Love and the Loveless Read Free Page B

well know what I’m talking about!”
    “Aiy, that’s true,” said the Northumbrian, sombrely, his eyes lifting from the print after reading half-a-dozen words. “I was in attack at Glory Hole in front of La Boisselle, and I had no sich thoughts before we went over t’bags, and got coot oop by Jerry’s machine guns.”
    “I was hit in Mash Valley, just north of the Glory Hole,” said Phillip. “This is an idealist’s poem, I agree, but Julian Grenfell had been in a battle, and won the D.S.O. before he wrote this.”
    “Yes, in the cavalry!” said Pinnegar, hotly. “And the son of a lord! With bags of decent grub sent out in hampers from Curling and Hammer’s in Piccadilly! What has the cavalry done, since 1914? Even then, they covered the Retreat on horseback , while the poor bloody footsloggers wore their boots to the uppers and got court-martialled when they lost their nerve and wandered off, driven scatty by fighting all day and marching all night!”
    “Steady on! Those staff wallahs may hear what you’re saying.”
    “I don’t give a damn! I’m not frightened of a bunch of gallopers! I got a bullet through my ribs during the flame attack at Hooge in 1915, and another at Arras early this year, and I never saw a cavalryman the whole time I was in France! They were sitting on their bottoms in rear areas, hunting foxes, shooting hares and pheasants, and living on the fat of the land! French was a horse soldier, so was Haig, so was Gough, and all the others at the top. What do they know of barbed wire and the front line? Sweet fanny adams!”
    “Aye, that’s a fact,” said the Northumbrian, giving back the clipping.
    “May I see it?” asked Montfort. Phillip passed it to him, saying, “Anyway, Pinnegar, I think it’s a very fine poem. Though during First Ypres I must admit I didn’t feel like Julian Grenfell did, when he wrote this poem.”
    “Of course you didn’t, nor did anybody else!” Pinnegar held out his hand for the paper. “Look at this!”
    ‘ And Life is Colour and Warmth and Light
    And a striving evermore for these’
    that bit’s all right, I’m not objecting to that, it’s the next bit that gets my goat,
    ‘And he is dead who will not fight ,
    And who dies fighting hath increase. ’
    ‘He is dead who will not fight.’ Yes, if he’s a tommy, as I said just now, who loses his nerve and ends up being tied to a post, or stood up against a wall of some château pinched for Corps Headquarters, and shot by a firing squad! Otherwise he who fights is damned lucky to get a blighty one, and not an army blanket in a shell-hole! Which anyway the poor stiff has to pay for! How anyone can seriously believe that bit about having increase if he dies fighting beats me altogether! It’s tripe, as I said.”
    “Officers are rich men, and don’t think the same as t’ poor man as has to work ’ard for a living,” said the Northumbrian, sententiously.
    “What are you, a bloody Socialist?” asked Pinnegar, hotly. “I’ve no time for that tripe!”
    “You’re middle-class, I can see that, Pinnegar. I’m a workin’ man. I’ve ’ad to work ’ard, I ’ave, all my life, and no college education. I’ve lain many an hour sweatin’ at craggin’ lip. I got these bits of coal in t’ face from a premature shot.” He stared from one to another with the expression as dark as coal itself.
    “Come off it, you old four-flusher,” smiled Pinnegar. “How the hell did you get a commission, without any education?”
    “Night School,” replied the Northumbrian.
    “What the hell’s wrong with Night School?” exclaimed Pinnegar. “That’s where Lloyd George got his education.”
    “And Horatio Bottomley,” said the Northumbrian. “Don’t forget Bottomley!”
    “Bottomley my foot!” cried Pinnegar. “The biggest bloody crook unhung!”
    “Hear hear,” said Phillip, echoing Mr. Hollis, senior clerk in the office. Would Downham now be at Catterick?
    “Then what the hell are we