual source of surprise to him to see how few men
there were in each sector. He had long known, of course, the length of
line allotted on the average to a division, and he had laboriously
worked out sums giving the number of rifles per yard of trench from the
data issued by the War Office (Most Secret. For the information of
Officers Commanding Divisions Only), but he was not gifted with the
power of visualizing in actual pictures the results obtained. Now that
he could see for himself he marvelled; presumably the German trenches
over there were as scantily manned--it seemed to him impossible that
such a frail force could withstand a heavy artillery preparation and
then a brisk attack with overwhelming numbers.

He already itched with the desire to make the attempt, to head a fierce
offensive which would end this slovenly, unmilitary, unnatural kind of
warfare once and for all. There must have been mismanagement at
Festubert and Neuve Chapelle, or bad leadership, or bad troops. Nothing
else could account for their failure to put an end to a situation
against which all Curzon's training caused him to revolt with loathing.
His feverish feeling made him reply very shortly indeed to Bewly's
droned platitudes on the way back to Corps Headquarters and at lunch,
and later, when Miller and he were called into to discuss with
Wayland-Leigh and Norton what they had seen, his sincerity lent a touch
of eloquence to his unready tongue.

He spoke vehemently against the effect on the troops of life in the
trenches, and of this system of petty ambuscades and sniping and dirt
and idleness. And, with his experience of improvised attacks and defence
to help him, he was able to say how advantageous it must be to be
allowed ample time to mount and prepare a careful attack in which
nothing could go wrong and overwhelming force could be brought upon the
decisive point. Curzon checked himself at last when he suddenly realized
how fluently he was talking. It was lawyer-like and un-English to be
eloquent, and his little speech ended lamely as he looked in
embarrassment from Wayland-Leigh to Norton and back again.

But Wayland-Leigh apparently was too pleased with the sentiments Curzon
had expressed to be suspicious of his eloquence. There was a gleam of
appreciation in his green eyes. He exchanged glances with Norton.

"That's the stuff, Curzon," he said. "That's different from what I've
been hearing lately from these can't-be-doners and better-notters and
leave-it-to-youers that the Army's crowded with nowadays. What about
you, Miller?"

Miller, dark, saturnine, silent, had said nothing so far, and now, after
a Lieutenant-General and a Major-General had expressed themselves so
enthusiastically, it could not be expected of a mere colonel to go
against their opinions--not a colonel, at any rate, who placed the least
value on his professional career.

"I think there's a lot in it, sir," said Miller, striving to keep the
caution out of his voice and to meet Wayland-Leigh's sharp glance
imperturbably.

"Right," said Wayland-Leigh. "Norton's got a lot of trench maps and
appreciations and skeleton schemes for local offensives. I want you to
start going through them with him. We all know that the real big push
can't come for a month or two while these bloody politicians are
muddling about with munitions and conscription and all the rest of
it--why in hell they can't put a soldier in to show them how to run the
affair properly I can't imagine. Your division's due to arrive in two
days. We'll give 'em a couple of turns in the front line to shake 'em
together, and then we'll start in and get something done. Your lot and
Hope's Seventy-ninth are the people I'm relying on."

Curzon ate his dinner with enjoyment that night--it was enough to give
any man pleasure in his food to be told that the Buffalo relied upon
him. There was a letter from Emily, too--full of the shy
half-declarations of love which were as far as Emily could be expected
to write and as far as Curzon wished. Burning phrases in black and white
would have made Curzon uncomfortable; he was well satisfied with Emily's
saying that she missed him and hoped he would soon be back again with
her, and with the timid "dears," three in all, interpolated in the
halting sentences. Emily was at Bude House, which the Duke had decided
to keep open all the summer, but she would soon be going for a few weeks
to Bude Manor in Somerset. She was still being a little sick--Curzon
fidgeted with a premonition which he told himself to be unfounded when
he read that. The last paragraph but one brought a grin to his lips both
because of its contents and its embarrassing phrasing. The grim gaunt
housekeeper who had ruled Narling Priory under their nominal control had
been found to be with child after forty-one years of frozen virginity,
and obstinately refused to name her partner beyond saying he was a
soldier. As Emily said, the war was changing a lot of things.

Curzon wrote back the next day, bluffly as usual. The only "dear" he was
able to put into his letter was the one that came in "my dear wife," and
the only sentiment appeared in the bits addressed in reply to Emily's
statement that she missed him. He devoted three or four lines to the
excellent weather prevailing, and he committed himself to a cautiously
optimistic sentence or two regarding the future of the war. He bit the
end of his pen in the effort of trying to think of something more to
say, but found inspiration slow in coming, and ended the letter with a
brief recommendation that Emily should take great care of herself, and a
note of amused surprise at the fall of the housekeeper.

He did not think the letter inadequate (nor did Emily when she received
it) but it was a relief to turn aside from these barren literary labours
and to plunge once more into the living business of the Army. The
Division arrived, and Curzon rode over to join it with all the thrill
and anticipation of a lover--he had been separated from it for more than
a week, and it was with delight that he sat his horse at the side of the
road, watching the big bronzed battalions stream past him. He gave a
meticulous salute in reply to each salute he received, and his eyes
scanned the dusty ranks with penetrating keenness. He heard an
ejaculation from the ranks: "Gawd, there's old Bertie again," and he
looked on with grim approval while a sergeant took the offender's
name--not because he objected to being called Bertie, but because the
battalion was marching at attention and therefore to call out in that
fashion was a grave breach of discipline.

It was an indication, all the same, of the high spirits of the men, who
were bubbling over with the excitement of the journey and with the
prospect of action. They took a childlike interest in everything--in
French farming methods, in the aeroplanes overhead with the white puffs
of anti-aircraft shells about them, in the queer French words written
over shop windows, in the uncanny ability of even the youngest children
to talk French, in the distant nocturnal firework display that indicated
the front line.

They showed a decided tendency to let their high spirits grow too much
for them, all the same. The arrival of the Division coincided with a
large increase in the military crimes in which the British soldier never
ceases to indulge. They stole fruit (horrible unripe apples) and poultry
and eggs. Their inappeasable yearning for fuel led them to steal every
bit of wood, from fence rails and doors to military stores, which they
could lay their hands on. They drank far too much of the French wine and
beer even while they expressed their contempt for them, and sometimes
they conducted themselves familiarly towards Frenchwomen who were not
ready to appreciate the compliment.

Curzon read the statistics of regimental crime with growing indignation.
All this gross indiscipline must be checked at once. He circulated a
scathing divisional order, and strengthened the hands of the military
police, and saw to it that a score of offenders received exemplary
punishments. The effect was immediate and gratifying, because the amount
of crime decreased abruptly--as soon as the men had grown accustomed to
the new conditions and to the methods of those in authority, so that
they could evade detection; for no disciplinary methods on earth could
keep British soldiers from wine, women and wood.

The Ninety-first Division took its place in the line without any great
flourish of trumpets. Norton chose a quiet section for them, and the ten
days went by with nothing special to report. There were a hundred
casualties--the steady drain of losses to be expected in trench
warfare--and a general court martial on a man caught asleep while on
sentry duty, from which the culprit was lucky enough to escape with his
life.

Curzon fretted a little at the conditions in which he had to command his
men. It went against his conscience to a certain extent to spend his
time, while his men were in the line, in a comfortable house. He could
eat good dinners, he could ride as much as he wanted, he could sleep
safely in a good bed; and it was not easy to reconcile all this with his
memory of First Ypres. He chafed against the feeling of impotence which
he experienced at having to command his Division by telephone. He was
still imbued with the regimental ideal of sharing on active service the
dangers and discomforts of his men.

During the Division's turns of duty in the trenches his anxiety drove
him repeatedly up into the front line to see that all was well. He
plodded about along the trenches trying to ignore fatigue--for a journey
of a dozen miles through the mud, stooping and scrambling, was the most
exhausting way of spending a day he had ever known. His aide-de-camp,
Greven, bewailed his fate to unsympathetic audiences; the other one,
Follett, was more hardy--but then Curzon had selected him with care and
without regard to family connections, on the recommendation that Follett
had once ridden in the Grand National and completed the course. Follett
endured the mud and the weariness and the danger without complaint.

There was inconvenience in making these trench tours. Miller had to be
left in charge at headquarters, and however capable Miller might be the
ultimate responsibility--as Curzon well appreciated--was Curzon's own.
During the dozen hours of Curzon's absence orders calling for instant
decision might come by telephone or by motor-cycle despatch rider. While
Curzon was in the trenches he found himself to be just as anxious about
what was happening at headquarters as he was about the front line when
he was at headquarters. It took all the soothing blandishments which
Greven could devise with the aid of Curzon's personal servants to keep
him from making an unbearable nuisance of himself, and quite a little
while elapsed before he was able to reconcile himself to this business
of leading by telephone.

On the Division's third turn in the front line Curzon was allowed by
Wayland-Leigh to put into practice some of the principles he had been
forming. Curzon came to believe, in the event, that it was more
harassing to sit by a telephone looking at his watch waiting for news,
than to take part in the operations which he had ordered. The first one
was the merest trifle, a matter of a raid made by no more than a
company, but two o'clock in the morning--the hour fixed--found Curzon
and all his staff fully dressed in the office and consumed with anxiety.
It was a battalion of a Minden regiment which was making the raid--the
colonel had begged the honour for his unit because it was Minden day
without realizing that this was a tactless argument to employ to a
cavalry man--and Curzon spent an anxious half-hour wondering whether he
had been wise in his selection. The buzz of the telephone made them all
start when at last it came. Frobisher answered it while Curzon tugged at
his moustache.

"Yes," said Frobisher. "Yes. Right you are. Yes."

The studied neutrality of his tone enabled Curzon to guess nothing of
the import of the message until Frobisher looked up from the telephone.

"It's all right, sir," he said. "They rushed the post quite easily.
Seven prisoners. Bombed the other bit of trench and heard a lot of
groans. The party's back now, sir. We won't get their casualty return
until the morning."

"All right," said Curzon. His first independent operation had been
crowned with success.

He got up from the table and walked out to the front door, and stood in
the porch looking towards the line, his staff following. There was far
more commotion there than usually. The sky was lighted by the coloured
lights which were being sent up, and the ground shook with the fire of
the guns, whose flashes made a dancing line of pin points of light on
the horizon. The raid had put the line on the alert, and expectancy had
led to the inevitable "wind-up" until ten thousand rifles and two
hundred guns were all blazing away together--and killing a man or two
here and there, while wiring parties and patrols, caught in No Man's
Land by the unexpected activity, crouched in shell-holes and cursed the
unknown fool who had started the trouble.

The glare in the sky which indicated unusual nocturnal activity was to
be seen frequently after that over the sector occupied by the
Ninety-first Division. There were all sorts of little local operations
awaiting their attention--small salients to be pinched out and exposed
listening posts to be raided--and the Ninety-first Division engaged in
them whole-heartedly.

Moreover, as Curzon had suspected, a certain amount of a
live-and-let-live convention had grown up in the line. Each side had
inclined to refrain from inflicting casualties on the other side at
moments when retaliation would cause casualties to themselves--ration
parties were being mutually spared, and certain dangerous localities
received reciprocal consideration. Curzon would have none of this. It
seemed to him to be a most dangerous and unsoldierly state of affairs;
if a soldier whose duty it was to kill the enemy refrained from doing so
he was clearly not doing his duty and it might lead to untold damage to
discipline. Drastic Divisional orders put a stop to this. The keenness
of the new troops and the energy of their commander brought renewed
activity into the line; the number of snipers was increased, and places
where the enemy had been inclined to be careless were regularly sprayed
with machine-gun fire, with, as far as headquarters could tell, a most
gratifying increase in German casualties.

Naturally the enemy retaliated. British divisions accustomed to a
peaceful turn of duty were annoyed and surprised, when they relieved the
Ninety-first, to find that localities hitherto regarded as safe were now
highly dangerous, and that sniping had vastly increased, and that the
Germans had developed a system of sudden bombing raids which made life
in the trenches a continual strain on the nerves. This was especially
noticeable because, as the Germans had the advantage of direct
observation from the low heights which they occupied, and did not
trouble themselves nearly as much as the British about holding on to
dangerous salients, and worked far harder at making their trenches safe
and habitable, they could make things far more uncomfortable for the
British than the British could for them.

Both officers and men of the other divisions complained of the new state
of affairs to their fellows of the Ninety-first, but they found small
satisfaction in doing so. The Ninety-first Division pleaded the direct
orders of their commander. "Bertie's the boy," they said, half-proud,
and half-rueful, and the daily drain of casualties increased--Curzon was
already making application for drafts and new officers for his
battalions.

The new system met with one protest from an unexpected quarter. Young
Captain Frobisher, the General Staff Officer, third grade, found an
opportunity while he and Miller and Curzon, sitting at the table
littered with trench maps, were drafting the orders for fresh activity.
The weak points of the German line in their sector had by now been
blotted out, and Curzon casually admitted in conversation that it was
not easy now to find suitable objects for attention.

"Perhaps," said Frobisher, "it might be wise to quiet down for a bit,
sir?"

"No, it's not good for the men," replied Curzon.

"Casualties are getting a bit high," said Frobisher.

"You can't make war without casualties," said Curzon. He had been a
casualty himself, once, and he had freely exposed himself to the chance
of its occurring again.

"Wellington tried to keep 'em down, sir," said Frobisher, suddenly bold.

"What on earth do you mean, boy?" asked Curzon.

"Wellington always discouraged sniping and outpost fighting and that
sort of thing."

"Good God!" said Curzon. "Wellington lived a hundred years ago."

"Human nature's the same now, though, sir."

"Human nature? What in hell are you talking about? Anyone would think
you were a poet or one of these beastly intellectuals. I don't like
this, Frobisher."

Curzon was definitely angry. There was a frosty gleam in his eyes and a
deep line between his brows. It was not so much because a captain was
venturing to argue with him, a major-general, as that the captain was
putting forward suggestions of a suspicious theoretical nature in direct
opposition to the creed of the Army, that the side which does not attack
is bound to lose.

"Frobisher's had too much history and not enough practical experience,
yet, sir," said Miller. He put his word in hastily, because he did not
want to lose the services of the best G.S.O.3 he could hope to get hold
of.

"So I should think," said Curzon, still staring indignantly at the
delinquent, but somewhat appeased. He had grown fond of young Frobisher
after six months of work with him, and had been pained as well as
shocked at his heresy, just as if his son (supposing he had one) had
announced his intention of marrying a tobacconist's daughter. His
fondness for Frobisher even led him into defending his own actions by
argument.

"We're giving the Germans hell, aren't we?" said Curzon.

"Yes, sir," said Frobisher, with dropped eyes. A word from Curzon would
take him from his staff position, where he could think even though his
mouth remained shut, and put him into an infantry battalion where he
would not be able to think at all.

"Well, don't let me hear any more of this nonsense. Pass me that map and
let's get down to business."




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


The next time that the Ninety-first Division came out of the line Curzon
was summoned to attend a conference at Corps Headquarters. Wayland-Leigh
and Norton were jubilant. The Big Push was being planned at last--the
great offensive which was to bring with it the decisive victory and the
march to Berlin. There were nine divisions available, about three times
as many Englishmen--as Curzon jovially pointed out to Frobisher on his
return--as Wellington had commanded at Waterloo. There were more
field-guns ready for use in the preliminary bombardment than the entire
British Army had owned in 1914, and there was a stock of ammunition
accumulated for them sufficient for fifty hours of continuous steady
firing--a longer bombardment than had ever been known in the field
before. Besides all this, they were going to take a leaf out of the
Germans' book and employ poison gas, but on a far larger scale than the
Germans' timorous attempt at Ypres. There were mountainous dumps already
formed of cylinders of chlorine, and every ship that crossed the Channel
was bringing further supplies.

But the great cause for rejoicing was that the Forty-second Corps had
been selected to take part in the attack--the Buffalo was to be turned
loose to crash through the gap made by the leading divisions. The maps
were brought out--not the finicking little trench maps on which Curzon
had planned his little petty offensives, but big maps, covering all
North-eastern France. The French were to attack at Vimy, storm the
ridge, and push forward; the British were to strike at Loos, break the
German line, and join hands with the French behind Lens, which was to
fall as the first ripe fruit of victory into the Allies' hands
unassailed. At this stage of the battle the Forty-second Corps would be
in the van, with open country before them, and nothing to stop them.

"It's a pity in a way," said Norton, "that we've had to wait until
autumn for this attack. It makes it just possible that the Huns will be
able to hold us up for a winter campaign on the Rhine."

Before this campaign on the Rhine could be begun, there was more work to
be done. The Ninety-first Division had to take another turn of duty in
the front line trenches, working like beavers over the preparations for
the great attack. One morning Frobisher brought the Divisional orders
for Curzon to sign, and Curzon, as ever, read them carefully through
before assuming responsibility for them.

"Here, what's this, boy?" he said suddenly. "Two men to carry up each
gas cylinder? We've only been using one for the empty ones."

"Yes, sir," said Frobisher. "These are full, and they're heavier in
consequence."

"Nonsense," said Curzon. He was glad to be able to find something he was
quite certain he was right about while Frobisher was wrong even though
he bore him no ill will. "Everyone knows that gas makes things lighter.
They put it in balloons and things."

"That's coal gas, sir," said Frobisher with deference. "This is
chlorine, and highly compressed."

"You mean I'm talking nonsense?" demanded Curzon.

"No, sir," said Frobisher, treading warily as he could over this
dangerous ground, "but we've never had to deal with full cylinders
before."

Curzon glared at this persistent young captain, and decided that his
victory would be more crushing still if he gained it without recourse to
his hierarchical authority.

"Well, if you don't believe _me_," he said, with all the dignity he
could summon, "you'd better ring up the gas officer at Corps
Headquarters and see what _he_ says. You may believe him, if he's had
the advantage of an education at Camberley, too, as well as you."

"Yes, sir," said Frobisher.

It took Frobisher ten minutes to make his call and get his answer, and
he was decidedly nervous on his return.

"Well?" said Curzon.

"The gas officer says that the full cylinders are fifty pounds heavier
than the empty ones, sir," said Frobisher.

Curzon looked very sharply at him, but Frobisher's face was immobile.
Without a word Curzon drew the orders to him, dashed off his signature,
and handed them back. It must be recorded to Curzon's credit that he
never afterwards allowed that incident to prejudice him against
Frobisher--and it is significant of his reputation for fairness that
Frobisher had no real fear that he would.

By the time the Ninety-first Division came out of the line the
preparations for the attack were nearly complete. The ammunition dumps
were gorged. There were drafts to fill the ranks of the waiting
divisions up to their full establishment, and further drafts ready at
the base to make up for the inevitable casualties of the initial
fighting. There were hospitals, and prisoners' cages, and three
divisions of cavalry ready to pursue the flying enemy.

Curzon's heart went out to these latter when he saw them. For a moment
he regretted his infantry command. He felt he would gladly give up his
general officer's rank just to hear the roar of the hoofs behind him as
he led the Lancers in the charge again. He rode over to their billets,
and visited the Twenty-second, to be rapturously received by those men
in the ranks who had survived First Ypres. Browning, in command, was not
quite so delighted to see him--he had unhappy memories of their previous
contacts, when Curzon had been to no trouble to conceal his contempt for
his indecision and loss of nerve in the climax of the battle. The
officers' mess was full of strange faces, and familiar ones were
missing--Borthwick, for instance, when he had recovered from his wounds,
had been transferred to the staff and was organizing some piratical new
formation of machine-gunners with the rank of Colonel. The fact that
Borthwick should ever be a colonel when he had never properly learned to
ride a horse was sufficient proof of what a topsy turvy war this was, as
Curzon and his contemporaries agreed over a drink in the mess.

Curzon bade the Twenty-second a sorrowful good-bye at the end of the
day. He could not stay to dinner, as he had an invitation to Corps
Headquarters. As he stood shaking hands with his friends they heard the
roar of the bombardment--in its third day now--which was opening the
battle of Loos.

"They're getting Hell over there," said a subaltern, and everyone
agreed.

"You'll be having your chance in less than a week," said Curzon, and
regret surged up in him again as he mounted his horse. He had gained
nothing in forsaking a regiment for a division. He would never know now
the rapture of pursuit; all there was for him to do now was to make the
way smooth for the cavalry.

There were high spirits at Corps Headquarters, all the same, to counter
his sentimental depression. Wayland-Leigh had provided champagne for
this great occasion, and in an unwonted expansive moment he turned to
Curzon with his lifted glass.

"Well, here's to the Big Push, Curzon," he said. His green eyes were
aflame with excitement.

"Here's to it, sir," said Curzon, fervently.

"It's like that bit of Shakespeare," said Wayland-Leigh--and the fact
that Wayland-Leigh should quote Shakespeare was a sufficient indication
of the greatness of the occasion. "'When shall we three meet again?' Or
rather we five, I ought to say."

He looked round at his four divisional generals.

"On the Rhine, sir," said Hope of the Seventy-ninth.

"Please God," said Wayland-Leigh.

The horizon that night was all sparkling with the flashes of the guns as
Curzon rode back to his headquarters; the bombardment was reaching its
culminating point, and the gentle west wind--Curzon wetted his finger
and held it up to make sure--was still blowing. It would waft the poison
gas beautifully towards the German lines, and those devils would have a
chance of finding out what it was like.

At dawn next morning Curzon was waiting in his headquarters for orders
and news. The horses of the staff were waiting saddled outside; within
half a mile's radius the battalions and batteries of the Division were
on parade ready to march. Neither orders nor news came for some time,
while Curzon restlessly told himself that he was a fool to expect
anything so early. Nothing could come through for seven or eight hours.
But Frobisher looked out at the Divisional flag drooping on its staff,
and he went outside and held up a wet finger, and came in again
gloomily. There was no wind, or almost none. In fact, Frobisher had a
suspicion that what little there was came from the east. There could be
small hope to-day for a successful use of gas.

"We can win battles without gas, gentlemen," said Curzon, looking round
at his staff.

As time went on Curzon grew seriously alarmed. They were fifteen miles
from the line, and if orders to move did not come soon they might be too
late to exploit the initial advantage. Curzon knew that the Forty-second
Corps was being held directly under the command of General Headquarters,
so that he could try to quiet his fears by telling himself that there
was no question of a muddle in the command; G.H.Q. must know more than
he did. The orders came in the end some time after noon, brought by a
goggled motor-cyclist. He and Miller ran through them rapidly; all they
said was that the Division was to move up the road at once--it was not
more than a quarter of an hour after the motor-cyclist's arrival that
Curzon had his leading battalion stepping out briskly towards the
battle.

By the time the Division was on the march there was news of sorts to be
picked up on the road as the dbris of the battle drifted back.
Ambulance drivers and lorry drivers and wounded contributed their quota,
and the tales told brought the deepest depression and revived the
wildest hope alternately. A light infantry officer told of disastrous
failure, of the ruin of his division amid a tangle of uncut wire. An
ambulance load of wounded Scots reported a triumphant advance, the
overrunning of miles of German trenches, and desperate fighting still in
progress. From a Seventh Division major, Curzon learned of the failure
of the gas, and how it was released in some sectors and not in others,
and how it had drifted over the German lines, or had stayed stagnant in
No Man's Land, or had blown sideways over the advancing British troops
as if moved by a spirit of murderous mischief. Then on the other hand
there came the news that the British had reached Hill 70 and Hulluch,
that the German line was definitely broken, and that the enemy was
fighting desperately hard to stave off disaster.

A big motor-car with the flag of the Forty-second Corps fluttering at
the bonnet came bouncing up the road. Inside could be caught glimpses of
scarlet and gold--it was Wayland-Leigh and his staff. The car stopped
where Curzon's horse pranced over the _pav_, and Curzon dismounted,
gave his reins to Greven, and hurried to the door.

"Keep your men stepping out, Curzon," said Wayland-Leigh, leaning
forward in his seat and speaking in a hoarse whisper.

"Yes, sir," answered Curzon. "Can--can you give me any news?"

"I don't know any myself," said Wayland-Leigh, grimly. "G.H.Q. has
hashed it all up, as far as I can see. Your division's ten miles back
from where it ought to be. We broke through this morning, and hadn't the
reserves to make a clean thing of it. You'll have to break through again
to-morrow, Curzon. And I know you'll do it. Good luck."

The motor-car jolted on along the road, while Curzon swung himself back
into the saddle. His division might be late, but he would see to it that
it made up for some of the lost time. All down the five-mile-long column
the pace quickened as his orders reached each unit to lengthen the pace.
Then the head of the column came to a halt, and as Curzon was spurring
furiously forward to ascertain the cause of the delay word came back
that the road was jammed with broken-down transport. So it was, as
Curzon saw when he reached there five minutes later, but it did not
remain so long. His blazing anger goaded the transport drivers into a
final effort to clear the road. An empty lorry was heaved bodily clear
into the ditch, where it lay with its wheels in the air. A distracted
officer was bullied into organizing a party to empty the lorry with the
broken wheel of the ammunition in it so that the same could be done with
that, but before the party had even set to work the Ninety-first
Division was pouring through the gap Curzon had contrived.

They marched on while darkness fell and the battle flamed and flickered
before them. Long ago the men had lost their brisk stride and air of
eager anticipation; now they were merely staggering along under the
burden of their packs. No one sang, and the weary sergeants snapped at
the exhausted men as they blundered on the slippery _pav_. At midnight
they reached what billets were available--half the division slept in wet
bivouacs at the roadside, while Curzon slept in his boots and clothes in
an arm-chair in the back room of the estaminet which became his
temporary headquarters.

The orders he had been waiting for came during the night. The division
was given an objective and a sector and a time in to-morrow's attack.
Miller and Curzon compared the orders with the maps spread on the
marble-topped tables. Miller made his measurements, looked involuntarily
at his watch, and said: "It can't be done."

"It's got to be done," said Curzon, with a rasp in his voice.

"Dawn's at six-fifteen," said Miller. "We'll have two hours of daylight
for seven miles on these roads."

"Can't help that," snapped Curzon. "The division'll have to move at
five. We'll have to get the orders for the brigades out now. Here,
Frobisher----"

A weary staff wrote out the orders, and weary orderlies took them to
Brigade Headquarters, where tired brigadiers were roused from sleep to
read them and to curse the higher command which forced their men to go
into action with no more than four hours' rest--and those, for most of
them, passed in muddy bivouacs.

In the half-light the division formed up on the road, trying to loosen
its stiff joints. The march began long before dawn, and they toiled
forward up the road to the summons of grumbling guns. Dawn had hardly
come when there was another hitch ahead. Curzon was almost beside
himself with rage as he rode forward, and what he found made him boil
over completely. The road was crammed with cavalry, two whole brigades
of it, a forest of leaden-hued lance points. Their transport was all
over the road, apparently in the process of being moved from one end of
the column to the other. What miracles of staff work had brought that
cavalry there at that time and in that place and in that condition
Curzon did not stop to inquire.

He turned his horse off the road and galloped madly along the side of
the column over the muddy fields; not even Follett could keep pace with
him. Curzon's quick eye caught sight of a cluster of red cap-bands. He
leaped his horse over the low bank again, risking a nasty fall on the
greasy _pav_, and addressed himself to the general of the cavalry
division.

"Get your men off this road at once, sir!" he blared. "You're stopping
the march of my division. Orders? I don't care a damn what your orders
are. Clear the road this minute! No, sir, I will _not_ be careful what I
say to you. I've got my duty to do."

The two major-generals glared fiercely at each other for a moment,
before the cavalry man turned to his staff and said: "Better see to it."

Curzon was tapping with impatience on his saddle-bow with his crop
during the slow process of moving the cavalry with their lances and
their forage nets and their impedimenta over the bank into the fields,
but it was done at last; soon Curzon saw his leading battalion come
plodding up the road, a few staunch spirits singing, "Hullo, hullo,
who's your lady friend?" with intervals for jeers and boos for the
disgruntled cavalry watching them go by.

A precious quarter of an hour had been wasted; it seemed almost certain
that the division would be late at the rendezvous appointed for it. Soon
afterwards it became quite certain, for the narrow road, only just wide
enough for two vehicles side by side, was utterly jammed with transport.
There was a road junction just ahead, and no military police in the
world could have combated successfully with the confusion there, where
every vehicle in nine divisions seemed to have converged from all four
directions.

Frobisher and Follett galloped hither and thither to find someone in
authority who could compel the way to be cleared for the Ninety-first
Division, but it was Curzon who achieved it in the end, riding his
maddened horse into the thick of the turmoil, and using the weight of
his authority and the urge of his blazing anger to hold up the traffic.

It was not for Curzon to decide whether the state of the battle made it
desirable that the division should have precedence; that was for the
General Staff, but as the General Staff was seemingly making no effort
to tackle the problem he had to deal with it himself--and as his
division was an hour late his decision was a natural one. For Curzon was
not to know that German counter-attacks launched in the early morning
had completely stultified the orders he had received that night, and
that the task before the Ninety-first Division was not now to exploit a
success, but to endeavour to hold on to precarious gains.

They were nearing the line now. There were battery positions beside the
road, firing away with a desperate rapidity which indicated the severity
of the fighting ahead. Curzon rode on through the drifting flotsam of
the battle to the house which his orders had laid down should be
established as his headquarters. There was a signal section already
there, as Curzon saw with satisfaction. Telephonic communication with
the new front line had at last been established, and Headquarters would
not have to rest content with the news dribbled out an hour too late by
scribbled messages borne by runners.

Curzon had no intention of staying in these headquarters of his. He was
determined upon going forward with his division. Miller could be trusted
with the task of communicating with Corps Headquarters. Curzon knew the
value of a commander on the spot in a confused battle; as Curzon saw it,
a divisional general among his men even if they were occupying a mile of
tangled front was of more use than a divisional general two miles
behind.

The division came on up the road--it was hardly a road by now. The
artillery branched off, rocking and swaying over the drab shell-torn
fields to take up the position assigned them. Webb and Challis rode up
for their final orders, and then the division began to plunge forward
into action, while Curzon waited, with Daunt's brigade still in hand, in
case new orders should come during this period of deployment.

New orders came, right enough. Frobisher came running out of the
headquarters to where Curzon stood chatting with Daunt and staring
forward at the battle he could not see.

"Please, sir," said Frobisher, breaking into the conversation, and
discarding prefixes and circumlocutions with the urgency of the
situation. "Miller wants you. Quickly, sir. Buffalo's on the 'phone."

When Curzon arrived indoors Miller was listening at the telephone,
writing hard with his free hand. He waved Curzon impatiently into
silence at his noisy entrance.

"Yes," said Miller. "Yes. All right. Hold on now while I repeat."

Miller ran slowly through a list of map references and cryptic sentences
about units of the division.

"All correct? Then General Curzon is here if General Wayland-Leigh would
care to speak to him."

He handed the instrument to Curzon. A moment later Wayland-Leigh's voice
came through.

"Hullo, Curzon. You've got your new orders?"

"Miller has."

"Right. I've nothing to add, except to remind you of the standing orders
of this Corps. But I can trust you, Curzon. There's all hell let loose,
but as far as I can see it's just a last effort on the part of the Huns.
You've got to hold on until I can persuade G.H.Q. to reinforce you.
Sorry to break up your Division. Good-bye."

Curzon turned to Miller, appalled at these last words. Miller was
already engaged in writing orders in a bold, careful hand.

"What's all this about?" demanded Curzon, and Miller told him, briefly.

There was no intention now of sending the Ninety-first Division in to
break through an attenuated line. The German reserves had arrived and
were counter-attacking everywhere. So difficult had been communication
with troops a mile forward that only now was the higher command able to
form an approximately correct picture of the situation of units far
forward with their flanks exposed, and other units beating themselves to
pieces against strong positions, units in retreat and units holding on
desperately in face of superior numbers. The Ninety-first Division was
to be used piecemeal to sustain the reeling line. The new orders
prescribed that two battalions should be sent in here, and another
employed in a counter-attack there, a brigade held in reserve at this
point, and support given at that.

"Christ damn and blast it all!" said Curzon, as the situation was
explained.

He had had enough experience in South Africa as well as elsewhere of the
confusion which follows countermanded orders in the heat of action. His
artillery were already getting into action; two brigades of infantry
were in movement on points quite different from the new objectives. He
tore at his moustache while Miller went on steadily writing, and then
mastered his fury.

"All right," he said. "There's nothing for it. Show me these orders of
yours."

So the Ninety-first Division, after a morning of interminable delays on
the road, was now subjected to all the heart-breaking checks which were
inevitable with the change of scheme. The bewildered rank and file,
marched apparently aimlessly first here and then there, cursed the staff
which heaped this confusion upon them. They were short of sleep and
short of food. They came under fire unexpectedly; they came under the
fire of British artillery who had been left in the dark regarding the
fluctuations in the line; and then, when that mistake had been set
right, they remained under the fire of shells from British
artillery--shells bought in Japan and America, the trajectory and time
of flight of ten per cent. of which were quite unpredictable.

Curzon had perforce to fight his battle from headquarters.
Wayland-Leigh, besieged by requests for help and by orders to give help,
coming from all quarters, was persistent in his demands upon the
Ninety-first. Challis with a fraction of his 302nd Brigade reported that
he had stormed the redoubt whose enfilade fire had caused such losses in
the Guards' Division, but an hour later was appealing for permission to
use another of his battalions to consolidate his position. Daunt in
another part of the line sent back a warning that a counter-attack was
being organized in front of him apparently of such strength that he
doubted whether he would be able to stop it. From every hand came
appeals for artillery support, at moments when Colonel Hill was warning
Curzon that he must persuade Corps Headquarters to send up yet more
ammunition.

To reconcile all these conflicting claims, to induce Corps Headquarters
to abate something of their exacting demands, and to try and find out
from the hasty reports sent in which patch of the line might be left
unreinforced, and in which part a renewed attack was absolutely
necessary, constituted a task which Curzon could leave to no one else.
All through the evening of September 26th, and on through the night,
Curzon had to deal with reports and orders brought in by runner, by
telephone, and by motor-cyclist. There was no possible chance of his
being in line with his men--there was no chance either of guessing in
which part of the line his presence would do most good. Miller and
Frobisher, Greven and Follett, slept in turns on the floor of the next
room, but Curzon stayed awake through the night, dealing with each
crisis as it came.

He was red-eyed and weary by the morning, but in the morning there were
fresh counter-attacks to be beaten back. All through the night German
divisions had been marching to the point of danger, and now they were
let loose upon the unstable British line. The nine British divisions had
been prodigal of their blood and strength. The mile or half-mile of
shell-torn ground behind them impeded communications and supply; the
inexperienced artillery seemed to take an interminable time to register
upon fresh targets. It was all a nightmare. Units which had lost their
sense of direction and position in the wild landscape reported points
strongly held by the enemy which other units at the same moment were
reported as being in their possession.

Wayland-Leigh's voice on the telephone carried a hint of anxiety with
it. General Headquarters, dealing with the conflicting reports sent in
by two Armies and an Army Corps, had changed its mood from one of wild
optimism to one of equally wild despair. They had begun to fear that
where they had planned a break-through the enemy instead would effect a
breach, and they were dealing out threats on all sides in search of a
possible scapegoat.

"Somebody's going to be for it," said Wayland-Leigh. "You've got to hold
on."

Curzon was not in need of that spur. He would hold on without being
told. He held on through that day and the next, while the bloody
confusion of the battle gradually sorted itself out. General
Headquarters had found one last belated division with which to reinforce
the weak line, and its arrival enabled Curzon at last to bring Daunt's
brigade into line with Challis's and have his Division a little more
concentrated--although, as Miller grimly pointed out, the two brigades
together did not contain as many men as either of them before the
battle. The front was growing stabilized now, as parapets were being
built in the new trenches, and carrying parties toiled through the night
to bring up the barbed wire which meant security.

Curzon could actually sleep now, and he was not specially perturbed when
a new increase in the din of the bombardment presaged a fresh flood of
reports from the trenches to the effect that the German attacks were
being renewed. But once more the situation grew serious. The German
command was throwing away lives now as freely as the British in a last
effort to recover important strategic points. Fosse 8 and the quarries
were lost again; the British line was bending, even if it would not
break. Webb's 300th Brigade, in the very process of transfer to the side
of its two fellows, was caught up by imperative orders from
Wayland-Leigh and flung back into the battle--Curzon had to disregard a
wail of protest from Webb regarding the fatigue of his men. Later in the
same day Curzon, coming into the headquarters' office, found Miller
speaking urgently on the telephone.

"Here's the General come back," he said, breaking off the conversation.
"You'd better speak to him personally."

He handed over the instrument.

"It's Webb," he explained, _sotto voce_. "Usual sort of grouse."

Curzon frowned as he took the receiver. Webb had been making
difficulties all through the battle.

"Curzon speaking."

"Oh, this is Webb, here, sir. I want to withdraw my line a bit. P.3--8.
It's a nasty bit of salient----"

Webb went on with voluble explanations of the difficulty of his position
and the losses the retention of the line would involve. Curzon looked at
the map which Miller held out to him while Webb's voice went on droning
in the receiver. As far as he could see by the map Webb's brigade was
undoubtedly in an awkward salient. But that was no argument in favour of
withdrawal. The line as at present constituted had been reported to
Corps Headquarters, and the alteration would have to be explained to
Wayland-Leigh--not that Curzon would flinch from daring the Buffalo's
wrath if he thought it necessary. But he did not think so; it never once
crossed his mind to authorize Webb to withdraw from the salient. Retreat
was un-English, an admission of failure, something not to be thought of.
There had never been any suggestion of retreat at First Ypres, and
retreat there would indubitably have spelt disaster. Curzon did not stop
to debate the pros and cons in this way--he dismissed the suggestion as
impossible the moment he heard it.

"You must hold on where you are," he said, harshly, breaking into Webb's
voluble explanations.

"But that's absurd," said Webb. "The other line would be far safer. Why
should----"

"Did you hear what I said?" asked Curzon.

"Yes, but--but----" Webb had sufficient sense to hesitate before taking
the plunge, but not enough to refrain from doing so altogether. "I'm on
the spot, and you're not. I'm within my rights if I make the withdrawal
without your permission!"

"You think you are?" said Curzon. He was tired of Webb and his
complaints, and he certainly was not going to have his express orders
questioned in this way. After that last speech of Webb's he could not
trust him, however definitely he laid down his orders. "Well, you're not
going to have the chance. You will terminate your command of your
brigade from this moment. You will leave your headquarters and report
here on your way down the line at once. No, I'm not going to argue about
it. Call your brigade-major and have him speak to me. At once, please.
Is that Captain Home? General Webb has ceased to command the brigade.
You will be in charge of your headquarters until Colonel Meredith can be
informed and arrives to take command. Understand? Right. Send the
message to Colonel Meredith immediately, and ask him to report to me on
his arrival."

So Brigadier-General Webb was unstuck and sent home, and lost his chance
of ever commanding a division. The last Curzon saw of him was when he
left Divisional Headquarters. There was actually a tear--a ridiculous
tear--on one cheek just below his blue eye as he went away, but Curzon
felt neither pity for him nor dislike. He had been found wanting, as men
of that type were bound to be sooner or later. Curzon would have no man
in the Ninety-first Division whom he could not trust.

And as Webb left the headquarters the divisional mail arrived. There
were letters for each unit in the division, sorted with the efficiency
the Army Postal Service always managed to display. They would go up with
the rations that night, but the letters for the headquarters personnel
could be delivered at once. For the General, besides bills and
circulars, and the half-dozen obviously unimportant official ones, there
was one letter in a heavy cream envelope addressed to him in a sprawling
handwriting which he recognized as the Duke's. He hesitated a moment
when Greven gave it to him, but he could not refrain from opening it
there and then. He read the letter through, and the big sprawling
writing became suddenly vague and ill-defined as he did so. The wording
of the letter escaped him completely; it was only its import which was
borne in upon him.

That vomiting of Emily's, about which he had always felt a premonition,
had actually been a serious symptom. There had been a disaster. Young
Herbert Winter Greven Curzon (Curzon had determined on those names long
ago) would never open his eyes to the wonder of the day. He was dead--he
had never lived; and Emily had nearly followed him. She was out of the
wood now, the Duke wrote, doing his best to soften the blow, but Sir
Trevor Choape had laid it down very definitely that she must never again
try to have a child. If she did, Sir Trevor could not answer for the
consequences.

Curzon turned a little pale as he stood holding the letter, and he sat
down rather heavily in the chair beside his telephone.

"Not bad news, sir, I hope?" said Greven.

"Nothing that matters," answered Curzon stoically, stuffing the letter
into his pocket.

"Colonel Runcorn would like to speak to you, sir," said Follett,
appearing at the door.

"Send him in," said Curzon. He had no time to weep for Herbert Winter
Greven Curzon, just as Napoleon at Marengo had no time to weep for
Desaix.




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


The battle of Loos had come to an end, and at last the Ninety-first
Division was relieved and could march out to its billets. It was not the
division which had gone into action. Curzon stood by the road to see
them march by, as he had so often done in Hampshire and France, and they
took far less time to pass him. Each brigade bulked no larger on the
road than a battalion had done before the battle; each battalion was no
larger than a company. The artillery had suffered as badly; there were
woefully few men with the guns, and to many of the guns there were only
four horses, and to many of the waggons there were only two mules.
Curzon's heart sank a little as he returned the salute of the skeleton
units. Even with the drafts which were awaiting them they would not be
up to establishment; it would be a long time before the Ninety-first
Division would be built up again into the fine fighting unit it had been
a fortnight ago.

He did not attempt to conceal from himself that Loos had been a disaster
for the British Army; he could only comfort himself with the thought
that it had been a disaster for the German Army as well. The next attack
to be made would have to be planned very differently. The bombardment
had been insufficient. Then they must have a bombardment which would
make certain of it--fifty days, instead of fifty hours, if the
ammunition supply could be built up to bear the strain. There must be
reserves at hand, instead of seventeen miles back, to exploit the
success. The Flying Corps must intensify its operations so that maps of
the German second line could be ready in the utmost detail, to enable
the artillery to register on fresh targets from new positions without
delay. Equally important, there must be none of the muddle and confusion
behind the line which had caused so much harm at Loos.

Curzon, despite his red tabs and the oak leaves on his cap-peak, could
still feel the fighting man's wrath against the staffs that were
responsible for that muddle. It was their business to prevent muddle,
and they had failed. Curzon was quite well aware of his own incapacity
to do that sort of staff officer's work. He was not too reliable in the
matter of addition and multiplication and division; the mathematical
problems involved in the arrangement of supply and transport and of
march time-tables would certainly be too much for him. But it was not
his job to solve them; it was the responsibility of the men at Army
Headquarters and G.H.Q., and they had not been equal to it. Curzon felt
that if he were in chief command he would make a clean sweep of the
gilded young men who had made such a hash of the time-tables and replace
them by efficient mathematicians. Hang it, he would put civilians on the
Staff for that matter, if they could do the job better--and for Curzon
to permit himself even for a moment to be guilty of a heresy of that
sort showed how strongly he felt about it.

There were others of the same opinion, as Curzon discovered when he
reported himself at Corps Headquarters. Over the whole personnel there
lay a brooding sense of disaster both past and to come. Someone would
have to bear the responsibility of failure. It would not be long before
heads began to fly. Some were gone already--Bewly had been sent home by
Wayland-Leigh just as Webb had been sent back by Curzon. Hope of the
Seventy-ninth was in hospital, dying of his wounds--rumour said he had
gone up to the line to seek death, and death was not so hard to find in
the front line trenches. No one in that gloomy assembly dared to think
of the brave words at the last Headquarters dinner, and the brave
anticipations of an immediate advance to the Rhine.

Wayland-Leigh, bulky yet restless, sat at the head of the conference
table and looked round with his sidelong green eyes. Everyone knew that
it would be touch and go with him. He might be selected as the
scapegoat, and deprived of his command and packed off at any moment, if
G.H.Q. should decide that such a sacrifice would be acceptable to the
strange gods of Downing Street. He was conscious of the trembling of his
throne even while he presided at this meeting to discuss what
suggestions should be put forward regarding future operations.

Curzon was inevitably called upon for his opinion. He spoke
hesitatingly, as might be expected of him; as he told himself, he was no
hand at these infernal board-meetings, and speech-making was the bane of
his life. He was conscious of the eyes upon him, and he kept his own on
the table, and fumbled with pen and pencil as he spoke. Yet he had
something very definite to say, and no man with that advantage can speak
without point. He briefly described what he thought must be considered
essentials for the new battle. More men. More guns. More ammunition.
More artillery preparation. More energy. He fumbled with his pencil more
wildly than ever when he had to pass on from these, to his mind the
obvious things, to the other less tangible desiderata. The arrangements
behind the lines had been disgraceful. There must be an efficient staff
created which would handle them properly. Someone must work out an
effective method of bringing fresh troops into the front line at the
decisive moments. Someone must see to it that reserves should be ready
in the right place at the right time.

Curzon was surprised by the little murmur of applause which went round
the table when he had finished. More than one of the subsequent speakers
alluded in complimentary terms to General Curzon's suggestions. The
whole opinion of the assembly was with him. The attack at Loos had been
correct enough in theory. There had only been a failure in practical
details and an insufficiency of men and materials. It could all be made
good. A staff that could handle half a million men in action could be
found. So could the half-million men. So could the guns and ammunition
for a really adequate artillery preparation.

Quite noticeably the spirits of the gathering rose; within a very few
minutes they were discussing the ideal battle, with forty divisions to
draw upon, and elaborate time-tables, and a preliminary bombardment
which would transcend anything the most vaulting imagination could
depict, and a steady methodical advance which nothing could stop--in a
word, they were drawing up designs to be put forward before higher
authority for the battle of the Somme. With visions like this before
them, they could hardly be blamed for ignoring the minor details of
machine-guns and barbed wire. Minor details vanished into insignificance
when compared with the enormous power they pictured at their disposal.

Wayland-Leigh sat in his chair and writhed his bulk about, grinning like
an ogre as the suggestions assumed more and more concrete form, while
Norton beside him took industrious notes to form the skeleton of the
long reports he would have to send in to Army Headquarters and to G.H.Q.
In some ways it was like the debate of a group of savages as to how to
extract a screw from a piece of wood. Accustomed only to nails, they had
made one effort to pull out the screw by main force, and now that it had
failed they were devising methods of applying more force still, of
obtaining more efficient pincers, of using levers and fulcrums so that
more men could bring their strength to bear. They could hardly be blamed
for not guessing that by rotating the screw it would come out after the
exertion of far less effort; it would be a notion so different from
anything they had ever encountered that they would laugh at the man who
suggested it.

The generals round the table were not men who were easily
discouraged--men of that sort did not last long in command in France.
Now that the first shock of disappointment had been faced they were
prepared to make a fresh effort, and to go on making those efforts as
long as their strength lasted. Wayland-Leigh was pleased with their
attitude; indeed, so apparent was his pleasure that Curzon had no
hesitation in asking him, after the conference, for special leave to
England for urgent private affairs. Curzon was able to point out (if it
had not been the case he would never have dreamed of making the
application, despite the urgency of his desire to see Emily) that the
division would not be fit to go into the line for some time, and that
the knocking into shape of the new drafts could safely be left to the
regimental officers.

"Oh, yes, you can go all right," said Wayland-Leigh. "You've earned it,
anyway. We can spare you for a bit."

"Thank you, sir," said Curzon.

"But whether you'll find me here when you come back is quite another
matter."

"I don't understand," said Curzon. He had heard rumours, of course, but
he judged it to be tactless to admit it.

"I've got half an idea I'm going to be unstuck. Sent home because those
bloody poops at G.H.Q. have got to find someone to blame besides
themselves."

"I hope not, sir," said Curzon.

Wayland-Leigh's huge face writhed into an expression of resignation.

"Can't be helped if I am," he said. "I've done nothing to be ashamed of,
and people will know it sometime, even if they don't now. I'm sorry for
your sake, though."

"For me, sir?"

"Yes. I was hoping they'd give you one of the new corps which are being
formed. I've written recommending it in the strongest terms. I wanted
Hope to have one, too, but he'll never be fit for active service again
even if he lives. But what my recommendation's good for is more than I
can say. Probably do you more harm than good, as things are."

"Thank you, sir. But I don't care about myself. It's you that matters."

Curzon meant what he said.

"Very good of you to say so, Curzon. We'll see what happens. G.H.Q. have
got their eye on you anyway, one way or the other. I've had a hell of a
lot of bother with 'em about your unsticking that beggar Webb, you
know."

"Sorry about that, sir."

"Oh, I didn't mind. I backed you up, of course. And I sent your report
on him in to G.H.Q. with 'concur' written on it as big as I could make
it. Push off now. Tell Norton you've got my permission. If you drive
like hell to Boulogne you'll catch the leave boat all right."

In reply to Curzon's telegram the Duke's big motor-car was at Victoria
Station to meet the train, and in it was Emily, very wan and pale. She
was thinner than usual, and in the front of her neck the sterno-mastoid
muscles had assumed the prominence they were permanently to retain. She
smiled at Curzon and waved through the window to attract his attention
although she did not stand up.

"It was splendid to have your telegram, Bertie," she said, as the car
slid through the sombre streets of war-time London. "Mother's been
wanting to move me off to Somerset ever since the air raids started to
get so bad. But I wouldn't go, not after your letter saying you might be
home any minute. We want every hour together we can possibly have, don't
we, Bertie?"

They squeezed hands, and went on squeezing them all the short time it
took the car to reach Bude House.

The Duke and Duchess welcomed Curzon hospitably, the latter almost
effusively. Yet to Curzon's mind there was something incongruous about
the Duchess's volubility about the hardships civilians were going
through. If it were not for the supplies they could draw from the model
farm and dairy in Somerset, the family and servants might almost be
going short of food, and if it were not for the Duke's official position
petrol and tyres for the motor-cars would be nearly unobtainable. That
Ducal servants should be given margarine instead of butter seemed to the
Duchess to be far more unthinkable than it did to Curzon, although he
had the wit not to say so; and it gave the Duchess an uneasy sense of
outraged convention that aeroplane bombs should slay those in high
places as readily as those in low. She described the horrors of air
raids to Curzon as though he had never seen a bombardment.

The Duke's sense of proportion was less warped than his wife's, although
naturally he was inclined to attribute undue importance to his
activities under the new Government. Between Curzon's anxiety for Emily,
and the Duchess's desire to tell him much and to hear a little from him,
it was some time before Curzon and the Duke were able to converse
privately and at leisure, but when they did the conversation was a
momentous one. The Duke was as anxious as all his other colleagues in
the Government to receive an unbiased account of what was really
happening on the Western Front, freed from official verbiage and told by
someone without a cause to plead. Out of Curzon's brief sentences--for
the conversation was of the fashion of small talk, in which the state of
military affairs usurped the time-honoured pre-eminence of the weather
as a topic of conversation--the Duke was able to form a clearer picture
than ever before of the bloody confusion which had been the battle of
Loos. He stroked his chin and said, "H'm" a great many times, but he was
able to keep the conversational ball rolling by the aid of a few
conjunctive phrases.

"You say it wasn't this chap Wayland-Leigh's fault?" he asked.

"Good God, no. He wouldn't stand anything like that for a moment. It'll
be a crime if they unstick him."

"Why, is there any talk about it?"

"Yes. You see someone's got to go, after all that was said beforehand."

"I see. H'm."

The Duke was aware that anxiety in the Cabinet was reaching a maximum.
The decline of Russian power, the alliance of Bulgaria with the Central
Powers, the crushing of Serbia, the failure at Gallipoli, Townshend's
difficulties in Mesopotamia, and now the fiasco at Loos had been a
succession of blows which might well shake anyone's nerve. Yet there
were three million Allied troops in France opposed to only two million
Germans. That superiority at the decisive point about which the military
were so insistent seemed to be attained, and yet nothing was being done.
The Duke knew as well as any soldier that a crushing victory in France
would make all troubles and difficulties vanish like ghosts, and he
yearned and hungered for that victory.

"H'm," he said again, rousing himself from his reverie. "Then there's
this business about conscription, too."

Curzon's views on the matter of conscription were easily ascertained.
When forty divisions began their great attack in France the need for
drafts would become insistent. However decisive the victory they won,
the volunteer divisions would need to be brought promptly up to
strength. Not all the recruiting songs and propaganda--not even the
shooting of Nurse Cavell--would ensure an inflow of recruits as reliable
as a drastic conscription law like the French. In Curzon's opinion, too,
this was a golden opportunity for bringing in a measure which he had
always favoured, even before the war.

"It is every man's duty to serve his country," said Curzon, remembering
fragments of what Lord Roberts had said in peace time.

"It won't be easy to do," said the Duke, visualizing a harassed Cabinet
striving to avoid disruption while being dragged in every direction by
conflicting forces.

"Drafts have got to be found, all the same," said Curzon. He thought of
the effect it would have on his own attitude if he were warned that the
supply of recruits was uncertain and dwindling. It would mean caution;
it would mean an encroachment upon his liberty to attack; it would mean
thinking twice about every offensive movement, and an inevitable
inclination towards a defensive attitude; it might conceivably come to
mean the breaking up of some of the units which had been built up with
such care--the Ninety-first Division, even.

He was filled with genuine horror at such a prospect--a horror that made
him almost voluble. He laid down as stiffly and as definitely as he
possibly could the extreme urgency of a lavish supply of recruits. He
thumped his knee with his hand to make himself quite clear on the
subject. The Duke could not help but be impressed by Curzon's animation
and obvious sincerity--they were bound to be impressive to a man who had
had experience of Curzon's usual tongue-tied formality of manner.




CHAPTER NINETEEN


Curzon found his leave as bewilderingly short as any young subaltern
home from France. It seemed to him as though he had scarcely reached
England before he was back again in the steamer at Folkestone; and when
he had rejoined the flood of khaki pouring across the Channel, and heard
once more the old military talk, and received the salutes of soldiers
stiffened into awed attention by the sight of his brass hat and medal
ribbons, he experienced the odd sensation known to every returning
soldier--as if his leave had never happened, as if it had been someone
else, and not himself, who had revelled in the delights of London and
received the embraces of his wife.

Curzon had to think very hard about Emily, about her last brave smile,
and her waving handkerchief, before he could make the events of the last
week lose their veneer of unreality. He had to make himself remember
Emily stroking his hair, and speaking soberly about the amount of grey
to be seen in it. Emily had held his head to her breast, kissing his
forehead and eyes, that time when they had at last brought themselves to
mention the brief sojourn in this world of Herbert Winter Greven Curzon.
She had offered herself up to him again, a mute voluntary sacrifice, and
he had declined like a gentleman; like a gentleman who in the year of
grace 1915 had only the vaguest hearsay knowledge of birth control
methods and did not want to extend it. There would never be a Herbert
Winter Greven Curzon now. He was the last of his line. He blew his nose,
harshly, with a military sort of noise, and made himself forget Emily
and England again while he turned back to the problems of his profession
and his duty.

Miller had thoughtfully sent a motor-car to meet him at Boulogne--not
for him the jolting, uncomfortable, endless journey by train. He sat
back in the car fingering his moustache as the well-remembered
countryside sped by. There were French troops on the roads, and French
Territorials guarding bridges. Then the British zone; grooms exercising
chargers; villages full of British soldiers in shirt sleeves with their
braces hanging down by their thighs; aeroplanes overhead. Divisional
Headquarters; Challis ready to hand over the command, Greven and Follett
with polite questions about how he had enjoyed his leave; piles of
states and returns awaiting his examination.

And there was something new about the atmosphere of headquarters, too.
Miller and Frobisher bore themselves towards him with a slight
difference in their manner. Curzon, none too susceptible to atmosphere,
was only aware of the difference and could not account for it. He could
only tell that they had heard some rumour about him; whether good news
or bad he could not tell. The General Staff, as he bitterly told
himself, were as thick as thieves with one another, and passed rumours
from mouth to mouth and telephone to telephone, so that these men, his
juniors and assistants, were always aware of things long before they
reached his ears, because he was not one of the blood-brotherhood of
Camberley.

He asked Miller tentatively about news, and Miller was ready with a vast
amount of divisional information, but nothing that would in the least
account for the new atmosphere. In the end he ordered out his motor-car
again, without even waiting to go round the stables and see how his
horses had been looked after during his leave, and had himself driven
over to Corps Headquarters at St. Crisy. He had to report his return to
Wayland-Leigh, and he felt that if he did so in person he might discover
what this new unannounced development was.

But at St. Crisy the affair only became more portentous and no less
mysterious. Wayland-Leigh and Norton were both of them away. Stanwell,
the senior staff officer in charge, told Curzon that they were at G.H.Q.
He conveyed this piece of information in a manner which gave full weight
to it, and when he went on to suggest that General Curzon should stay to
dinner at the headquarters' mess, he did so in such a manner likewise as
to leave Curzon in no doubt at all that he would be glad later that he
had done so. The atmosphere of Corps Headquarters was yet more tensely
charged with expectancy even than Divisional Headquarters had been.
Fortunately it was the hour before dinner, and Curzon was able to fall
back upon gin-and-angostura to help him through the trying wait. He
actually had four drinks before dinner, although it was rare for him to
exceed two. Then at last the ante-room door opened, and Wayland-Leigh
came in, followed by Norton, and one glance at their faces told everyone
that the news they brought was good.

The news was historic, as well as good. There had been complete upheaval
at General Headquarters. The Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief had
fallen; the new Cabinet at home had decided they would prefer to risk
their reputations upon someone different. His exit was to be made as
dignified as possible--a Peerage, the Commandership-in-Chief of the Home
Forces, Grand Crosses and ribbons and stars were to be given him, but no
one present at the headquarters of the Forty-second Corps cared a rap
about this aspect of his fate. It was far more important to them to know
that his successor was to be a man after their own heart, an Army
commander, another cavalry man, a man of the most steadfast
determination of purpose. Under his leadership they could look forward
to a relentless, methodical, unremitting pressure upon the enemy;
nothing fluky, nothing temperamental; something Scottish instead of
Irish. Curzon remembered how he had come riding up to his brigade
headquarters at First Ypres, and his unmoved calm in the face of the
most desperate danger.

But there was a personal aspect as well as a general one. One Army
commander had been promoted; one had gone home; the creation of a new
Army made a vacancy for a third. Three Army Corps commanders would
receive promotion to the full rank of General and the command of an
army--and Wayland-Leigh was to be one of them. He was a man cast in the
same mould as the new Commander-in-Chief; where the previous one would
have cast him down the new one had raised him higher yet. It meant
promotion, power, and new opportunities for distinction for all the
officers of his staff.

Next there was the question of the lower ranks still. Three Army Corps
commanders were being promoted to armies; three divisional commanders
would be promoted to take their places. And ten new divisions had now
reached France, or were on their way. Three new Army Corps would have to
be formed to control these, so that altogether six Major-Generals could
expect promotion to Lieutenant-General. Wayland-Leigh did not know yet
all their names, but he knew that Curzon had been selected. He clapped
Curzon on the shoulder as he told him, with extraordinary _bonhomie_.
Curzon flushed with pleasure as he received the congratulations of those
present. He was destined for the command of four divisions, for the
control of something like a hundred thousand men in battle--as many as
Wellington or Marlborough ever commanded. He was destined, too, to the
bathchair on Bournemouth promenade, but Bournemouth and bathchairs were
far from his thoughts as he sat, a little shy, his cheeks red and his
eyes on his plate, contemplating his future.

The personality of the new Commander-in-Chief was already noticeable in
his selection of his subordinates, and so through them to the holders of
the lesser commands. The men who were wanted were men without fear of
responsibility, men of ceaseless energy and of iron will, who could be
relied upon to carry out their part in a plan of battle as far as flesh
and blood--their own and their men's--would permit. Men without
imagination were necessary to execute a military policy devoid of
imagination, devised by a man without imagination. Anything resembling
freakishness or originality was suspect in view of the plan of campaign.
Every General desired as subordinates officers who would meticulously
obey orders undaunted by difficulties or losses or fears for the future;
every General knew what would be expected of him (and approved of it)
and took care to have under him Generals of whom he could expect the
same. When brute force was to be systematically applied only men who
could fit into the system without allowance having to be made for them
were wanted. Curzon had deprived Brigadier-General Webb of his command
for this very reason.

In point of fact, Curzon's report on this matter had been the factor
which had turned the scale and won him his promotion against the rival
influences of seniority and influence. Read with painstaking care by
those highest in authority, the sentiments expressed in it had so
exactly suited the mood of the moment that Wayland-Leigh had been
allowed to have his way in the matter of Curzon's promotion.

Curzon himself did not trouble to analyse the possible reason for his
promotion. If some intimate had ventured to ask him what it was likely
to be, he would have answered, as convention dictated, that it must have
been merely good luck. Right far within himself, in that innermost
sanctuary of his soul where convention ceased to rule, would have dwelt
the admission that his rise was due to his own merit, and that admission
would not have indicated hollow pride. It was his possession of the
qualities which he most admired, and which he strove most to ingrain
into himself, and which he thought were the necessary characteristics of
true greatness, which had won for him the distinction of being almost
the youngest Lieutenant-General in the British Army.

The conversation round the mess-table was light-hearted. The shadow of
calamity had been lifted, for if Wayland-Leigh had been removed from his
command the careers of all the staff officers under him would have been
gravely checked. As it was, Norton, Brigadier-General, General Staff,
would now become Major-General and Chief of Staff of an Army; Commanding
Officers of Artillery and Engineers could confidently look forward to a
new step in rank, and so on down to the most junior G.S.O.s. Everybody
drank champagne and became a little noisier than was usual at dinner at
headquarters' messes, while Wayland-Leigh at the head of the table
allowed his big face to wrinkle into an expression of massive good
humour. Soldiers had once drunk to "a bloody war and sickly season"; the
bloody war had come, and an expansion of the Army far beyond the
calculation of the wildest imagination was bringing with it promotion
more rapid than any sickly season could have done.

Curzon drove back to his headquarters with his brain whirling with
something more than champagne. He was trying to build up in his mind his
conception of the perfect Army Corps, the sort of Army Corps he really
wanted. He would have little say in the choice of the divisions under
his command, for individual divisions came under and out of Army Corps
control according to the needs of the moment. All he could do in that
connection was to see that his major-generals knew what he expected of
them--in the darkness of the motor-car, Curzon's expression hardened and
his lips tightened; he did not anticipate much trouble from
major-generals.

It was not in the matter of subordination that his mind chiefly
exercised itself. He was preoccupied with the less obvious and more
detailed aspect of high command. He had seen something of muddled staff
work, and he still retained much of the fighting man's suspicion of the
ability of staff officers to handle simple problems of space and time.
There was going to be no muddling in _his_ Corps. Everything was going
to be exact, systematic, perfect--to Curzon the adjective "systematic"
implied a supremely desirable quality. If his officers could not attain
to such a standard then he would replace them by others who would.

Curzon made all this abundantly clear to Miller and Frobisher next
morning, when he summoned them to hear his news and his decisions. He
would retain Miller as his chief staff officer, putting him forward, as
would be necessary, for promotion to brigadier-general, General Staff.
He would advance Frobisher from third to second grade, always provided,
of course, that the War Office consented. He would listen to their
suggestions in the selection of their assistants--the more readily
because he knew very little still about the relative merits of the men
of the General Staff.

But Miller and Frobisher in return must pick the best men who could be
got, and must remain uninfluenced by fear or favour. They must work for
him with a wholehearted devotion, and the standard of their work would
be judged necessarily by results. Curzon could tell as easily as anyone
else whether arrangements were working smoothly or not, and if they did
not, then Miller and Frobisher would feel the whole weight of his
displeasure.

Curzon darted frosty glances at his staff when he said this. Ever since
he had passed out from Sandhurst he had been unable to do tricky
problems of the type of: "If A can do a piece of work in four days, and
B can do it in five days, how long will they take working together?" and
he knew it, and knew that his staff knew it. Curzon now would be
responsible for the correct solution of problems of the same order, but
far more complicated, dealing with the traffic-capacity of roads, and
divisional march time-tables, and artillery barrages, and even with
railway management--for railways came to a certain extent under Corps
control. If things went wrong he would have to bear the blame, and he
was not going to trust his military reputation to incompetents.

"You've got to find blokes I can rely on," said Curzon. "Some of these
University wallahs, or those railway men and engineer fellows who carry
slide rules about with them. They make bloody bad soldiers, I know, but
I don't care about that. _I_'ll do the soldiering."

Curzon's experience of his brother-officers left him in no doubt at all
that in the ranks of what was left of the old professional Army there
were not nearly men enough to go round capable of dealing with these
semi-military problems, and as the last comer and the junior
lieutenant-general he would never have a chance of getting any of them.
In these circumstances Curzon had no scruple in making use of the
services of civilians in uniform. He could rely upon himself to see that
they had no opportunity given them for dangerous theorizing or for
interfering in the real management and direction of the Army.

So in this fashion the staff of Curzon's Forty-fourth Corps came to
include a collection of characters whom a year ago Curzon would not have
expected to see as soldiers, far less in the brass hats of field
officers and the red tabs of the staff. The Gas Officer was a University
of London chemist, Milward, who was blessed with a Cockney accent that
would have upset Curzon every time he heard it had he allowed it to.
Spiller, who had been a Second Wrangler, was a deputy assistant
quartermaster-general, and Colquhoun, whose Lancashire accent was as
noticeable as Milward's Cockney, was another--he had had several years'
experience in railway management. Runcorn (who had been Curzon's
commanding engineer in the Ninety-first Division, and had come on to the
Forty-fourth Corps in the same capacity) had as his assistants a major
who had built bridges in India and a captain who had built cathedrals in
America.

There was no love lost between the Regulars and the others who gaily
styled themselves Irregulars. After a short trial it was found
impossible for the two sections to mingle without friction in the social
life of the headquarters mess, and by an unspoken agreement the staff
fell into two separate cliques, only coming together for the purpose of
work. It would have been a vicious arrangement had it not been for the
authority of Curzon. He wanted the work done, and under his pressure the
work was well done--he wanted no theorizing or highfalutin suggestions;
all he asked was technical efficiency and that he got.

The Forty-fourth Corps began to make a name for itself, just as the
Ninety-first Division had done. The sector of the front line which it
held was always an area of great liveliness. Divisional generals were
encouraged or coerced--the former usually, as no lieutenant-general had
any use for a major-general in need of coercion--to plan and execute
local operations of a vigour and enterprise which called forth German
retaliation of extreme intensity. Disciplinary measures, carried out
with all the severity which Curzon could wring from courts martials,
kept the Corps freer than its neighbours of the plagues of trench feet
and trench fever which afflicted the British Army during that miserable
winter.

It became noticeable that in the Fourty-fourth Corps area, there were
fewer lorries ditched while taking up supplies to the line at night. A
ditched lorry meant that the driver was saved for that night from
undergoing personal danger, whatever privations were caused to the men
in the line. Curzon knew nothing of lorry driving, but he saw to it that
a driver who was ditched suffered so severely that no one else was
encouraged to follow his example. Motor-transport drivers remained
influenced by the fear of a sentence of imprisonment to an extent far
greater than in the infantry (the time was at hand when plenty of
infantrymen would have welcomed a sentence of imprisonment which took
them out of the line) and the savage sentences which Curzon obtained for
delinquents made the chicken-hearted use their headlights at the risk of
drawing fire, and to go on across dangerous cross-roads however easily
they could have staged a breakdown.




CHAPTER TWENTY


Emily was able to eke out the meagreness of her letters with occasional
Press cuttings. The notice in the _Gazette_--"Major (temp.
Major-General) Herbert Curzon, C.B., D.S.O., to be temp. Lieut.-General,
4th Dec., 1915," had attracted the attention of the Press. They printed
paragraphs about his phenomenal rise, and in the absence of the details
which the censorship prohibited, they fell back upon the old information
that he was the husband of Lady Emily Winter-Willoughby, only daughter
of the Duke of Bude, Minister of Steel, and that he was connected (they
did not say how) with the family of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, leader of
the House of Lords and member of the War Cabinet.

Not much was known about generals in the present war--a contrast with
the Boer War, when people wore in their button-holes portraits of Buller
or White or Baden-Powell. Generals in 1914-15 had ignored the value to
them of publicity, and were only just beginning to realize how foolish
it had been to do so. Few people could list off-hand the names of Haig's
Army commanders; and yet the public desire for news about generals was
quite definite although unsatisfied. In consequence the newspapers
grasped eagerly at the opportunity of saying something about Curzon, and
he became better known than, say, Plumer or Horne.

Curzon read the paragraphs about "this brilliant young general," and
"the satisfaction the public must feel about the promotion of such a
young officer" in the privacy of his room with an odd smile on his face.
They gave him a feeling of satisfaction without a doubt; he liked
publicity, as simple-minded people often do--even though his
satisfaction was diminished by the thought that he was indebted for it
to "these newspaper fellows," for whom he had a decided contempt. It did
not occur to him that the publicity was of priceless value to him, and
established him more firmly in his new rank than any military virtue
could have done. It was left for the Army to discover much later that
publicity may so strengthen a general's hand that even a Cabinet would
risk its own destruction if it should hint at incapacity in the general
who was nominally their servant.

Probably it was those paragraphs which brought Curzon the rewards which
he was able to write to Emily about. Foreign decorations flowed in to
him--G.H.Q. were generous in apportioning his share. He received the
Legion of Honour (submitting stoically to the accolade of the French
general who invested him with it) and the Italian Order of St. Maurice
and St. Lazarus, and the Russian Order of St. George, and the Portuguese
Order of St. Benedict of Aviz, so that there were three rows of gay
ribbons now on his breast. It was not much to write about to Emily, but
it was at least something; Curzon could not bring himself to write "I
love you," and by the time he had said "I wish I was with you" (which
was only partly true, but could be allowed to stand) and remarked on the
weather, the page was still only half full. He did not discuss military
topics--not so much because of the need for secrecy but because it was
difficult to describe trench raids and local offensives without maps,
and he doubted whether Emily could read a trench map.

Emily was fortunate in finding plenty to say. She told how her father
had given up the hopeless task of keeping Bude House properly heated and
staffed in war-time, and had solved his difficulties by lending the
place to the Government as offices. She described her rural life in
Somersetshire, and the patriotic efforts she was making to increase the
national food supply. She dwelt in happy reminiscence on Curzon's last
leave, and told how much she was looking forward to his next, although
she appreciated how difficult it was for a man in his position to get
away. In fact Emily chattered away in her letters with a spirit and
freedom only to be explained by her delight in having a confidant for
the first time in her life.

As the winter ended and the summer began a new topic crept into Emily's
letters. Her mother (whose work on committees caused her to spend half
her time in London) was full of the news that a battle was about to be
fought which was to end the war. The Duchess said that July 1st was the
date fixed. Emily hoped it was true, because at that rate she would have
her husband home with her in time for the beginning of the hunting
season.

Curzon boiled with anger as he read the artless words--not anger with
his wife, but with the thoughtless civilians who were gossiping about
matters of the utmost military importance. He was absolutely certain
that no soldier could have made the disclosure. It must be the fault of
the politicians and the women. Curzon knew well enough that the Germans
must be aware of the prospect of an offensive on the Somme. The huge
ammunition dumps, the accumulation of gun positions, the new roads and
the light railways, for much of which his own staff was responsible,
must have given that away long ago. But that the very date should be
known was an appalling thought. He wrote with fury to the Duke, and the
Duke replied more moderately. It was not he who had told the Duchess--he
had learned not to entrust her with secrets of state--but the fact was
common gossip in politico-social circles in London. He would be more
ready to blame the staff in France than the politicians in England.

That was poor comfort to Curzon, who could only set his teeth and urge
on his staff to further efforts to ensure certain success on the great
day. In the conferences at Army Headquarters statistics were brought
forward to show how certain success would be. For every division
employed at Loos there would be five on the Somme. For every gun,
twenty. For every shell, two hundred. It was inconceivable that an
effort on such a scale should fail; there had never been such an
accumulation of force in the history of the world. It was doubtful,
bearing in mind the heavy losses the Germans had been experiencing at
Verdun, whether it was all quite necessary, but as the Chief of Staff of
the Sixth Army pointed out, no one ever yet lost a battle by being too
strong.

The divisions were slowly moving up into place. The elaborate
time-tables for the reinforcement and relief of units in the heat of
action were settled to the last minute. Then with a crash the
bombardment opened. Curzon went up the line to watch the effect. It
seemed quite impossible for anything to live a moment under that hell of
fire. The German trenches were blotted out by the smoke and the dbris.
And that bombardment extended for miles back from the front line, and
was to endure for a hundred and sixty-eight hours. He had signed orders
drawn up by his Commanding Officer of Artillery which had cunningly
distributed the fire of the mass of guns at his disposal over every
important point in the German defences on his sector--and five other
Lieutenant-Generals had signed similar orders.

A week of expectation followed, a week during which the bombardment
raved louder than the loudest brief thunderstorm anyone had ever heard;
the biggest noise which had shaken the world since it had settled down
into its present shape, louder than avalanches, louder than the
crackling of icefloes or the explosion of volcanoes. The preparations
continued without a hitch. Ingenious people solved the problem of
finding drinking water for half a million men on that bare chalk plain;
ammunition flowed in steadily from railheads to dumps, from dumps to
guns; divisions packed themselves neatly into the camps and bivouacs
awaiting them. There were no last-minute difficulties, no sudden
emergencies. Curzon drove and rode hither and thither through his area
and was satisfied. He had done good work for England.

He was stern and unmoved on the morning of July 1st. He shaved himself
with a steady hand, long before dawn; he drank his coffee and ate his
eggs and bacon (he experienced a momentary distaste for them at first
sight, but he fought that down) while the bombardment rose to its
maximum pitch. With a calm that was only partly assumed he stalked into
the inner headquarters' office where Miller and Frobisher, Spiller and
Runcorn, Follett and Greven, and a dozen other officers were waiting,
drumming on the green baize tables with their fingers and looking at
their watches. Colquhoun was biting his nails. Curzon lit his cigar with
care; as he struck the match, under the furtive gaze of his staff, came
the moment for the lifting of the barrage. There was a moment's
appalling silence, followed by a crash which seemed louder than it was
in consequence of the silence which had preceded it. Curzon held the
flame to the cigar with steady fingers, drawing slowly until the cigar
was lit as well as a good cigar deserved to be lit. As the tobacco
flared a hundred and twenty thousand Englishmen were rising up from the
shelter of their trenches and exposing their bodies to the lash of the
German machine-guns hastily dragged from the dug-outs; but that was no
reason for an English general to show un-English emotion.

Even now, despite all the elaborate precautions which had been taken to
ensure the prompt passage of messages, despite telephones and buzzers
and runners and pigeons and aeroplanes and despatch riders, there must
necessarily be a long wait before the reports came in. Runcorn rose and
paced about the cramped space between the tables, to Curzon's unspoken
irritation. Greven blew his nose. Colquhoun dealt with a couple of
messages whose arrival made every one stir expectantly, but proved to be
no more than railway routine matters.

Then, in a flood, the reports began to pour in. Divisional commanders
were reporting progress. The Army Command telephoned, demanding news,
describing the result of the attacks on the flanks of the Forty-fourth
Corps, issuing hasty orders to meet the new situation. Irascible
messages came in from the Corps Headquarters on each side. Miller sat
with Curzon, the maps before them, and a tray of coloured pins with
which to indicate the situation. Despite the rush and the bustle, there
was a strange lack of force about the general tenor of the reports,
considered in sum. One unit or other seemed to be always behind the rest
with its news, and that gave unreality to the situation. Terry's
division had found the wire in their front uncut over wide sectors; it
was only in places that they had reached the enemy's front line, and
heavy fighting was in progress. Franklin reported that his division was
still progressing, but he reported heavy losses--fifty per cent. was his
estimate, at which Curzon tugged at his moustache with annoyance. The
man must be unnerved to say a thing like that. He would have small
enough means of knowing yet, and no division could possibly suffer fifty
per cent. of losses in an hour's attack on an enemy who had just been
subjected to seven days' bombardment. Similarly Terry must be
exaggerating the amount of uncut wire.

What about Green? Follett brought the message from Green. His men were
all back in their trenches again, such as survived. They had made no
progress at all. On that instant, Hobday of the Forty-first Corps on the
right telephoned. The failure of the Forty-fourth Corps to push forward
their right wing--Green's division, in other words--had left their flank
exposed. Curzon spoke to Green personally on the telephone. His division
must be roused up and sent forward again. The positions in front of it
must be stormed at all costs. At all costs, said Curzon with emphasis.
No officer could plead ignorance of what that implied, or find excuses
for disobedience. Curzon called for Deane, commanding his artillery, and
ordered further artillery support for Green. Deane tended to demur; he
pleaded the rigours of a set time-table and the disorder which would
follow counter-order, but Curzon over-rode him.

Sixth Army were on the telephone, demanding amplification of the meagre
report Frobisher was doling out to them. Curzon dealt with them. He
could not amplify the news yet. He was sending stringent orders to his
divisional commanders for more details. But what was coming through was
positive enough. As he rang off a glance at the clock surprised him.
Time was racing by. According to plan his advance should be a mile deep
in the German line by now, yet half his forces had not advanced at all
and the other half were fighting desperately to retain meagre gains.
Halleck and the reserve division should be on the move now to reinforce
the advance. That must be countermanded, and Halleck thrown in to
complete Green's work for him and clear Hobday's flank. Curzon saw
confusion ahead; he telephoned for Halleck to come over in person and
have his orders explained to him, it would take hours to switch the
division across and mount a new attack. Spiller would have to improvise
a route with the help of the I.G.C.

Curzon could hardly believe that things could have gone so wrong. He got
through to Sixth Army again for more news. The Tenth Corps and the Third
Corps had failed worse than his. Only towards the Somme was definite
progress being made. For a moment Curzon felt comforted, because other
Lieutenant-Generals were worse off than he. But that feeling vanished at
once. The failure of the attack meant the failure of the method of
colossal bombardment, and Curzon could see no alternative to that
method. Stalemate lay ahead--a hideous, unthinkable prospect. In savage
desperation he sent the harshest orders he could devise to Terry and to
Franklin to attack once more, and to snatch success where failure
threatened. He knew he would be obeyed.

In the first few hours on the Somme the British Army lost three times as
many men as the Boer War, with all its resounding defeats, had cost
altogether. Little by little, as confirmation trickled in throughout the
day, Curzon came to realize the truth. The result of the day, despite
the capture of Mametz and Montauban and the advance of the French on the
right, had been a decided set-back to British arms. The afternoon
brought gloom; the night while the fighting still continued, black
depression. It was not because of the losses. They could be borne and
made up again. It was because the method of breaking through the trench
line had failed--a method devised according to the very soundest
military ideas. Napoleon had said that artillery preparation was
necessary for attack--they had employed an artillery preparation greater
than the world had ever seen. Careful planning beforehand was
desirable--the plans had worked perfectly, without a hitch, up to the
moment of proof. Ample reserves--there had been ample reserves in hand.
It would have only needed for Curzon that night to have discussed the
tactical problems with some hard bitten infantry subaltern for him to
have become convinced that the invention of machine-guns and barbed
wire, which Napoleon had never heard of, called for a departure from
Napoleon's tactical methods, and if Curzon had once been convinced it
would have been hard to unconvince him.

But comfort came in the end, and from higher authority than an infantry
subaltern. Hudson, the Sixth Army Chief of Staff, came down in person to
explain to Curzon. The examination of prisoners which had been hastily
proceeding through the night had revealed the fact that the German
losses during the attack and the bombardment had been heavy. Several
German units had been ruined. After their Verdun losses the Germans
would not be able to stand a prolonged draining of their strength. If
the pressure should be kept up long enough the German Army would break
completely. Systematic bombardment and attack, relentlessly maintained,
would wear them down.

"Their losses are bigger than ours," said Hudson. "And if they're only
equal to ours we're bound to win in the end."

Hudson paused to sip at the drink at his side, before he brought in
carelessly the blessed word which had occurred to someone at G.H.Q. with
a more than military vocabulary.

"The key-note of the next series of operations," said Hudson, "is
attrition."

"Attrition," said Curzon thoughtfully, and then he brightened as he
realized the implications of the word. There would be no need for an
unmilitary abandonment of the offensive; more than that, there would be
a plan and a scheme to work to, and a future to look forward to. A
General without these was a most unhappy creature, as Curzon's sleepless
night had demonstrated to him.

"Yes," said Curzon. "I see what you mean, of course."

"It's like this----" said Hudson, going on to expand his original
thesis.

There was excuse to be found for them, and for G.H.Q., too. Anyone could
realize the terrifying effects of a bombardment, but no one who had not
lurked in a dug-out through one, emerging alive at the end--shaken,
frightened, exhausted, perhaps, but alive and still capable of pressing
the double button of a machine-gun--could appreciate the possibility of
survival.

Two-thirds of yesterday's attack had failed, but there were considerable
lengths of the German front line in British hands, where the
Forty-fourth Corps and the Seventeenth and the Third had won footholds.
From these points the pressure was to be maintained, bombardment and
advance alternating. The Germans would go on losing men, and the advance
would slowly progress. Something would give way in the end. The German
strength would dwindle, their morale would break down under the
ceaseless strain of the defensive, and, as a further possibility, the
advance would in the end climb up to the top of the rolling crest ahead,
and something would simply have to happen then.

Hudson's estimate of the enemy's losses was fantastic--he had selected
the highest estimate put forward by the intelligence section, simply
because anything less seemed fantastic to him. A month or two of losses
on that scale would reduce the German Army to a wreck. There would be
corresponding losses on the British side, but the British Army could
bear them as long as the leaders kept their nerve--and that was the
point which Hudson specially wanted to make with Curzon. Not all corps
commanders could be trusted as Curzon could be, to push attacks home
relentlessly, applying ceaseless pressure to divisional generals.

So that Curzon was to be maintained in charge of his present sector of
the front. He would be supplied with new divisions as fast as they could
be brought up to replace his exhausted ones, and he must see to it that
the attacks were maintained with all the intensity the situation
demanded. It was a high compliment which was being paid to Curzon (or at
least both Hudson and Curzon saw it as one). He flushed with pleasure
and with renewed hope; he had work to do, a plan to carry out, a goal in
front of him, and he was one of the five lieutenant-generals who were
charged with the execution of the offensive on which England was pinning
her whole trust.

After Hudson's departure Curzon called his staff together. He outlined
the work before them, and he quoted the figures of the German losses
which Hudson had given him. He looked round at them. Miller, dark,
sombre, and reliable, nodded approval; the others, even if they did not
approve, had learned by now to keep their faces expressionless in the
face of schemes they could not oppose.

"Our old Ninety-first Division is coming up into our sector," concluded
Curzon. "We know what they can do. What do you suggest, Miller? Hadn't
they----"

In this fashion began the orgy of bloodshed which is now looked upon as
the second phase of the battle of the Somme, three agonizing months
during which divisions, "fattened up" in back areas on quiet sectors,
were brought up into the line to dissipate in one wild day the strength
built up during the previous months. They went into action ten thousand
infantry strong; they won a few yards of shell-torn ground, a few trees
of a shattered wood, or the cellars of a few houses, and they came out
four thousand strong, to be filled up with recruits and made ready for
the next ordeal. Kitchener's Army found its grave on the Somme just as
the old regular army had done at Ypres.

Curzon worked with grim determination during those three months. There
was always pressure to be applied to someone--transport officers who
said that a thing could not be done, major-generals who flinched from
exposing their divisions to some fresh ordeal, artillery colonels who
pleaded that their men were on the point of exhaustion. He did his duty
with all his nerve and all his strength, as was his way, while the
higher command looked on him with growing approval; he was a man after
their own heart, who allowed no consideration to impede him in the
execution of his orders.




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


One morning there was a private letter (it was marked "private" on the
envelope) for Curzon, and the sight of it gave Curzon an unpleasant
sensation of disquietude. It was addressed to "General Herbert Curzon,"
care of the regimental dept of the Twenty-second Lancers, and had been
sent on to him via the War Office--and it was from Aunt Kate. He
hesitated before he opened it; he did not want to open it; it was only
by an effort of will that he forced himself to open it and read it.

    DEAR BERTIE,

    Just a line to wish you all success and to ask you if you will
    do a favour for your aunt, because I have not asked you ever for
    one before. Our Dick has got to go out to the Front again. He
    was wounded and came back to the hospital, but now he is better
    and he is going back next week. Bertie, he does not want to go.
    He does not say so, but I know. He has done his bit because he
    has been wounded and has got the Military Medal. I showed him
    something about you that I saw in the paper, and he said joking
    that he wished you would give him a job. He said he would rather
    clean out your stables than go over the top at Ginchy again. He
    said it as if he didn't mean it, but I know. Bertie, would you
    do that for me. You have only got to ask for him. Corporal R.
    Cole, 4/29 London Regiment, Duke of Connaught's Own. I swear
    that he won't say he is your cousin to your friends. Because he
    is your cousin, Bertie. He is my only son and I want him to come
    back to me safe. Please, Bertie, do this for me because I am
    only an old woman now. He doesn't know I am writing to you. It
    does not matter to you who cleans out your stables. Your Uncle
    Stanley and Gertie and Maud send their love. Maud has a fine big
    baby boy now. We call him Bertie and he is ever such a tartar.
    Please do that for me.

                                                      Your loving
                                                         AUNT KATE.

Curzon sat and fingered the letter. Aunt Kate was quite right when she
said it did not matter to him who cleaned out his stables. Curzon really
had not troubled his mind with regard to the dispensing of patronage at
his headquarters. He had no knowledge of how the grooms and clerks and
servants there had been appointed to their soft jobs--nor would he
trouble as long as they were efficient. A single telephone message would
suffice to give him Corporal Richard Cole's services--the 4/29 London
was in Terry's Division and coming back to the line soon.

But Curzon had no intention of sending for him; he formed that
resolution after only brief reflection. Cole had his duty to do like
everyone else, and there was no reason why he should be selected rather
than any other for a safe billet. Curzon had always frowned on
favouritism--he reminded himself how he had sent back Horatio
Winter-Willoughby to regimental duty. He was not going to deprive the
fighting forces of the services of a valuable trained N.C.O. He tore the
letter up slowly. He was glad that he had reached that decision, because
otherwise a request by a Lieutenant-General for the services of a
corporal would have been sure to excite comment, and Cole would be sure
to talk about the relationship, and Greven would hear, and from Greven
the news would reach the Duchess, and from the Duchess it would go on to
Emily. He did not want Emily to know he had a Cockney cousin--to shake
that thought from him he plunged back furiously into his work.

In fact he was able to forget all about his cousin again in the stress
and strain of the last weeks of the battle of the Somme, and the
excitement of the first entry into action of the tanks, and the need to
combat the growing paralysis caused by the October rains and the
exhaustion of his units. Only was he reminded of the affair when yet
another letter, addressed in the same way, was put into his hands. There
was a telegraph form inside addressed to Shoesmith Road,
Brixton--"Regret to inform you Corporal R. Cole killed in action Nov.
1st." There was only one word on the sheet of notepaper enclosing the
telegraph form, and that was printed large--MURDERER.

His hands shook a little as he tore the papers into fragments, and his
face lost a little of its healthy colour. He had never been called that
before. It was a hideous and unjust accusation, and it made him
furiously angry; he was angrier still--although he did not know
it--because he was subconsciously aware that there were plenty of people
who would most unreasonably have agreed with Aunt Kate. He did not like
to be thought a murderer even by fools with no knowledge of duty and
honour.

The memory of the incident poisoned his thoughts for a long time
afterwards. When he went on leave--his first leave for eleven months--he
was almost moved to confide in Emily about it. He knew she would
appreciate and approve of his motives, and he was in need of approval,
but he put the insidious temptation aside. His common sense told him
that a moment's sympathy would not be worth the humiliation of
confessing the deceit he had practised for two years; and yet it was his
need of sympathy which made him put his arms round Emily and kiss her
with an urgency which brought colour to her cheeks and expectancy into
her eyes.

After the stress and turmoil and overwork of active service it seemed
like Paradise to be back in the quiet West Country, to ride a horse
through the deep Somerset lanes with Emily beside him and not a soldier
in sight. The freakishness of Fate had placed him in a position wherein
he was compelled to work with his brain and his nerves. He had been
gifted with a temperament ideal for a soldier in the presence of the
enemy, knowing no fear and careless of danger, and yet his duty now
consisted in never encountering danger, in forcing responsibility on
others, in desk work and paper work and telephone work which drained his
vitality and sapped his health.

Emily was worried about him. Despite the healthy red-brown of his cheeks
(nothing whatever would attenuate that) she fretted over the lines in
his forehead and the increasing whiteness of his hair, even though she
tried to look upon these changes in him as her sacrifice for King and
Country. There was anxiety in her eyes when she looked at him while they
were in the train returning to London--the Duke had expressed a wish to
have a long talk with Curzon before he went back to France, and, as he
could not leave his official duties, Curzon was spending a day and a
night of his leave in London although Emily had met him at Folkestone
and carried him straight off to her beloved Somerset.

The Duke was worried about the progress and conduct of the war. While
talking with Curzon he seemed incapable of coming out with a downright
statement or question or accusation. He listened to Curzon's bluff
phrases, and said "H'm," and stroked his chin, but an instant later he
harked back again, seeking reassurance. Curzon found it difficult to
understand his drift. Curzon was quite ready to admit that the offensive
on the Somme had been quenched in the mud without decisive results, but
he was insistent that it had done much towards bringing victory within
reach. The German Army was shattered, bled white; and if it had not
rained so continuously in October, just when the offensive had reached
Sailly-Saillisel and Bouchavesnes on the crest of the ridge, the
decisive victory might have taken place then and there.

"H'm," said the Duke, and after a pause he harked back once more to the
aspect of the question which was specially worrying to him. "The
casualties are heavy."

The Duke felt that was a very mild way of putting it, considering the
terrible length of the daily lists--Englishmen were dying far faster
than in the Great Plague.

"Yes," said Curzon. "But they're nothing to what the German casualties
are like. Intelligence says----"

The conclusions that the General Staff Intelligence drew from the
material collected by their agents and routine workers were naturally as
optimistic as they could be. The material was in general correct, but
necessarily vague. Exact figures could not be expected, and the data
accumulated only permitted of guesses. Pessimists would have guessed
much lower. Equally naturally Curzon and his fellows approved of the
conclusions reached by Intelligence. If this plan of attrition failed,
there was no plan left to them, only the unthinkable alternative of
stagnation in the trenches. With just that unmilitary confession of
helplessness before them they would need a great deal of convincing that
their only plan was unsuccessful.

"You're sure about this?" asked the Duke. He wanted to be convinced,
too. The task of finding someone to win the war was a heavy one for the
Cabinet.

"Quite sure," said Curzon, and he went on to say that as soon as fine
weather permitted a resumption of the offensive a breakdown of the
German defence could be looked for quite early. Tanks? Yes, he imagined
that tanks might be a useful tactical accessory; they had not yet fought
on his front at all, so that he could not speak from experience. It
would take a great number of tanks, all the same, to kill the number of
Germans necessary for victory. Only infantry, of course, can really win
battles--the Duke was so eager to learn that Curzon could restate this
axiom of military science without impatience. Keep the infantry up to
strength, build up new divisions if possible, keep the ammunition dumps
full, and victory must come inevitably.

"I'm glad," said the Duke, "that I've had this chance of talking to you.
We've been a bit--despondent, lately, here in London."

"There's nothing to be despondent about," said Curzon. A despondent
soldier means a bad soldier; Curzon would be as ashamed of being
despondent as of being afraid--he would see little difference between
the two conditions, in fact.

It may have been this conversation between the Duke and Curzon which
turned the scale of history. Perhaps because of it the Cabinet allowed
the Expeditionary Force to spend that winter preparing once more for an
offensive on the present lines, and were only confirmed in their
decision by the bloody failure of the great French attack launched by
Nivelle with his new unlimited ideas. Curzon was at Arras when Nivelle
failed, wailing to engage in his eternal task of sending divisions
through the Moloch-fires of assaults on the German line. So serious was
the news that a general assembly of British generals was called to
discuss it--Curzon was there, and half a dozen other Corps commanders,
and Hudson and his chief, and Wayland-Leigh from the Sixth Army with
Norton. When Curzon climbed out of his car with Miller behind him and
saw the array of cars already arrived, and the different pennons
drooping over the radiators, he guessed that something serious was in
the wind. Wayland-Leigh's car stopped immediately after his, and Curzon
waited to greet his old commander before going in. The Buffalo was lame
with sciatica, and he took Curzon's arm as they went up the steps.

"Christ knows," said Wayland-Leigh, hobbling along, "what this new how
d'ye do's about. Ouch! I bet the French have got 'emselves into trouble
again."

Wayland-Leigh's shrewd guess was correct. When everyone was seated on
the gilt chairs in the big dining-room of the chateau an officer on the
General Staff at G.H.Q. rose to address the meeting. It was Hammond,
very tall, very thin, with no chin and a lisp, but with a reputation
which belied his appearance.

"Gentlemen," said Hammond. "The news I have to tell you is such that we
have not dared to allow it to reach you by the ordinary channels. It
must not be written about, or telephoned about, or even spoken about
outside this room."

He paused and looked round him as he said this, and one general looked
at another all round the room, before Hammond went on.

"The French Army has mutinied."

That made every one stir in their seats. Half a dozen generals cleared
their throats nervously. There were alarmists among them who had
sometimes thought of mutiny.

"As you all know, gentlemen, the great French offensive on the
Chemin-des-Dames has failed with very heavy losses, just as you all
predicted. General Nivelle promised a great deal more than he could
perform."

Wayland-Leigh and Norton grinned at the mention of Nivelle's name, and
others followed their example. Nivelle, with his gift of the gab and his
vaulting ambitions, was an object of amusement to the British staff.
They smiled when he was spoken about, like a music-hall audience when a
comedian refers to Wigan or to kippers. But Hammond was deadly serious.

"The point is," he went on, "eight French divisions have refused to obey
orders. It is not as serious as it might be, gentlemen. There has been
no Socialist movement." The word "Bolshevik" had not yet crept into the
English language, or Hammond would have used it. "There are no political
feelings at all in these divisions. They only objected to what they call
unnecessary waste of life. It is a case of----"

"Cold feet," interjected Wayland-Leigh, and got a laugh.

"Objection to a continuance of the offensive," said Hammond. "Nivelle
has resigned and Ptain has taken his place. He is rounding up the
mutineers with loyal troops. I don't know what measures General Ptain
will take--I suppose we all know what we should recommend to him. But
the fact remains, gentlemen, that for this summer the duty of
maintaining pressure upon the enemy will fall on us alone. We must
attack, and attack again, and go on attacking. Otherwise the enemy will
undoubtedly take the opportunity of falling on our gallant allies."

There was a sneer in Hammond's tone at these last two words--for some
time there had been a tendency in the British Army to say those words
with just that same intonation; for a year no English staff officer had
spoken of "les braves Belges" and meant it.

"So, gentlemen, the battle at present in progress at Arras will
continue. The Second Army will deliver the attack at Messines which they
have had ready for some time, while plans will be perfected for a
transference of pressure to the northern face of the Ypres salient and a
drive to clear the Belgian coast. In this fashion, gentlemen----"

Hammond turned to the big map on the wall behind him, and introduced his
hearers to the Third Battle of Ypres. It was not the Third Battle of
Ypres as the long-suffering infantry were to know it. Polygon Wood and
Passchendaele were mentioned, but only in passing. The concentrated
efforts of the British Army for a whole summer would carry them far
beyond these early objectives. Hammond indicated the vital railway
junctions far to the rear which must eventually fall to them; and he
lingered for a moment over the relief it would afford the Navy in the
struggle against submarines if the whole Belgian coast should be
cleared.

Hammond's optimism was infectious, and his lisping eloquence was subtle.
Curzon's mood changed, like that of the others, from one of do-or-die to
one of hope and expectancy. There were seventy divisions, and tanks for
those who believed in them, guns in thousands, shells in tens of
millions. Surely nothing could stop them this time, no ill fortune, no
bad weather, certainly not machine-guns nor barbed wire. The enemy
_must_ give way this time. All a successful attack demanded was material
and determination. They had the first in plenty, and they would not be
found lacking in the second. Curzon felt resolution surging up within
him. His hands clenched as they lay in his lap.

The mood endured as his car bore him back to his own headquarters, and
when he called his staff about him his enthusiasm gave wings to his
words as he sketched out the approaching duties of the Forty-fourth
Corps. Runcorn and Deane and Frobisher caught the infection. They began
eagerly to outline the plans of attack which Army Headquarters demanded;
they were deeply at work upon them while the divisions under their
direction were expending themselves in the last long-drawn agony of
Arras.




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Curzon wrote to Emily that there was no chance at all of his taking
leave this summer. He realized with a little regret that an officer at
the head of an Army Corps would be far less easily spared for a few days
than any regimental officer or divisional general. The troops of the
line had their periods of rest, but he had none. His responsibility was
always at full tension. He was signing plans for the future at the same
time as he was executing those of the present. He was responsible for
the discipline and movement and maintenance and activity of a force
which sometimes exceeded a hundred thousand men.

And he was lonely in his responsibility, too, although loneliness meant
little to him. Save for Emily he had gone friendless through the world
among his innumerable acquaintances. He would sometimes, during that
summer of 1917, have been desperately unhappy if he had stopped to think
about happiness. But according to his simple code a man who had attained
the rank of Lieutenant-General, was the son-in-law of a duke, and had a
loving wife, could not possibly be unhappy. There could be no reason for
it. Unreasonable unhappiness was the weakness of poets and others with
long hair, not of soldiers, and so he believed himself to be happy as
the British Army plunged forward into the slaughter of Passchendaele.

For fifteen days--half as long again as at the Somme--twice the number
of guns as at the Somme had pounded the German lines. Curzon's staff,
Hobday's staff on his right, the staffs of six other army corps and of
three Armies had elaborated the most careful orders governing the
targets to be searched for, the barrages to be laid, the tactics to be
employed. The Tank Corps had early pointed out that this sort of
bombardment would make the ground impassable for tanks, but after the
success at Messines Curzon and all the other generals had decided that
the tank was a weapon whose importance had been over-rated, and it stood
to reason that fortifications should not be attacked without preliminary
bombardment.

Once more the reports came in describing the opening of the
battle--large sections of the German line overrun, the advance once more
held up, the usual heavy fighting in the German second line. Once more
the weather broke, and the country, its drainage system battered to
pieces, reverted under the unceasing rain to the condition of primeval
swamp from which diligent Flemish peasants had reclaimed it in preceding
centuries. Already intelligent privates in the ranks were discussing
whether the Germans had a secret method of bringing rain whenever they
wanted it for tactical purposes.

Curzon in his headquarters, as the days went on and the rain roared on
the roof, began almost to feel a sinking of heart. The toll of
casualties was mounting, and, significantly, the number of the sick,
while the progress was inordinately slow. Those optimistic early plans
had envisaged an advance a mile deep, and here they were creeping
forward only a hundred yards at a time. Tanks had proved utterly useless
in the swamp. The Germans with their usual ingenuity and foresight had
studded the country with concrete fortresses to hold the line where
trenches were impossible to dig, and attacks were horribly costly. There
were moments when Curzon hesitated before forcing himself to read the
casualty figures of the divisions he had sent into action.

His determination was maintained by the information which Army
Headquarters supplied to him. The German losses were heavier than the
British; the German morale was on the point of giving way; any moment
might see a general collapse of the enemy's army. When Curzon rode out
to inspect his long-suffering divisions in their rest billets he could
see for himself that they were as reliable as ever, and that if they
were not as high-spirited and hopeful as the early divisions of
Kitchener's army they were still ready, as he knew British soldiers
always would be, to pour out their blood at the command of their
leaders--and three years of elimination had given the British Army
leaders like Curzon, who could not be turned back by any difficulties,
nor frightened by any responsibilities.

Cheered on by the encouragement of the highest command, Curzon threw
himself into the work of maintaining the pressure upon the Germans,
flinging his divisions, each time they had been filled up with drafts,
once more in assaults upon the enemy's line, battering away with the
fiercest determination to win through in the end. Under his direction
and those of his colleagues the British Army used up its strength in
wild struggles like those of a buffalo caught in a net, or a madman in a
strait-jacket, rather than submit to what seemed the sole alternative,
which was to do nothing.

A week or two more--no longer than that--of these nightmare losses and
thwarted attacks would see the end of the war, a complete disintegration
of the whole German front in the north-east; that was what the Army
command deduced from their Intelligence reports. Victory was in sight.
Then suddenly Hudson, the Army Chief of Staff, dropped in with a
bombshell. The civilian Government at home had grown frightened at the
casualty lists, and were losing their nerve, as might be expected of
civilians. There was a suggestion that the Government--the "frocks" as
one famous staff officer significantly and humourously called them--were
actually proposing to interfere with the military conduct of the war and
to force some scheme of their own upon the command.

No self-respecting general could put up with that, of course. There
would be wholesale resignations, and, if the Government persisted and
could withstand the effect of these resignations upon public opinion,
there would be more than resignations. There would be dismissals, until
the Army was under the command of the pliant and subservient
boot-licking type of general who always wins promotion under civilian
command. It was not idle talk, but an imminent, urgent possibility; in
fact, to such lengths were the civilians going that the politicians were
actually coming out to France to see for ourselves, not on the customary
sight-seeing trip, but because they were pleased to doubt the word of
the soldiers as to the present state of affairs. Something must be done
to impress them immediately.

Curzon was in the heartiest agreement. He was genuinely horrified by
what Hudson told him. Civilian interference in military affairs spelt
ruin--all his teaching and experience told him that. If the present
order of generals was swept away and their places taken by others (Bewly
was an example of the type Curzon had in mind) there could be nothing
but shame and disaster awaiting the British Army. Curzon did not tell
himself that the present state of affairs must be the best possible
because it was the present state of affairs, but that was a pointer to
his line of thought. Innovations and charlatanry were indissolubly
linked in his mind. He called upon his staff to make haste with their
plans for the renewed attack upon Passchendaele. The surest reply to
these busybodies would be a resounding success and thousands of
prisoners.

Curzon was shaving early one morning, before the night's reports could
arrive, on the third day of that last tragic offensive, when young
Follett came into his room.

"G.H.Q. on the telephone, sir," he said--and the tone of his voice
indicated the momentous nature of the occasion. "They want to speak to
you personally."

Curzon hurried out with the lather drying on his cheeks. In the inmost
room of his headquarters Miller was at the telephone, and handed the
receiver over to him.

"Curzon speaking," he said.

"Right. You know who this is?" said the receiver.

"Yes," said Curzon.

"Is anyone else present in the room in which you are?"

"My B.G.G.S."

"Send him out."

Curzon dismissed Miller with a gesture, and, when the door had closed he
addressed himself again to the telephone.

"I'm alone now, sir," he said.

"Then listen, Curzon. You know about the visitors we're entertaining at
present?"

"Yes, sir."

"They're coming to poke their noses about in your sector this morning."

"Yes, sir."

"They think we're asking too much of the troops by continuing the attack
at Passchendaele. They as good as told me to my face last night that I
was lying."

"Good God!"

"You've got to show 'em they're wrong. What do you think of your corps
at the present?"

Curzon reflected for a moment. All his divisions had been through the
mill lately except for the good old Ninety-first under Challis.

"I've got nothing that would impress politicians, I'm afraid, at the
moment," said Curzon despondently.

"Well, you must. I don't care what you do. Who's that young A.D.C. that
you've got? Greven, isn't it? He ought to be some use in this
comic-opera business. Call him in and talk it over with him, and for
God's sake remember that something's got to be done."

Something was done and, as G.H.Q. advised, it was the result of Greven's
inspiration.

There is no need to describe the telephone calls and the hurried
motor-car journeys which were made in preparation for the politicians'
visit. Preparations were hardly completed and Curzon had hardly strolled
into the headquarters when an awed young staff officer looked up from
his telephone and said: "They're coming!"

In ten minutes a little fleet of motor-cars came rolling up and stopped
outside the house. From the radiators flew the pennons of G.H.Q. A
motley crowd climbed out of the cars--the khaki and red of the General
Staff, the new horizon blue of the French Army, officers in the
"maternity jackets" of the Royal Flying Corps; and among the crowd of
uniforms were half a dozen figures in ludicrous civilian clothes. Curzon
noted their long hair and shapeless garments with contempt. They gawked
about them like yokels at a fair. They were stoop-shouldered and slack.
He came forward reluctantly to be introduced.

"This is Lieutenant-General Curzon, sir, commanding the Forty-fourth
Corps," said the senior staff officer present. At the moment of making
the introduction the staff officer, his face turned from the civilian,
raised his eyebrows in inquiry, and Curzon nodded in return.

"We want to show these gentlemen, General," said the staff officer,
"something of the troops that have been engaged at Passchendaele. Have
you got any specimens on view?"

"Why, yes," replied Curzon. "There's the Ninety-first Division coming
out of the line now. If we drive over to the cross-roads we ought to
meet them."

"They've had a pretty bad time," put in Greven, with all the deference
expected of a junior staff officer venturing to demur from a suggestion
of his chief.

"That's just what we want to see," put in the leader of the visitors.
Yet the stilted artificiality of the conversation could hardly have
escaped his attention--his mind was one of the keenest in Europe--had
not the circumstances been so entirely natural.

The fleet of motor-cars, augmented now by those of the Corps, continued
their dreary way through the rain over the jolting _pav_. Curzon found
himself beside a sharp-featured little man whose manner reminded him of
Sir Henry's on the first occasion on which he dined at the Duchess's.
Curzon was plied with questions throughout the short journey, but none
of the answers he gave was particularly revealing. For one thing Curzon
had partly acquired the art by now of being uncommunicative without
being rude; and for another he was so excited about the outcome of this
very doubtful affair that he had hardly any words to spare for a
civilian in a suit whose trousers bagged at the knees.

Suddenly the whole _cortge_ slowed down and drew up at the side of the
road. Everybody got out and splashed about in the slush.

"Here comes the Ninety-first," said Miller, pointing. Greven pushed
himself forward. "Their numbers seem a little low," he said, "but that's
only to be expected when they've had ten days in the line."

The staff officers from G.H.Q. played up nobly. They shielded Curzon,
who was the least accomplished actor of them all, by grouping themselves
round him and surrounding him with a protective barrage of professional
explanation.

The Ninety-first came trailing down the long, straight road. They had
believed that the War held no new surprise for them until to-day. They
had been turned out of their comfortable rest billets at a moment's
notice, formed up into column without explanation and sent marching post
haste up the road towards the front. Everybody had naturally assumed
that they were being sent in to make a new attack or to fill up some gap
caused by a German counter-attack, and everybody's spirits had fallen
accordingly. Then suddenly at a cross-roads their march had been
diverted and they were being marched back post haste away from the line
again. The explanation of the manoeuvre entirely escaped them, even when
they saw the string of motor-cars with fluttering pennons and the group
of visitors watching them march by. They had had a fortnight's rest and
they were extraordinarily cheered by their reprieve from front line
duty. Naturally they were wet and muddy and weary with their long march
through the mud, but their spirits were high. They marched with all the
spring and swing of men ready for anything--and this was carefully
pointed out to the politicians by the staff officers from G.H.Q. Their
muddiness and their wetness were nothing compared with the condition of
the troops marching from the line at Paschendaele. Troops after that
ordeal hardly had anything human about them; they were generally so
sheeted in mud that only the whites of their eyes showed up uncannily
out of a uniform greyish-brown mask.

"There doesn't seem to be much the matter with these men," said the
sharp-nosed little politician who sat beside Curzon. He sounded
disappointed as he said it.

"Of course not," said Miller breezily.

Reeves, commanding the Rifle Battalion in the division's second brigade,
had his men most in hand and was the officer upon whose histrionic
ability Curzon's staff had placed most reliance. The Rifles were
marching past the group just when Miller had made his last remark and at
a signal from Reeves they broke into a wild burst of cheering. They did
not know whom they were cheering nor why, but a British battalion after
a fortnight's rest can generally be relied upon to cheer lustily at the
call of a popular commanding officer.

"There," said Miller. "You'd never hear broken-spirited men cheering
like that."

And soon after that the drenched politicians and staff officers climbed
back into their motor-cars and returned to G.H.Q. Curzon had done his
best for the Army. It would not be his fault if he and his brother
soldiers were held back at the moment of victory.

But the rain which had poured down upon prisoners and politicians alike
extinguished the last chance of victory. Passchendaele was taken--a
statistician might have calculated that the miserable village cost, in
the shells hurled against it and in pensions paid to the dependents of
the dead, about three hundred times as much as a similar area in the
most valuable part of New York covered with intact skyscrapers. The
ridge was crowned, but the higher command had decided that there was
nothing to be gained by trying to push on. The high hopes of capturing
Bruges and Zeebrugge had vanished; even if further efforts could be
asked of the troops (as Curzon maintained) there was no chance of
keeping the troops in the front line supplied well enough to maintain an
offensive across the three miles of shell-torn swamp which they had
conquered.

Curzon was informed of this decision in the course of a visit to Sixth
Army Headquarters; he was closeted alone with Hudson for a long time.
Yet during that interview Hudson was disinclined to discuss the future
of the War. His own efforts had ended in failure, and now the Third Army
was planning a tank offensive in the Cambrai sector regarding which his
opinion was not even being asked. Hudson skirted round controversial
subjects with a good deal of tact. He was full of appreciation for
Curzon's recent work, and as well as Curzon's relentlessness in command
he was pleased to approve of Curzon's handling of the matter of the
troops back from the front.

"That was first rate," said Hudson, grinning. "It was absolutely
convincing--took 'em in completely. Serve 'em right."

Curzon grinned back. There was joy in the thought that soldiers could
outwit politicians in other things as well as military affairs.

"Oh, yes, by the way," said Hudson. "You'd better take your leave now
while things are quiet."

"Thank you very much," said Curzon. "I was intending to ask you."

"There'll be a special reason for it, though," said Hudson.

"Indeed?"

"Yes." Hudson's expression was one of ungainly whimsicality. He fumbled
with the papers on his desk to prolong the dramatic moment. "You will
have to be present at an investiture."

Curzon's heart leaped; he guessed now what Hudson was going to say--he
had been modestly hoping for this ever since the Somme.

"The future Sir Herbert Curzon, K.C.M.G.," said Hudson. "Greven gets the
D.S.O., of course. Yes, I'm glad I'm the first to congratulate you. The
very strongest recommendations have gone through both from here and from
G.H.Q., and I'm glad that someone in London's got sense enough to act on
them. You'd better take your leave from the day after to-morrow."

Curzon was genuinely delighted with the news. He was glad to be a
knight. Socially it was a distinction, and professionally, too--only a
minority of corps commanders received knighthood. There would be a
ribbon and star to wear with full dress uniform, and it would be
pleasant to be addressed by servants as "Sir Herbert." Incidentally he
had never really liked being announced with his wife as "General and
Lady Emily Curzon." "Sir Herbert and Lady Emily Curzon," on the other
hand, sounded much better.

When he reached England, Emily was inclined to agree; she was glad for
Curzon's sake even though she herself was sorry because the investiture
would take him from her side for a day and would compel them to stay in
war-time November London, where the Duchess insisted on claiming (or,
rather, assumed as a natural right) too much of his attention. The
Duchess was full of gossip as usual--the Duke told Curzon that it beat
him where she got it from--and although the Navy in its life-and-death
struggle with German submarines was occupying more of her attention than
the Army nowadays, she found time to try and pump Curzon about the new
offensive, regarding which she had heard rumours.

Curzon was relieved to find that it was only rumours which she had
heard--many of the leaks of information must have been stopped--and that
the main reason for her curiosity was this very vagueness. Offensives of
the ordinary sort had no more charm of novelty for London society by now
than they had for the men in the trenches, but there was a quality about
the new rumours which stimulated her interest. Curzon was tactfully
reticent. He knew little enough about this Cambrai stunt as it was, and
neither he nor his corps was to be employed. Moreover, it was to be a
tank affair, and, frankly, he was not interested in tanks after they had
disappointed him at Arras and Passchendaele. His unconcern actually
deluded the Duchess into believing that the rumours had been
exaggerated, and she went back to her new interest of trying to find out
the latest about the new American Expeditionary Force.

However, she called upon Curzon and Emily at their hotel on the evening
of the investiture--naturally she wanted to hear about that. So it came
about that she was present when a servant came in with the information
that the Duke of Bude would like to speak to Sir Herbert Curzon on the
telephone.

"I wonder what your father wants, dear," said the Duchess to Emily
during Curzon's absence.

"I can't imagine, mother," said Emily.

Meanwhile Curzon was standing in the little glass box (which was the
home of the telephone at even luxurious hotels in 1917) listening in
amazement to the Duke's voice and to the news it was conveying to him
with excited volubility.

"There's good news, Curzon," said the Duke. "Best since the war began.
There's no harm in my telling you--it's being made public as quickly as
possible. We've won a big victory."

"Where?"

"On the Western front, of course. Cambrai."

"My God!"

"There's no doubt about it. Five miles advance up to now. Five thousand
prisoners. Two hundred guns. The cavalry are being brought into action.
The war's as good as won. It's the tanks that have done it."

"God bless my soul."

Three months of agony at Third Ypres had won no greater result.

"I'll come in later, if you're going to be in, and discuss it with you."

"Very good."

Emily and the Duchess thought that Curzon's expression on his return
portended bad news; they were relieved when in reply to their startled
"Whatever's the matter?" Curzon told them that England had won a
victory. It was irritating in the extreme to Curzon to have to recount
that in his absence from France a battle had been won in which his corps
had played no part, and that the principal instrument of victory had
been a weapon he despised--he remembered his cutting rudeness to his
Tank staff officer when the latter had ventured to make suggestions. He
could have swallowed the affront of the success of the tank if he and
his men had shared in it. As it was he was exceedingly angry;
apprehensive, as well, because the Duke's preposterous optimism over the
telephone had almost infected him with doubt lest the war should be won
before his leave expired. He would be a fool in his own eyes then.

He was hardly as angry as the Duchess, all the same.

"I'll never forgive you, Bertie," she said, bitterly. "And as for young
Gordon, he's finished as far as I'm concerned. Here have I been going
round, and whenever anyone's said that there was going to be a big push
soon I've said: 'Oh, no, I'm quite sure you're wrong. There's not going
to be anything of the kind. I know for certain.' I shan't be able to
hold up my head again."

Fortunately the Duke on his arrival was able to suggest a very
satisfactory way out of the difficulty, presumably by the aid of his
political experience.

"Don't worry, my dear," he said. "You'll be able to say that you knew
about it all the time, but denied the rumours so that the Germans would
be lulled into insecurity. You can say that you were acting in obedience
to a Royal command, because it was well known that whatever you said was
given great attention in Berlin."

The Duchess thought that a brilliant suggestion.




CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


In the morning the newspapers proclaimed England's victory in flaming
headlines. There could be no doubt about it. Curzon's appetite for his
war-time breakfast (not nearly as appetizing as the ones served him at
his headquarters in France) quite failed him as he read. Envy and
apprehension between them stirred up strange passions within him, to
such an extent that after breakfast he made an excuse to Emily and
slipped away to telephone to General Mackenzie at the War Office. He did
not dare tell Emily that he was going to suggest that he sacrificed the
remainder of his leave in order to make sure of missing no more of the
glory which was to be found in France.

But Mackenzie seemed to be in an odd mood.

"I shouldn't worry, if I were you, Curzon," he said.

"But I don't want to miss anything," persisted Curzon.

"Well--no, look here, Curzon, take my advice and don't worry."

"I don't understand, I'm afraid."

"Don't you? Perhaps that's my fault. But on the other hand perhaps it
isn't. Now ring off, because I'm busy."

There was a small grain of comfort in the conversation, Curzon supposed,
but it was woefully small. Out in the streets as he went for his walk
with Emily, the church bells were ringing a peal of victory, such as
London had not heard for three dark years. Emily's happy chatter at his
side received small attention from him. He brought tears into her eyes
by declining flatly to go to Somerset for the rest of his leave--he felt
that he did not dare to quit the centre of affairs and put himself six
hours further away from France. He could picture in his mind's eye the
rolling downland on which the victory had been won, and his mind dwelt
on the armies pouring forward to victory at that very moment while he
was left behind here in England and ignominy.

The evening papers told the same tale of a continued advance and of
further captures. The whole Press was jubilant, and Curzon remembered
bitterly the cautious half-praise which had been grudgingly dealt out to
him in the Press (not by name, of course, but by implication) for his
greatest efforts at Third Ypres. He began to lose confidence in himself,
and when a soldier of Curzon's type loses confidence in himself there is
little else for him to lose. He told himself repeatedly, and with truth,
that he was not jealous of the success of others. It was not that which
was troubling him, but the thought that there were still six days of his
leave left.

Then in the morning there was a change. Curzon was no literary critic,
but he sensed, even although he would not have been able to label it,
the note of caution in the newspaper comments on the progress of the
battle of Cambrai. There was a decided tendency to warn the public not
to expect too much. Curzon could imagine the sort of reports which would
be coming in to Corps Commanders from Divisional Headquarters--he had
received them often enough. Reports of a stiffening resistance, of the
arrival of new German divisions in the front, of the establishment of a
fresh defensive line which only a prolonged bombardment could reduce. He
could read the symptoms with certainty, and he knew now that General
Mackenzie had been right when he told him not to worry--enough details
must already have trickled through to the Imperial General Staff at that
early stage of the battle for Mackenzie to have formed his judgment.

So Curzon was fully reconciled to spending the rest of his leave in
England, and he brought a new pleasure into Emily's heart by consenting
to go down into Somersetshire with her for his last four days. Emily was
more anxious and worried about him than she had previously been. Perhaps
the revelation of Curzon's attitude during the battle of Cambrai had
shown her an aspect of his character with which she had not been
previously familiar, or perhaps with her woman's intuition she could
guess at the changing state of affairs on the Western Front more
accurately than Curzon could. In either case she had a premonition of
danger. She clung to Bertie during those four idyllic days in Somerset.

There was just enough petrol in the Duke's reserves to supply the
motor-car which bore them across the loveliest and most typical
stretches of the English countryside--lovely even in a war-time
December--for Somerset to Folkestone at the end of Curzon's leave. Emily
found it hard to keep her lips steady as she said good-bye to her
husband at Folkestone Harbour, where the stream of khaki flowed steadily
by on its way to the ships and to France; and Emily's cheeks were
unashamedly wet with tears. Curzon actually had to swallow hard as he
kissed her good-bye; he was moved inexpressibly by the renewal of the
discovery that there was actually a woman on earth who could weep for
him. His voice was gruff, and he patted her brusquely on the back before
he turned away, spurs clinking, past the barriers where the red-hatted
military police sprang to stiff attention, to where the steamer waited
against the jetty, crammed nearly solid with pack-laden soldiers.

At the headquarters of the Forty-fourth Corps Curzon found a new
atmosphere. The revelation of the efficacy of tanks to break the trench
line had come too late. The alterations of plan forced on the Tank Corps
Staff by G.H.Q. had reduced material results to a minimum, and
occasioned such losses in tanks that it would be some time before a tank
force sufficient to launch a new offensive could be accumulated.
Meanwhile the collapse of Russia meant that Germany could transfer a
million troops from East to West. Miller had ready for Curzon a long
list of new German divisions already identified, and more were to be
added to it every day. Where for three years three Allied soldiers
confronted two Germans, there was now an equality, and there seemed to
be every prospect that before long the balance would alter farther yet
until the Germans would possess a numerical superiority, which they had
not been able to boast since First Ypres. The staff maps which showed
the order of battle of the contending armies indicated an ominous
clustering of the black squares of German divisions in front of the
British line.

Curzon pored over them for long, scratching his cropped head, and
turning repeatedly to the detailed trench maps as he forced himself to
concentrate on this unusual problem of defence, with the help of the
appreciations to which Miller and Frobisher devoted long hours in
drawing up. He presided at long weary conferences with his divisional
generals and their staffs, when defensive tactics were discussed.
Universally the schemes laid before him took it for granted that ground
would be lost in the first stages of the battle should the enemy attack,
and he was puzzled at this. He tugged at his whitened moustache as he
listened or read. This almost voluntary cession of soil was quite
opposed to the traditions inherited from Wayland-Leigh, and the prospect
irked him sorely. There had been a few occasions when the Forty-fourth
Corps had yielded up bloodsoaked fragments of trench in the height of a
battle, but they had been very few. He would have preferred to have
issued a few stringent orders to hold on to the front line to the last
gasp, and threatening with a court martial any officer who retreated.
That was the kind of order which he understood and would have been ready
to execute.

But Miller was able to back up his suggestions with a huge mass of
orders from Sixth Army, bearing Hudson's signature, in which the
greatest urgency was laid upon the need for the economy of life.
Two-thirds of a million casualties, incurred at Arras and Paschendaele,
had forced the British Army, for the first time in two years, to worry
about losses. Curzon found the restriction irksome and unnatural. He had
grown used to handling unlimited supplies of men and material, and in
the Forty-fourth Corps a convention had grown up under which the prowess
of a division was measured by the number of its men who were killed.

"Confound it, Miller," he said, angrily. "You're surely not proposing
that we should give up St. Victor like this?"

A hundred thousand men had died so that the ruins of St. Victor should
be included in the British line.

"I think we'd better, sir," said Miller. "You see, it's like this.
There's a weak flank _here_. We can't be sure of holding the sector
along here to here. That'll mean a salient if we hang on to St. Victor.
It would be all right if we could afford the men, but----"

"Oh, all right, have it your own way," said Curzon, testily. He could
not withstand arguments about possible losses.

Into this atmosphere of nervous preparation there came a fresh bombshell
from Sixth Army headquarters. The Forty-fourth Corps were being taken
out of the line they were preparing to hold and transferred to take over
a sector held up to that time by the French.

"Yes, I'm sorry about it," said Hudson, when Curzon hotly denounced the
scheme over the telephone to him. "You don't think I wanted it, do you?
My own idea is that G.H.Q. have been weak. We oughtn't to stretch our
line any farther. But we've got to, old man, and there's an end of it.
You'll find your new sector a bit weak. Buckle to, old man, and get it
strengthened while you've got time."

Weak it certainly was. Divisional generals and brigadiers, when the
transfer was effected, inundated Corps headquarters with complaints
regarding the inadequacy of the wiring, the absence of support trenches,
and so on. Curzon passed on the complaints to Hudson.

"What do you expect from the French?" said Hudson. "They can't fight and
they can't work, and they expect us to do both for them. I can't help
it. We've picked the Forty-fourth Corps for this sector for that special
reason. If anyone can hold it, you can, Curzon, old chap. We're relying
on you."

Under this stimulus Curzon threw himself into the work of strengthening
his line, while Miller and Frobisher and the others slaved at drawing up
new orders to cover the changed conditions. Gone were the days when the
front of the Forty-fourth Corps was marked out from all others by
nightly fireworks and exceptional activity. Curzon's major-generals had
no desire to attract hostile attention to themselves. The waste of a
night of labour in consequence of a barrage put down by the enemy was a
disaster. They sought to extract as much labour from their men as they
could--as much as the sacrifices of Paschendaele had left spirit in the
men to give.

Curzon studied the new orders which Miller drew up. There were three
divisions in front line and one in support--the attenuated divisions
which the recent reduction in establishments had left to him. It was a
woefully weak force, and as far as he could gather from a study of Sixth
Army orders, and those issued by Fifth and Second Armies, there was
precious little reinforcement to expect. At first sight the prospect was
gloomy. There could be no doubting the menace of the accumulation of
German forces in front of him, and the reports which Intelligence kept
sending in of the piling up of German artillery and transport. Curzon
actually experienced a quailing in his stomach as he envisaged a future
of ruin and defeat. The inconceivable was at hand.

Largely because it was inconceivable to him Curzon later took heart. He
forced himself to remember the offensives he himself had commanded and
directed. Once he had looked upon them as tremendous victories, but now,
in a fresh light, he did not value them so highly. After all, what had
they brought? A few square miles of ground, a few tens of thousands of
casualties, and then stagnation. Why should he fear that the Germans
would achieve more? They had no tanks worth mentioning with which to
bring off a surprise like Cambrai. They had no new weapon, and would be
compelled to fight with the old ones. When their bombardment commenced
there would be ample time to move fresh divisions up to meet the
assault--he remembered the number of times when he had imagined himself
to be on the verge of victory, and had been held back by the arrival of
German reserves; he remembered his exasperation on hearing of the
identification of new divisions in his front. He forced himself to
realize that he had launched attacks with a four-fold, five-fold
superiority of numbers, and that not upon a settled piece of front, but
on one hastily built up in the midst of a bombardment, and he had never
broken through yet. He could rely upon his men to oppose a sturdier
resistance than the Germans, and upon his own will to hold them together
during the crisis--he set his mouth hard when he thought of that.

Moreover, the tactical arrangements of which he was approving would cost
the Germans dear. There were a whole series of strong points against
which the German waves would break in red ruin--how often had he not
flung whole divisions unavailingly upon strong points in the enemy's
line? He felt that he could await the attack with confidence, whatever
might be the boastings of Ludendorff and his men.

"Intelligence," said Miller, shuffling through a sheaf of reports, "keep
on insisting that the push is coming on March 21st. They say they've
confirmed it a dozen different ways. Cavendish would bet his life on it.
Sixth Army says so, too."

"They may be right," said Curzon. "It doesn't matter to a day or two,
except that the later they leave it the stronger we can make our line. I
should have liked another week or two, myself. But beggars can't be
choosers--I mean when you're on the defensive you can't expect to choose
the day to be attacked on."

"No, sir," said Miller.




CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


Curzon presided at the dinner of the staff of the Forty-fourth Corps on
the night of March 20th. He remembered how Wayland-Leigh had provided
champagne on the eve of other battles, and he sent Greven all the way
back to Amiens by car in order to obtain a full supply of the Clicquot
1900 which Curzon specially favoured. Conditions were a little different
from those other evenings, for Terry and Whiteman, commanding two of the
divisions in the line, had been compelled to refuse Curzon's invitation
on the ground that they dared not leave their headquarters for so long.
But Franklin was there, red-faced and be-ribboned, and Challis--for the
glorious old Ninety-first Division had come back under Curzon's orders.
Challis sat silently as usual, handling his knife and fork so as not to
draw attention to his maimed hand, about which he was morbidly
sensitive.

The dinner was dull enough at first, because everyone present was
overtired, and the smooth flow of conversation was continually being
checked by interruptions as messages came in which could only be dealt
with by particular individuals. The wine only loosened tongues
gradually, but by degrees a buzz of talk grew up round the table.
Stanwell told his celebrated story of how once when he had a bad cold he
had been deputed to show a sight-seeing party of important civilians
round the front. They had arrived in the dark, and his sore throat had
compelled him to whisper as he guided them to where they were spending
the night--"Step wide here, please." "Stoop under this wire, please."

At last one of the civilians whispered back to him: "How far off are the
Germans?"

"Oh, about ten miles."

"Then what the hell are we whispering like this for?"

"I don't know why _you_ are, but I've got a cold."

Everyone laughed at that, even those who had heard it before; it was
always good to hear of civilians and politicians making fools of
themselves. Milward, the gas officer, down at the foot of the table (the
Irregulars were dining with the regulars on this special occasion) was
tempted to tell how he had pleaded for a year with Curzon to experiment
with dichlorethyl sulphide--mustard gas--and had been put off because he
could not guarantee many deaths, but only thousands of disablements.

"We want something that will kill," Curzon had said, and the British
Army postponed the use of mustard gas until the Germans had proved its
efficiency.

Milward almost began to tell this story, but he caught Curzon's eye
along the length of the table and forbore. Curzon noticed his change of
expression, and with unusual sensitiveness felt Milward's slight
hostility. As host it was his duty to keep the party running smoothly;
as commanding officer it was his duty, too. He remembered Wayland-Leigh
on the night before Loos quoting Shakespeare as he toasted the advance
to the Rhine. He fingered his glass. There was no imminent advance
before them, only a desperate defensive. Into his mind drifted a
fragment which he remembered of one of Lewis Waller's speeches in the
old days when he was playing Henry V.

"Come the four corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them,"
said Curzon, turning to Challis on his right.

"Er--yes. Yes. Quite," said Challis, taken by surprise.

The presence of so many senior officers and the small number of young
subalterns present prevented the evening developing into the sort of
wild entertainment which Curzon had so often experienced in cavalry
messes. The junior ranks were unusually quiet, too. Several of them
withdrew early on the truthful plea that they had work to do, and
Franklin, who was a determined bridge player, quietly collected a four
and settled down, rather rudely and unsociably, Curzon thought.

He went out and stared through the darkness towards the line. The night
was absolutely still. There was an aeroplane or two droning in the
distance, but the sound of their passage was louder than any noise of
guns from the front. The bobbing points of light which marked the line
of trenches on the horizon were far fewer than he had ever noticed
before. There was no breath of wind; the stars were just visible in a
misty sky. Curzon went to bed. If Intelligence's forecast was correct he
would need all his energies for the morrow. He told Mason to call him at
five o'clock.

Curzon was soundly asleep when Mason came in--he had the trick of
sleeping sound until the exact moment when he had planned to wake. Mason
had to touch his shoulder to rouse him.

"Is it five o'clock?" said Curzon, moving his head on the pillow, with
his moustache lopsided.

"It's four-thirty, sir," said Mason. "Here's Mr. Greven wants to speak
to you, sir."

Curzon sat up.

"Bombardment's started, sir," said Greven. "Been going five minutes
now."

The house was trembling to the sound. A thousand German batteries--more
guns than the whole world put together had possessed before the
war--were firing at once.

"Mason, fill my bath," said Curzon, leaping from the bed in his blue and
white pyjamas.

"I've done it, sir," said Mason.

"Any reports?" asked Curzon, flinging off his pyjamas.

"Not yet, sir," said Greven.

"No, of course there wouldn't be," said Curzon. Not for two days did he
expect any vital report--the Germans would be fools if they attacked
after a briefer bombardment than that.

Curzon had his bath, and shaved, and dressed, and walked into his
headquarters office to hear the latest news before he had his breakfast.

"Bombardment's heavy, sir," said Miller, sitting at a telephone. "Gas,
mostly. Queer that they're using gas at this stage of the preparation.
And there's thick fog all along the line. I've warned everyone to expect
local raids."

"Quite right," said Curzon, and went off to eat porridge and bacon and
eggs.

When he had eaten his breakfast he came back again. Miller seemed
unusually worried.

"Something very queer's going on, sir," he said. "Back areas are coming
in for it as much as the front line. They're flooding places with gas."

He proffered half a dozen reports for inspection.

"And the cross-roads behind the line are catching it as well. _We've_
never spread a bombardment out like this."

"I expect they think they know better than us," said Curzon lightly.

"Terry's reporting that all communication with his front line units has
been broken already, but that's only to be expected, of course," said
Miller.

"Yes. Any raids?"

"Nothing yet, sir."

Curzon found his stolidity a little shaken by Miller's alarmist
attitude. There must be a long bombardment before the attack; in theory
there would be no need to do anything for days, and yet--Curzon could
not bring himself to order his horse and take his customary morning's
exercise. He paced restlessly about headquarters instead. The thick
ground mist showed no sign of lifting; the roar of the bombardment
seemed to have increased in intensity.

When next he came back Frobisher was speaking excitedly into a
telephone.

"Yes," he was saying. "Yes," and then he broke off. "Hallo! Hallo! Oh,
hell," and he put the receiver back with a gesture of annoyance.

"Wire's gone, I suppose. That was General Whiteman, sir. Attack's begun.
That's all I could hear."

An orderly came running in with a message brought by a carrier pigeon
and Frobisher snatched it from him. The attack had undoubtedly begun,
and confusion descended upon headquarters.

Incredibly, it seemed, the line was crumbling along the whole corps
front, and along the fronts of the corps on either flank as well. Curzon
could hardly believe the reports which were coming in. One of the chief
duties of a general is to sort out the true from the false, but here it
was impossible to believe anything. One or two strong points in the
front line whose communications had survived reported that they were
holding out without difficulty; the entire absence of news from others
might merely mean a rupture of communication. And yet from here and
there in the second line came reports of the German advance--so far back
in some places that Curzon felt inclined to dismiss them as the result
of over-imagination on the part of the officers responsible. The mist
and the gas were causing confusion; and the German bombardment had been
cunningly directed so as to cause as much havoc as possible in the means
of communication. Curzon found himself talking to an artillery colonel
who was reporting by telephone that the Germans were assaulting his
battery positions.

"Are you sure?" asked Curzon.

"Sure? We're firing over open sights with fuses set at zero," blazed the
colonel at the other end. "God damn it, sir, d'you think I'm mad?"

Through all the weak places in the British line--and they were many--the
German attack was pouring forward like a tide through a faulty dyke. The
strong points were being steadily cut off and surrounded--there was no
heroic expenditure of German life to storm them by main force. Little
handfuls of machine-gunners, assiduously trained, were creeping forward
here and there, aided by the fog, taking up tactical positions which
destroyed all possibility of unity in the defence.

Holnon and Dallon were lost. As the afternoon came Curzon sent orders to
Challis and the Ninety-first Division to move up into the line and stop
the advance. His old Ninety-first could be relied upon to do all their
duty. Guns, ammunition dumps, bridges, all were falling intact into the
hands of the enemy. At nightfall the British Army seemed to be on the
verge of the greatest disaster it had ever experienced, and Curzon's
frantic appeals to Army Headquarters were meeting with no response.

"We've got no reserves to give you at all," said Hudson. "You'll have to
do the best you can with the Ninety-first. It'll be four days at least
before we can give you any help. You've just got to hold on, Curzon. We
know you'll do it."

All through the night the bombardment raved along the line. Challis was
reporting difficulties in executing his orders. Roads were under fire,
other roads were blocked with retreating transport. He could get no
useful information from his fellow divisional generals. But he was not
despairing. He was deploying his division where it stood, to cover what
he guessed to be the largest gap opening in the British line. Curzon
clung to that hope. Surely the Ninety-first would stop the Huns.

At dawn Franklin reported that he was shifting his headquarters--the
German advance had reached that far. There was no news from Terry at
all. He must have been surrounded, or his headquarters hit by a
shell--four motor-cyclists had been sent to find him, and none had
returned. The coloured pins on Miller's map indicated incredible
bulgings of the line.

"Message from Whiteman, sir," said Frobisher, white-cheeked. "He's lost
all his guns. Doesn't know where Thomas's brigade is. And he says
Stanton's is legging it back as fast as it can, what there is left of
it."

That meant danger to the right flank of the Ninety-first. Before Curzon
could reply Miller called to him.

"Challis on the telephone, sir. He says both flanks are turned. There
are Huns in St. Felice, and nothing can get through Boncourt 'cause of
mustard gas. Shall he hold on?"

Should he hold on? If he did the Ninety-first would be destroyed. If he
did not there would be no solid point in the whole line, and in the
absence of reserves there was no knowing how wide the gap would open.
Could he trust the Ninety-first to hold together under the
disintegrating stress of a retreat in the presence of the enemy? He went
over to the telephone.

"Hallo, Challis."

"Yes, sir."

"What are your men like?"

"All right, sir. They'll do anything you ask of them--in reason."

"Well----"

Frobisher came running over to him at that moment with a scrap of paper
which an orderly had brought in--a message dropped from an aeroplane. It
bore only three important words, and they were "Enemy in Flcourt." At
that rate the Germans were far behind Challis's right flank, and on the
point of intercepting his retreat. There could be no extricating the
Ninety-first now.

"I can't order you to retreat, Challis," said Curzon. "The Huns are in
Flcourt."

"Christ!"

"There's nothing for it but for you to hold on while you can. You must
maintain your present position to the last man, Challis."

"Very good, sir. Good-bye."

Those few words had condemned ten thousand men to death or mutilation.

"If the Huns are in Flcourt, sir," said Miller, "it's time we got out
of here."

Half a dozen eager pairs of eyes looked up at Curzon when Miller said
that. He was voicing the general opinion.

"Yes," said Curzon. What Miller said was only common sense. But Curzon
suddenly felt very dispirited, almost apathetic. What was the use of
withdrawing all this elaborate machinery of the Corps command when there
was no Corps left? Three divisions were in ruins, and a fourth would be
overwhelmed by converging attacks in the next two hours. And there was
nothing to fill the gap. The Germans had achieved the break-through
which the English had sought in vain for three years, and a
break-through meant defeat and ruin. England had suffered a decisive
military defeat at a vital point. Curzon went back in his mind through a
list of victories which had settled the fate of Europe--Sedan, Sadowa,
Waterloo. Now England was among the conquered. He tried to find a
precedent in English military history, and he went farther and farther
back in his mind through the centuries. Not until he reached Hastings
could he find a parallel. Hastings had laid England at the feet of the
Normans, and this defeat would lay England at the feet of the Germans.

"We'll move in the usual two echelons," Miller was saying. "Frobisher,
you'll go with the first."

What was the use of it all? A vivid flash of imagination, like lightning
at night, revealed the future to Curzon. He would return to England a
defeated general, one of the men who had let England down. There would
be public reproaches. Courts martial, perhaps. Emily would stand by him,
but he did not want her to have to do so. In an excruciating moment he
realized that even with Emily at his side he could not face a future of
professional failure. Emily whom he loved would make it all the worse.
He would rather die, the way the old Ninety-first was dying.

He swung round upon Greven, who was standing helpless, as was only to be
expected, amid the bustle of preparation for the transfer.

"Send for my horse," he said.

Those who heard him gaped.

"The motor-cars are just coming round, sir," said Miller, respectfully.

"I shan't want mine," replied Curzon. Even at that moment he sought to
avoid the melodramatic by the use of curt military phrasing. "I'm going
up the line. I shall leave you in charge, Miller."

"Up the line," someone whispered, echoing his words. They knew now what
he intended.

"I'll send for my horse, too, sir," said Follett. As A.D.C. it was his
duty to stay by his general's side, even when the general was riding to
his death. One or two people looked instinctively at Greven.

"And me, too, of course," said Greven, slowly.

"Right," said Curzon harshly. "Miller, it'll be your duty to reorganize
what's left of the Corps. We can still go down fighting."

"Yes, sir."

"Two minutes, Follett," said Curzon, and under the gaze of every eye he
strode across the room and through the green baize door into his
quarters.

Mason was running round like a squirrel in a cage, packing his officer's
things.

"Get me my sword," snapped Curzon.

"Your sword, sir?"

"Yes, you fool."

While Mason plunged in search of the sword into the rolled valise,
Curzon wrenched open the silver photograph frame upon the wall. He
stuffed Emily's photograph into the breast of his tunic.

"Here it is, sir," said Mason.

Curzon slipped the sword into the frog of his Sam Browne. There was
still a queer military pleasure to be found in the tap of the sheath
against his left boot. Mason was talking some foolishness or other, but
Curzon did not stop to listen. He walked out to the front of the house,
where among the motor vehicles Greven and Follett were on horseback and
a groom was holding his own horse. Curzon swung himself up into his
saddle. The horse was full of oats and insufficiently exercised lately,
besides being infected by the excitement and bustle. He plunged madly as
Curzon's right foot found the stirrup. Curzon brought the brute back to
the level with the cruel use of the curb, and swung his head round
towards the gate. Then he dashed out to the road, with Greven and
Follett clattering wildly behind him.

The road was crowded with evidences of a defeat. Transport of all sorts,
ambulances, walking wounded, were all pouring down it with the one
intention of escaping capture. Puzzled soldiers stared at the three
red-tabbed officers, magnificently mounted, who were galloping so madly
over the clattering _pav_ towards the enemy. Far ahead Curzon could
hear the roar of the guns as the Ninety-first fought its last battle.
His throat was dry although he swallowed repeatedly. There was no
thought in his head as he abandoned himself to the smooth rhythm of his
galloping horse. Suddenly a flash of colour penetrated into his
consciousness. There was a group of unwounded soldiers on the road, and
the little squares on their sleeves showed that they belonged to the
Ninety-first. He pulled up his horse and turned upon them.

"What the Hell are you doing here?" he demanded.

"We ain't got no officer, sir," said one.

They were stragglers escaped by a miracle from the shattered left wing
of their division.

"D'you need an officer to show you how to do your duty? Turn back at
once. Follett, bring them on with you. I expect you'll find others up
the road."

Curzon wheeled his lathered horse round again and dashed on, only Greven
following him now. They approached the cross-roads where a red-capped
military policeman was still directing traffic. An officer there was
trying to sort out the able-bodied from the others.

"Ah!" said Curzon.

At that very moment a German battery four miles away opened fire. They
were shooting by the map, and they made extraordinarily good practice as
they sought for the vital spots in the enemy's rear. Shells came
shrieking down out of the blue and burst full upon the cross-roads, and
Curzon was hit both by a flying fragment of red-hot steel and by a
jagged lump of _pav_. His right leg was shattered, and his horse was
killed.

Greven saved Curzon's life--or at least always thought he did, although
the credit ought really to be given to the two lightly wounded R.A.M.C.
men who came to the rescue, and put on bandages and tourniquets, and
stopped a passing lorry by the authority of Greven's red tabs, and
hoisted Curzon in.

Pain came almost at once. No torment the Inquisition devised could equal
the agony Curzon knew as the lorry heaved and pitched over the uneven
road, jolting his mangled leg so that the fragments of bone grated
together. Soon he was groaning, with the sweat running over his
chalk-white face, and when they reached the hospital he was crying out
loud, a mere shattered fragment of a man despite his crossed sword and
bton and crown, and his red tabs and his silly sword.

They had drugged him and they operated upon him, and they operated again
and again, so that he lay for months in a muddle of pain and drugs while
England fought with her back to the wall and closed by a miracle the gap
which had been torn in her line at St. Quentin.

While he lay bathed in waves of agony, or inert under the drugs, he was
sometimes conscious of Emily's presence beside him, and sometimes Emily
was crying quietly, just as she had done at that revue he took her to on
the last night of his last leave after Paschendaele and someone sang
"Roses of Picardy." It was a long time before he was sure enough of this
solid world again to put out his hand to her.

And now Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Curzon and his wife, Lady Emily,
are frequently to be seen on the promenade at Bournemouth, he in his
bathchair with a plaid rug, she in tweeds striding behind. He smiles his
old-maidish smile at his friends, and his friends are pleased with that
distinction, although he plays such bad bridge and is a little inclined
to irascibility when the east wind blows.






[End of The General, by C. S. Forester]
