get a start in business—the competition—he’d gone straight except for that once.
“I think you’re the blackguardest, off-est scamp in the trade, and I wouldn’t be found dead in a ditch with you. That’s juicy, coming from me. I’m no saint, but just a common-or-garden Tommy, with a defaulter sheet it’s a sin to read; and I say you’re a blackguard, and dead-off.”
Hullah cringed. He’d gone straight since—Peterson had already pushed him for twice what he’d had out of it—it was hard to be persecuted like this, hard. The cherub revolved in his mind phrases of elaborate and over-done irony.
Suddenly Hullah mentioned his wife, and the pink of the cherub’s face deepened.
“Come into the yard,” he said.
Hullah followed him into a dusty plot, where hens scratched and cases and barrels lay scattered everywhere.
“What did you say?” the soldier demanded.
The architect’s face was of an unwholesome white, and Hey spat. He saw that Hullah feared he was going to strike him.
“She’s been ill, Tom, and must be got away to the Mediterranean. Peterson’s sucking me dry; he thinks I’m afraid of him. You used to be fond of her, Tom.”
All at once Private Hey’s wrath gave place to utter wretchedness, and he began to stride up and down the yard. Tears rose into his eyes, and presently rolled unchecked down his cheeks. He approached Hullah, and said in a quavering voice: “A fortnight ago—was that?”
“A boy,” Hullah murmured.
“It’s a mercy he’s dead, if he’d ha’ been like you,” the cherub sobbed.
And then he forgot all about Hullah. He forgot everything except that little Mollie Westwood had been through an agony, was ill, must be got away, and that he might help her. An ineffable, soft thrill stirred at his heart; he, wicked Tom Hey, might help her. And presently he stood before Hullah again, looking wistfully at him.
“You ain’t lying, Hullah?”
“Oh, Tom!”
“And suppose—suppose I was to think Peterson’s as big a thief as you, and treat him as such—treat him as such, if he dares to speak to me; you understand, Hullah?”
“Don’t put it that way, Tom ... then I may take it, Tom——?”
“Oh, go, go! I want to me by myself!” the poor cherub moaned; and Hullah, turning once to dart a hateful glance at him over his shoulder, passed through the public-house.
“It’s Siberia for you this time, Tom,” the guard whispered, adjusting his pipe-clayed belt; “what in thunder made you go and do it?”
The cherub’s tunic was unbelted, and the colour had fled from his simple face. He made no reply.
“Was you drunk? Barker says you hadn’t been in the canteen. Anyway, the chap’s in ’orspital. A blooming civilian, too!”
He saluted stiffly; the major had passed on his way to the outbuilding that had been furnished for a court-martial; and the barrack clock struck eleven.
Half a dozen officers in full uniform sat about a long trestle-table, and the sunlight that came through the tall windows lay across the pens and ink and pink blotting-paper that were spread before the Court. The colonel, at the head of the table, talked to Warren, the regimental surgeon.
“I’m absurdly upset, Warren. It’s ridiculous, the faith I have in the fellow. Moreover, I have reason to know that he hasn’t touched drink for weeks.”
“He’s been in the habit, and in such cases a sudden discontinuance sometimes.... But the point isn’t whether he was drunk or not; it’s an unprovoked attack on this fellow Peterson, or whatever his name is.”
The colonel sighed. “Ah, well, I can’t overlook this. Are you ready, gentlemen?”
An orderly opened the door, and the prisoner was brought in between two armed guards. He saluted the Court, and then stood at attention. The guards fell back. Two or three witnesses sat on a bench within the door.
The colonel did not once look at Private Hey, and the charge was read. The principal witness lay in hospital, but sufficient evidence of the fact of the assault would be produced, and the president desired the prisoner to plead. The plea was scarcely audible, but it was understood to be “Not guilty,” and the first witness was called.
The cherub knew not in what queer way it hurt him that his colonel refused to look at him. He didn’t much care what happened, but he would have liked the colonel to think well of him. A witness was telling how the prisoner had reeled, spoken thickly, offered his bayonet, and finally flung the man down the steps of the turret of the South Bar. Would the witness consider the prisoner to have been drunk? the Court asked, and the witness replied that he should. The steps were old and worn; might not the man have slipped? the Court suggested, and the witness reminded the Court that the prisoner had staggered and offered his bayonet. Had the injured man spoken to the prisoner? The witness thought not; he had seemed to be on the point of speaking, but the prisoner had cut him short, exclaiming: “I don’t want to talk to dead-off’s—like you!”
Asked if he had anything to say, the prisoner shook his head. “I wasn’t drunk, sir,” he said.
Other witnesses were called; the case went drowsily forward, and the major yawned. The colonel was whispering to the doctor again, and then for the first time he looked at the prisoner.
“Do you know this Peterson?”
“I worked for him when I was a civilian, sir,” the prisoner answered.
“Have you any grudge against him?”
“I didn’t want to talk to him, sir.”
“But suppose he should speak to you again?”
A brief gleam of satisfaction crossed the cherub’s mild blue eyes. “I frightened him too bad for that, sir,” he said; and then, as the colonel’s grave eyes did not cease to regard him, there came a quick little break in his voice.
“I wasn’t drunk, sir. I wouldn’t tell you a lie, sir, nor do nothing that’s off—there’s marks against me a many, but not for things that’s off; I ask you to believe I wasn’t drunk, sir——”
“Clear the Court,” said the colonel.
The guard, the prisoner, and the witnesses filed out and the door closed, and the colonel leaned forward in his chair. He seemed disproportionately moved.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “if the prisoner is to be seriously punished, I ask you to remember it’s dismissal and imprisonment. Let me make a suggestion. It was a very hot day—he’s been in India—possibly an old sunstroke——”
“A bit discredited, that,” observed the doctor.
“He would be punished, of course, but more leniently. It’s all I can put forward. It rests with the Court.”
He leaned back again, troubled.
