night. I-I thought I smelled his filthy pipe. He'd sneak up and skulk about behind chimneys; twice I caught him peeking out at us. I don't know if he saw anything, it was all so quick. We were sitting right by the edge of the roof, and she tilted her chair sideways when I jumped at her. She did n't scream. She threw up her hands and tried to clutch me as she toppled over. I stepped back. I just let her go. That 's murder, is n't it? And you know what was in my head that minute? What that old fellow said about a man falling off a roof in Mars. I had a sort of crazy idea that she 'd flutter down, down as light as paper.' "Never mind the janitor,' pleaded Jessica. 'What can he do? Perhaps he did n't see. Don't think of that. You must get away and begin over again. Think of this as a terrible dream.' "She remembered that she had sent down some money that evening to pay for a package she expected in the morning, and she began to search frantically, pulling out drawers, opening cupboards, until she found it and thrust the bills into his hands. Then as he still stood before her, silent, bewildered, she went on insistently: You must go away at once. You can't stay here any longer. But I'll give you the key of the little park. It 's locked, you know, and it has high railings round. it. It's the stillest spot, the loneliest place in the city. You can sit under a tree near the fountain, hidden from the street. You can sit there all night and look at Mars and decide where you '11 go. And you will go on. Promise me, please!' "She gave him the key. He looked at it curiously, turning it over and over, and then he looked at her and smiled timidly as he had when they first faced each other across the kitchen table. "Well, she opened the basement door, and out he went, still clutching his cap and the key, to a few quiet hours; and after she shut the iron grille he stood still for a minute in the areaway, with his head thrown back, looking up at the lights. "THAT 's about all. I suppose you 'd like to know what Ruby did that finally drove her young husband to violence. He did n't tell, you see. Jessica said he made her feel that it was something way beyond jealousy that moved him. Perhaps something in her that would not only kill his love, but her own loveliness as well. Who knows? Is it ever possible to put one's fingers on the cause of a tragedy? Those things are cumulative, of course; anger, resentment, revenge, even righteous indignation, all follow the same course, slowly gathering momentum, moving with the inevitability of time itself. You can't retard or evade the final crash, and you can't say it was caused by so and so. You might as well say that a mountain-goat stamped, and brought about a landslide. "And, anyway, Jessica was doubtful in the end if he had intended what happened. I think he did, myself; still "Poor Jessica! She crept up to bed that night quaking in the grip of new emotions. Suddenly in an eye's blink she realized that humans are penned from one another by purely imaginary barriers, and she knew what death was; she had a vague idea what love might be, and she was at once timorous and eager to know more. "Very early the next morning she went out and peered through the park railings. She had no key to open the gate, but she walked slowly around outside, looking into every corner. "There was no one there. And as she looked, it seemed impossible that in the night a despairing intruder had invaded. the snug inclosure, disturbing its green quiet, its neat security. "You know the little park? It's incredibly fresh, incredibly neat. In the middle is a fountain presided over by a decorous white nymph with a little hat on her head and very voluminous mid-Victorian draperies; a sort of sublimated nurse-maid in marble; very suitable. "Every night Jessica walks there with her husband and the two chows, and her new thoughts." ΤΗ By A BRITISH OFFICER HE major commanding 809th Battery R.F.A. picked his way in the rain along the cabbage-patch, looking for his dugout. It was two A.M. and a blind moon, and all the dugouts looked the same, little tunnels in the ground into which one crept like a rabbit. The cabbage-patch was the major's own idea. Instead of digging along hedge-rows, where the aeroplanes were accustomed by now to look for signs of habitation, he had dug boldly in the cabbage-patch in the middle of the field, and replanted the cabbages on the roofs of the dugouts. In aëroplane photographs of the field the dugouts were virtually invisible, and "what really is a bit of luck," the major used to say, "there are those two shell-holes on the edge of the cabbages to divert attention." In the dark the major peered into one of the dugouts, and switched on his electric torch. A large, white porcelain bath was let in flush with the ground. "Carey 's got that bath, I see," he said to himself. "Good!" The absurdity of a porcelain bath in a hole in a field tickled him. "What a rum thing this war is!" was the way he put it to himself. A moment later he was in his own dugout, had wriggled out of his gumboots, wound his wrist-watch, glanced at his wife's photograph on the roof just above him, and within thirty seconds of pulling the blankets over him had passed into deep, dreamless slumber. God bless the sleep of all soldiers! Be sure they have need of it. "MESSAGE from brigade headquarters, sir!” suddenly said a voice at the entry of the dugout. "Well, you'd better read it out," said the major, sitting up. "Following received from Lieut. Leslie begins: Germans thickly collected each side railway behind second barrier be tween Y7 and Y8. All their communications are down by side of railway. Can you turn on? 405th Brigade." " "Tell sergeant-major to carry on on yesterday's register. Do that first. Then call Mr. Drummond, and say I want to see him at once. I shall observe from F2. I will go up there at once and take the trumpeter, and one telephonist will be wanted for Mr. Drummond. Mr. Drummond will probably be in F7. Tell my servant to have some lunch strapped on to my bicycle." As he came out of his dugout the major looked at his watch. It was four A.M., and that odd sense of change which comes just before the dawn was in the air. It was still raining. A subaltern came up in the dark. "Is that you, Major?" he said. "Good morning, Drummond," said the other. "I wanted you. Leslie says there's a collection of Boches in Railway Wood. I want you to go up to F7. You'd better tap into Leslie's wire. We may as well go up together on the bicycles as far as the cross-roads." Field-artillery are not "entitled" to bicycles in the British army; but 809th Battery had large ideas, and the sergeantmajor had a knack of "finding" things that the battery wanted. They now possessed over and above their "establishment" eight bicycles; two limbered wagons, made up from debris in the rubbishheaps of Ypres and painted regulation color so as to escape the notice of inspecting generals; fifteen miles of D3 telephone wire, and two miles of captured German wire,-this was better than the English wire; they wished they had more of it,a motor-cycle, on which the subalterns used to ride enormous distances, and return with bottles of Cointreau or cherry brandy for the mess; two acetylene lamps; a large supply of carbide; and, as already 1 This narrative, while it is a combination and rearrangement of actual facts, is substantially The Trumpeter's Notes A photograph of the original memoranda written down during the battle. The real number of the brigade has been cut out by the military authorities for military reasons they all seem to be, that the world is all wrong.' Then she repeated, 'I 've never thought about life at all before last week.' "While I was wondering whether I should urge her to tell me what had changed the complexion of her universe, she blurted out, as if she feared her courage might fail: "I wish I could tell you about it. If I told my husband, he 'd think me crazy; if I told any of my friends, they 'd run around asking, “Oh, have you heard about Jessica's electrician?" They'd make a joke or a scandal out of it. May I tell you?' And then as I nodded, 'How funny that I should tell you here!' "She told her tale without the slightest affectation. No interpolations or explanations or opinions of her own; I always prefer to supply that sort of thing in my telling. Anything that impressed her she repeated as she had heard it, word for word. It was n't, of course, the sort of story that would have satisfied a jury; not explicit or detailed enough, and not especially coherent. It was just real; an accurate report would have left one quite cold. That's the difference between reality and actuality. There's nothing, you 'll admit, so ludicrously stationary as a snap-shot of a person running or walking. That foot thrust forward in the act of taking a step seems turned to stone. Have n't you noticed it? In order to give a sense of real motion the literal image of a moving being won't do. It's the same way with a tale. "I got the core of the whole thing from her telling then, but I built it out a bit later after a walk about the little park and a talk with an old telescope-man in Fourteenth Street, a strange old chap with a face as round as a moon and roughly pitted, like the moon's surface in a photograph. "I'll give you the tale, if you like, just as I have it now in my head. "Jessica and her husband had been out walking in the park with their two chows. It was a June evening, about ten o'clock. They had left their door ajar, as they often did in warm weather, and Jessica had run in ahead to telephone. All the servants had gone to bed but one maid, who was dozing in the pantry. Jessica called to her that she would close the doors, and sent her off to bed. Now, the telephone on that floor was in a corner between the dining-room and the basement stairway, very dark and inconvenient, the 'phone on a high shelf, no chair, and close to it, so close that one was always knocking things off it, stood a clothes-tree bulgy with mackintoshes and sweaters and rough coats. Every household, unless it's dominated by a domestic-efficiency expert, has some such corner. One says, I really must get at this and do so and so,' but one does n't. "The wire was busy, and as Jessica waited, she tried to push the clothes-tree farther into the corner. It would n't budge, though she pushed with all her might, and then a voice, very low and very anxious, came from behind it, 'Please don't be frightened!' "Well, she was frightened, and she stepped back quickly, knocking the telephone off the shelf. It struck her hand as it fell, and she must have uttered a cry, for the voice went on in an urgent whis "You could see Broadway blazing off to the west, and she 'd stare at the lights'" of the earth, sounded the faint, insistent, "Do you know chows? They 're vigorous, amiable, well-behaved animals, not too sensitive or imaginative, and not at all suspicious, and they 're so well balanced they 're not always making a bid for approbation like most dogs. This one sniffed about for a minute, whined interroga tively, and then squatted close to the wall, waiting for developments. She knew something was wrong, but she took her mistress's word for it that she would not be held responsible. "Well; there Jessica crouched in the corner holding the dog by the collar. Then came her husband's sleepy voice, 'Coming, Jess?' and she found herself replying carelessly: "I'll be up later. Don't wait. I've not got my number; then I must go down and find something for Mell. Poor Mell! you shall have a bone in a minute!' and she waited with a shaking heart until she heard a door close on an upper floor. She realized that she should have fled |