Men, Women and Guns. H. C. McNeile

then he laughed. "Of course, the humour of the situation couldn't help striking me. Dick O'Rourke in a filthy hole, covered with branches and bits of dirt, watching two mangy old Belgians picking up wood. But, having stood it the whole day, I made up my mind to wait, at any rate, till night. If only I could catch the gun in action—even if the odds were too great for me alone—I'd be able to spot the hiding-place, and come back later with a party and round them up.

      "Then suddenly the evening hate started—artillery from all over the place—and with it the Belgian labourers ceased from plucking sticks. Running down a little path, so close to me that I could almost touch him, came one of them. He stopped about ten yards away where the dense undergrowth finished, and, after looking cautiously round, waved his hand. The other one nipped behind a tree and called out something in a guttural tone of voice. And then, I give you my word, out of the bowels of the earth there popped up a little gun not twenty yards from where I'd been lying the whole day. By this time, of course, I was in the same sort of condition as a terrier is when he's seen the cat he has set his heart on shin up a tree, having missed her tail by half an inch.

      "They clapped her on a little mounting quick as light, laid her, loaded, and, by the holy saints! under my very nose, loosed off a present for Poperinghe. The man on guard waved his hand again, and bedad! away went another. The next instant he was back, again an exclamation in German, and in about two shakes the whole thing had disappeared, and there were the two labourers picking sticks. I give you my word it was like a clown popping up in a pantomime through a trap-door; I had to pinch myself to make certain I was awake.

      "The next instant into the clearing came two English soldiers, the reason evidently of the sudden dismantling. Had they been armed we'd have had at them then and there; but, of course, so far behind the trenches, they had no rifles. They just peered round, saw the Belgians, and went off again. I heard their steps dying away in the distance, and decided to wait a bit longer. The two men seemed to be discussing what to do, and ultimately moved behind the tree again, where I could hear them talking. At last they came to a decision, and picking up their bundles of sticks came slowly down the path past me. They were not going to fire again that evening."

      Dick smiled reminiscently. "Bill, pass the rum. I'm thirsty."

      "What did you do, Dick?" I asked, eagerly.

      "What d'you think? I was out like a knife and let drive with my hand-gun. I killed the first one as dead as mutton, and missed the second, who shot like a stag into the undergrowth. Gad! It was great. I put two more where I thought he was, but as I still heard him crashing on I must have missed him. Then I nipped round the tree to find the gun. The only thing there was a great hole full of leaves. I ploughed across it, thinking it must be the other side, when, without a word of warning, I fell through the top—bang through the top, my boy, of the neatest hiding-place you've ever thought of. The whole of the centre of those leaves was a fake. There were about two inches of them supported on light hurdle-work. I was in the robber's cave with a vengeance."

      "Was the gun there?" I cried, excitedly.

      "It was. Also the Hun. The gun of small variety; the Hun of large—very large. I don't know which of us was the more surprised—him or me; we just stood gazing at one another.

      "'Halloa, Englishman,' he said; 'come to leave a card?'

      "'Quite right, Boche,' I answered. 'A p.p.c. one.'

      "I was rather pleased with that touch at the time, old son. I was just going to elaborate it, and point out that he—as the dear departing—should really do it, when he was at me.

      "Bill, my boy, you should have seen that fight. Like a fool, I never saw his revolver lying on the table, and I'd shoved my own back in my holster. He got it in his right hand, and I got his right wrist in my left. We'd each got the other by the throat, and one of us was for the count. We each knew that. At one time I thought he'd got me—we were crashing backwards and forwards, and I caught my head against a wooden pole which nearly stunned me. And, mark you, all the time I was expecting his pal to come back and inquire after his health. Then suddenly I felt him weaken, and I squeezed his throat the harder. It came quite quickly at the end. His pistol-hand collapsed, and I suppose muscular contraction pulled the trigger, for the bullet went through his head, though I think he was dead already." Dick O'Rourke paused, and looked thoughtfully into the fire.

      "But why in the name of Heaven," I cried, irritably, "have you kept this dark all the while? Why didn't you tell us at the time?"

      For a while he did not answer, and then he produced his pocket-book. From it he took a photograph, which he handed to me.

      "Out of that German's pocket I took that photograph."

      "Well," I said, "what about it? A very pretty girl for a German." Then I looked at it closely. "Why, it was taken in England. Is it an English girl?"

      "Yes," he answered, dryly, "it is. It's Moyra Kavanagh, whom I proposed to forty-eight hours previously at Ciro's. She refused me, and told me then she was in love with a German. I celebrate the news by coming over here and killing him, in an individual fight where it was man to man."

      "But," I cried, "good heavens! man—it was you or he."

      "I know that," he answered, wearily. "What then? He evidently loved her; if not—why the photo. Look at what's written on the back—'From Moyra—with all my love.' All her love. Lord! it's a rum box up." He sighed wearily and slowly replaced it in his case. "So I buried him, and I chucked his gun in a pond, and said nothing about it. If I had it would probably have got into the papers or some such rot, and she'd have wanted to know all about it. Think of it! What the deuce would I have told her? To sympathise and discuss her love affairs with her in London, and then toddle over here and slaughter him. Dash it, man, it's Gilbertian! And, mark you, nothing would induce me to marry her—even if she'd have me—without her knowing."

      "But—" I began, and then fell silent. The more I thought of it the less I liked it. Put it how you like, for a girl to take as her husband a man who has actually killed the man she loved and was engaged to—German or no German—is a bit of a pill to swallow.

      After mature consideration we decided to present the pill to her garbed in this form. On me—as a scribbler of sorts—descended the onus of putting it on paper. When I'd done it, and Dick had read it, he said I was a fool, and wanted to tear it up. Which is like a man. …

      Look you, my lady, it was a fair fight—it was war—it was an Englishman against a German; and the best man won. And surely to Heaven you can't blame poor old Dick? He didn't know; how could he have known, how … but what's the use? If your heart doesn't bring it right—neither my pen nor my logic is likely to. Which is like a woman.

CHAPTER II

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PRIVATE MEYRICK—COMPANY IDIOT

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      No one who has ever given the matter a moment's thought would deny, I suppose, that a regiment without discipline is like a ship without a rudder. True as that fact has always been, it is doubly so now, when men are exposed to mental and physical shocks such as have never before been thought of.

      The condition of a man's brain after he has sat in a trench and suffered an intensive bombardment for two or three hours can only be described by one word, and that is—numbed. The actual physical concussion, apart altogether from the mental terror, caused by the bursting of a succession of large shells in a man's vicinity, temporarily robs him of the use of his thinking faculties. He becomes half-stunned, dazed; his limbs twitch convulsively and involuntarily; he mutters foolishly—he becomes incoherent. Starting with fright he passes through that stage, passes beyond it into a condition bordering on coma; and when a man is in that condition he is not responsible for his actions. His brain has ceased to work. …