Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 308
So the admiral would take his stick and his spy-glass and walk out with the children from his cottage along the cliffs beside the sea. His “cottage” the admiral always called it; and he spoke of it as a “snug little crib.” But the eyes of others saw a green and white mansion set in handsome lawns and gardens and glass houses, in a sheltered hollow, behind the cliffs, within sight and sound of the sea.
The stick the admiral needed from a slight stiffness of the left knee acquired in boarding the Sanctissima Trinidad on October 21, 1805. The spy-glass might at any moment be needed to examine a ship far out at sea and to explain to the children why the ship, from the extra length of her mainyard, was a “Frenchman.”
It always seemed so strange and fascinating to the children to think that grandpapa had been in the great war, had actually seen “Boney” on the deck of the Bellerophon, and had even talked with “the Duke” — ever so many times, in fact more and more often as he told about it.
So sometimes they walked along the cliffs and grandpapa told stories of the war; and sometimes if it was windy they came and sat on a bench under the great trees on the spacious lawns of the sheltered “cottage.” Cottage or not, it was an estate of great beauty and would have commanded a lot of money in the market. For like all his generation, the admiral had done well out of the war. What with prize money accumulated for years, and the lucky purchase of lands in Portugal and the pension of a grateful sovereign, the admiral was a wealthy man. But that, of course, was always the reward of war and the admiral took it all modestly and with due humility.
So that afternoon Admiral Halftop sat with the children in the autumn light among the falling and fallen leaves.
“Did you ever fight on land, grandpapa?” asked little Edward.
“On land! Aye, to be sure, my boy. When the war moved to Spain, you know, we hadn’t much to do at sea then, so they shoved a lot of us youngsters with the naval brigade. We marched in from Santander — or was it Corunna — no, wait a bit, it was Santander — aye, that’s right, Santander, of course, yes, Santander.”
The admiral kept murmuring “Santander” so long that little Edward said, “And what did you do, grandpapa?”
“Do? Oh, we were supposed to go and help the Spanish gorillas.”
“Spanish what?” asked Clara.
“Gorillas,” said the admiral.
“Animals?” exclaimed both children.
“No, no, my dears, gorillas is the word we used for irregular Spaniards.”
“Is it spelt like the word in the picture book?” asked Clara.
“Couldn’t say?” said the admiral. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of my Spanish years ago. We never had another war against them — or with them, I should say; they were, as I remember, on our side. At sea they’d been against us.”
“How was that?” asked Edward.
“Don’t know,” said the admiral; “anyway, that was the arrangement. But they were a poor lot. I remember when our column joined the Duke — he’d come through, you know, from the Tagus — wait a bit, the Douro — not, the Tagus, yes, yes, the Tagus — we had about half a company of them with us — marching anyhow — some on donkeys. The Duke reined in his horse. I was right beside him as he stopped. ‘What the devil are those fellows?’ he said, turning towards me. ‘Spanish gorillas, sir,’ I answered. ‘Damme,’ said the Duke, ‘they look like it.’ Then he looked at my uniform, ‘And what are you?’ ‘Naval brigade, sir.’ ‘Damme,’ said the Duke, ‘I see you are.’ Then he turned to an aide-de-camp. ‘Ride and tell Sir John to dress those damn Spaniards better.’ Then we heard him murmur, ‘How the deuce do they expect me to meet Marmont with a lot of sailors and Spaniards!’ And off he rode.”
“What a disagreeable man!” exclaimed little Clara.
“Disagreeable! Not a bit!” said the admiral. “Deuced fine fellow, the Duke. I remember well the next time he saw me he said, ‘So you’re the young puppy that came in by Santander, eh? Damme, I hope you like it.’ Always knew everybody, the Duke did, always had a word to say like that. Next time I saw him outside Burgos. ‘Eh, what the devil,’ he said, ‘not shot yet?’ Oh, we all liked him, the Duke; damn fine soldier, no nonsense about him. But he couldn’t stand for the Spaniards. Neither could the French officers for the matter of that. In fact they often told us so.”
“The French?” said Edward, puzzled, “but weren’t you fighting against the French?”
“Certainly, the French were the enemy. Splendid lot they were too.”
“Then why were you fighting them?”
“Ah, well! that didn’t concern us — nor them either, for that matter. I mean to say, the French were the enemy and that’s as far as it mattered to us. Excellent fellows, we got to like them better and better.”
“But how would you know them if you were fighting them?”
“My dear Edward,” said Admiral Halftop. “Surely you don’t think that a soldier’s life is made up of fighting. I’m afraid you’d get damn few chaps to care for that. Plenty of time for fighting in its proper place, but when we were in bivouac they’d walk over to our lines, or we to theirs. And they’d send us over things — under a flag, you know. At first their commissariat was far better than ours — especially the wine. The ridiculous thing was that we couldn’t take anything from the Spaniards and of course they could. So they’d send over wine and game and things.”
“But was that allowed?” asked Edward.
“Allowed? Well — they’d hardly expect us to fight them on an empty stomach, would they?”
“You mean you actually knew the French and talked to them?”
“Why, of course,” said the admiral. “Saw a great deal of them, you know — truces, prisoners of war, parleys, all that sort of thing. As a matter of fact when the fighting wasn’t going on we often met them in the inns — against all rules, you know — but none of the generals ever cared. Why, Marshal Soult and the Duke, you know, became great friends.”
“But then, what was the war about if you didn’t hate the French?”
“Ah, now,” said Admiral Halftop, “that’s another question, isn’t it? Everyone said that the war was because Bonaparte was determined to conquer Spain — quite right of course — and we were determined to stop him — equally right, so there you are—”
“Then he was a very wicked man,” said little Clara.
“Wicked!” protested the admiral. “God bless me no! Fine fellow, Boney. I saw him myself, Edward, spoke to him — or at least he spoke to me. I Went on board the Bellerophon — not to sail with them, hadn’t the luck to do that — but sent with despatches. I had to wait on deck while the captain took the papers below to answer. Boney was there asking questions with a lot of our fellows round him and he was asking questions about the running gear. It seemed to surprise him that we knew the names of it all. ‘Et vous,’ says he turning to me, ‘quelle est cette corde-ci?’ Well, as a matter of fact all it was was simply the lower top-gallant-down-haul and I told him so. ‘Tiens!’ he said, ‘c’est curieux.’ That’s French, my dears, and it means ‘Well, that’s a rum go.’ And then he was silent. I had an idea he was thinking that if he’d had sailors like us . . .”
“Children, children!” cried their mother’s voice. “Here’s the pony carriage. Come along. Papa, if you don’t go in and dress you’ll be late for dinner. You’ve got Commander Cormorant coming, you know.”
“Ah, to be sure, to be sure! Bustle along, my dears, good-bye. Come again soon.”
As they drove home in the pony carriage little Clara said, “If I were a boy I think I’d like to be a sailor — or else a soldier—”
“What else is there to be?” said Edward.
Chapter III. He Goes in 1950
“YOU’LL HAVE TO go out on the lawn for a little while, children, and look after your grandfather.”
“Oh, bother,” said Edward. “Can’t he look after himself for once, mother?”
“You know he can’t,” said the woman gently, “and I can’t stay with him any longer. It’s Tilda’s afternoon out, and I have the work to do.”
“I know, mother,” said Edward, “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t really mind, mother. Come on, Clara.”
“Put your jacket on, dear,” said the woman to the little girl. “It’s too cold now to be out without a jacket. It’s nearly winter already.”
Little Clara said nothing. But her wistful face and half frightened eyes showed how she felt. The truth was the little girl was frightened to be with grandfather. With her brother Edward there, she didn’t mind so much, but if she had to be alone with him at all — if Edward went into the house to fetch anything — the presence of the old man frightened her. There was something in the unmoving attitude of the tall straight figure, sitting upright in a rustic chair, hardly ever speaking; something in the droop of the half withered left arm, the fingers always clutched; and most of all something in the sightless face that seemed to chill within the little girl the very springs of life and gladness.
For both the little children, to have to “sit with grandfather” was the standing trial of their existence. School was not so bad; the limitations of their shabby home they scarcely knew. The fact that they were not well off, because all the money of their family had been lost ever so long ago in the war — these things did not affect them in any conscious way.
But their trial was that for part of the time each day, or at any rate two or three times each week, they had to look after their grandfather. Somebody had to be near him, they knew that. For most of the time each day there was a village boy who was paid to be with the old man; and part of the time the clergyman’s daughter from the next house came and read to him. In the evenings, indoors, their mother was there, and Tilda, the maid, ironing in the kitchen. Grandfather sat in his room then, and it was all right.
But when they had to be alone with their grandfather and to know that he was under their charge, the children felt a strange uncanny feeling — an apprehension that something was going to happen. They were afraid.
Partly this was because they knew that their grandfather had been in the War of Desolation. This alone seemed to strike a chill into his presence. They knew that he was one of the very few surviving people about them who could remember the terror of that time. But he never spoke of it. And the children never asked him about it. They had always been told that they must never talk to grandfather about the War of Desolation.
They knew of course from their history books the general idea of what had happened. There had come into the world first of all a war of four years’ duration which the history books still called the World War. The children never could remember what nations were on which side though they had had to learn it at school. But it was hard to remember. And they had learned how after this war, not very long after, there had come another war, much more terrible, called the War of Desolation.
They knew too that this “final war,” this War of Desolation, had come to a sudden and strange end. The history books, it is true, glossed it over with generalities about “universal agreement” and nearly all the people who had been in it were dead. But everybody knew that the war had just ended, broken up, collapsed. All of a sudden, by a sort of mass impulse, the soldiers had left the trenches, hundreds and thousands of them together, in a mad desire to get back home to save their wives and children from the horror of the “falling death.”
It had long since been known that the war would be fought from the air and that its chief weapons would be great blankets of heavy poison gas sent down on the crowded cities. The trenches, everyone knew, would only be a frontier, a line of deadlock. But few had foreseen what this would mean. No army of men could be made to sit in the safety and shelter of a dug-out line while hundreds of miles behind them their wives and children perished. The soldiers broke. Officers were shot down, or broke with the men, in the wild rush for “home” to save their people or to die with them. It was not against the “enemy” that the anger of the soldiers turned. It was against governments, parliaments, statesmen and patriots. The history books gave but little account of the vengeance taken, often as blind and ruthless as war itself. But war, as an institution, died with the War of Desolation — self-destroyed.
Since then a generation had gone by — nearly two generations. There were nations still, and even a league of nations, and in a limited and declining way, armaments and armed forces.
But even children knew that war was gone.
So the children went out that afternoon to sit beside their grandfather.
“If you call me, I can hear,” said their mother, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
“That’s all right, mother,” said Edward.
“And, Edward—” she called the boy back a minute and whispered— “come and fetch me at once if — you know.”
“I know, mother, if there’s an aeroplane. But there won’t be. They never come here.”
“Sometimes they do. And, Edward, when grandfather asks for his medicine, come and take it out to him. I won’t get it ready till he asks.”
Out on the lawn in the presence of their grandfather both the children felt a little bit afraid, as they always did. Partly it was because the old man sat so still, so silent. For a long time he never spoke. Then at some rumbling noise in the village street, he started a little in his chair and asked, “Was that a cart?”
“Only a cart, grandfather.”
Then he fell silent again. The hedges around the little lawn and the tall trees that grew beside it shut out, for the most part, all light and sound. Above the trees the blue autumn sky was empty and silent.
“Was grandfather always like this?” asked little Edward as he stood in the kitchen watching his mother prepare the tonic for the old man. “I mean, was he like this ever since the war?”
“Oh, no, dear,” said his mother. “It only came on much later, the effect of the terrible poison was very slow in his case. After the war your grandfather worked for years — he was an engineer, dear, and a very clever one. He had to work because all the money was lost in the ruin of the war.”
“Was grandfather’s family rich before?”
“Oh, very rich, dear. There was a famous old admiral — your great-great — I don’t know how many greats — at any rate your ancestor who was an admiral and had lands in Spain that turned into a fortune, but it was all lost in the War of Desolation.”
“When you were a little girl, did grandfather ever talk to you about the war?”
“Never about himself, dear, but of course we knew.”
“Why didn’t the gas kill him?”
“I don’t know, dear. He was the only one they found alive in streets and streetsful of the dead. He had his little brother held against him, dead. Father, your grandfather I mean, had come back from the trenches when the men broke from the command. He knew they were going to bomb the city and he wanted to save his brother. There were only those two left alive in the family. The others were gone.”
“And he couldn’t save him?”
“No, dear.”
“And he got ill after?”
“Only gradually, dear. When your aunt and I were little girls, I can remember him so straight and strong. Then his sight began to go — little by little. And then it began to reach his brain. The doctors say . . .” She paused. Perhaps it would be just as well not to tell the little boy what the doctors said; time enough when it happened.
Then suddenly —
“Good heavens, what is it?”
“Oh, oh, mother! mother! come quick!”
It was little Clara’s voice as she burst into the room in a panic of fright. “Mother, come! There’s something the matter with grandfather.”
Mother and children rushed out on the lawn. The old man had risen from his chair to his full gaunt height. His sightless eyes were turned towards the sky. His clenched hands waved and threatened in the air. From his mouth came a storm of fierce imprecation.
Loud over the trees beyond came the roaring of an approaching plane. The old man seemed to hear their steps on the grass as they drew near. He turned towards them. He was clutching one arm against his breast as if to hold something — nothing — sheltered against it.
“They’re coming,” he shouted, “keep close to me. Follow me. Put your head there, close under my coat, your mouth covered. Don’t be afraid, little brother, I can save you. Stop firing,” he shouted. “It’s useless now. To the cellars, all of you!”
The old man stood erect, motioning with one hand to the unseen people whose hurrying feet and pallid faces had passed from the earth fifty years ago. With his other hand he clasped his little brother close against his breast to shield him from the onrush of the gas. On his sightless face was the inspiration of exalted courage, and over his head screamed the approaching plane.
His daughter rushed to him and seized his arm.
“Father! Father!” she pleaded. “It’s nothing; only an aeroplane. Father, come in, come with me — It is nothing.”
The old man yielded as she dragged him towards the house, his voice sinking to a murmur as the great plane swept overhead and passed.
“Run, Edward,” whispered his mother, “and fetch the doctor. Tell him that grandfather is bad again. Come, father, dear, come and lie down.”
Quite late that evening, the two children were taken to their grandfather’s room. They were told it was to say “good-bye.” But the room was nearly dark and they could hardly see him. His hand was cold and what he said was only a whisper beyond all power of hearing. But the children knew and were frightened.
Afterwards, when they stood outside the door on the landing: “Do you think, Eddie,” said Clara, “there’ll ever be another war?”
“How could there be?” said Edward.
Chapter IV. With the League of Nations, A.D. 2000 Or So
IF THE PICTURES of the past and of the immediate future as presented in the preceding chapters are correct, then let us grant that war, as we know it, has got to go. The common sense of humanity revolts at slaughter by machinery.
