Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/84

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I must confess that I was finding it rather galling to have no friends at all at the Front. Everyone else was so well furnished with these acquaintances, often actually relations. But I had no one I knew, although gradually one by one my clerks joined 's Army and passed to various training grounds, returning (in my opinion far too often) to the office in their uniforms to disturb the routine and waste the time of the others. Some drilling and instruction I am assured go on in these camps, but I see in London every day sufficient English soldiers to drive twice the present number of Germans out of Belgium—if they really meant it.

My point, however, is that for far too long there was no one at the Front, either living, dead or wounded, with whom I could claim any intimacy, and this is the kind of thing which does not do a man any good on his way to and back from the City.

Everyone else in my morning and evening trains has had friends at the Front ever since we sent out our first draft, and to me their talk about them has been extremely galling. Some of them have even had letters from them, and these are either read or paraphrased and have enormously sent up the stock of the recipients. In fact several men whom I know to be very shaky in business, and others who have been rather blown upon on account of their general bounderish demeanour, have established themselves in improved social positions wholly through letters from the Front.

There are people, of course, who, not having a soldier friend, would invent one; but that is not my way. I would not do that. For one thing, I should have great difficulty in keeping it up. It would mean studying the map, reading all the reports and knowing more about the army than I have time to learn.

Imagine then my delight and excitement when I opened the evening paper a day or so ago, and found that the hero of the dashing and perilous feat of which everyone was talking, and which resulted in the capture of many Germans and machine guns, was no other than the son of my old friend Wargrave. I had not seen Wargrave for some years, but we met often once, and on my last visit to him his son had been home from school, and I now remembered how fine a lad I had thought him. He had a fearless eye and a high spirit; he was, in fact, the very stuff of which bold warriors are made. There was no doubt about his identity either, for a personal paragraph in the paper stated who his father was.

I was so pleased about it all that I sat down at once and wrote a congratulatory note to Wargrave senior; and on my way to the station I thought of other things in connection with his brave son which I might never have called to mind but for this deed of prowess: what a good appetite he had had; how he had climbed a tree for cherries; how he had torn his clothes; and how tedious I had found his addiction to what was called a water-pistol. "Good old Clifford!"—that was his name, Lieut. Clifford Wargrave, I said to myself, and my heart beat the faster for having known him.

That evening the only man that I knew in my carriage coming home was Barrington, and naturally I said something to him about the gallant son of my old friend. Barrington is not a man that I ever liked, and my young people say contemptuous things of his family as a whole. One of the daughters, however, is rather pretty, but I should not care to confess this at my own table. It is as dangerous to tell some girls about the prettiness of others as to tell some people that they look well. Anyway, since Barrington was there, I mentioned to him that it was gratifying to me to think that my old friend's son had become such a public hero, and I recollected as I was talking, and mentioned too, certain further incidents in the young fellow's boyhood. We once bathed together in Cornwall, I remembered, and I am not sure that it was not I who taught him to swim. At another time we had been on a picnic and I had made him and his sister laugh a good deal by my jokes—poor simple things, no doubt, but tickling to him. "And no doubt he is the same simple fellow now," I said, "always ready to laugh and be merry." I told Barrington also about the cherries and the torn clothes, and what a good appetite he had; and about the water-pistol.

"Odd to think that that boy should grow into a hero," I said. "How little we can read the future!"

"Yes, indeed," said Barrington.

I don't know why, but talking about this young friend of long ago, now so illustrious, to Barrington, made me quite to like the man, and I even went out of my way to accompany him to his gate.

I am wiser now. I now know that it is a mistake ever to change one's opinion of a man. And the extraordinary pettiness of human nature! the paltry little varieties of it! the straws it will clutch at to support its self-esteem!

The next morning, owing to some delay over breakfast, I was a little late at the station end failed to get, my usual seat among my usual set. I managed just to scramble into a carriage and subsided into the far corner with my paper well before my face because I did not want to be sociable in that company. One has to be careful. Just as the train started, in dashed Barrington and took the only seat left—in fact there was not really room for him. He did not see me.

The train had not left the station before one of the men remarked upon the heroism of young Wargrave; when to my astonishment and annoyance Barrington at once took him up.

"Ah! yes," he said. "Such a fine young fellow; I always knew he would do something like that."

"Then you know him?" he was asked.

"Well, I don't say that I exactly know him," he said, "but I used to hear a lot about him from one of the most intimate friends of the family."

And one by one he told all my little anecdotes—trivial enough when in the mouth of a stranger, but, coming from one who knew, interesting and important. Will you believe it, Wargrave lasted Barrington and his idiotic listeners all the way to London—my Wargrave, mind, not his at all! And the way they listened! I personally sat hidden, and fumed but said nothing. How could I suddenly claim Wargrave as my own without being ridiculous? Nor would they have believed me. Besides, to put myself in competition with Barrington...

I managed to elude Barrington's eye at the terminus, and sought my office in state of fury and contempt. At lunch I was again baulked, for none of my regular companions were there. It was beginning to be ridiculous. I might as well have not known the Wargraves at all.

That evening I was very carefully early for my train, determined that I would score then. My own set should now know first-hand what my association with the young hero was. After all, what did those others matter? But here again I had been forestalled.

"I met that man Barrington at lunch," said one of my neighbours, "and he was most interesting about this young Wargrave. Knew lots of things about his boyhood. Often stayed there. A ripping boy it seems he was. Really, Barrington's not such a bad chap when you get to know him. I think we must have him in our carriage now and then. He was most modest about it."

"Did Barrington say that Lieut. Wargrave was a friend of his?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. No doubt about it; Barrington taught him to swim."