THE SILENCE OF COLONEL BRAMBLE

THE SILENCE OF COLONEL BRAMBLE

CHAPTER I

The Highland Brigade was holding its regimental boxing match in a fine old Flemish barn in the neighbourhood of Poperinghe. At the end of the evening the general got on to a chair and, in a clear, audible voice, said:

"Gentlemen, we have to-day seen some excellent fighting, from which I think we may learn some useful lessons for the more important contest that we shall shortly resume; we must keep our heads, we must keep our eyes open, we must hit seldom but hit hard, and we must fight to a finish."

Three cheers made the old barn shake. The motors purred at the door. Colonel Bramble, Major Parker and the French interpreter, Aurelle, went on foot to their billets among the hops and beetroot fields.

"We are a curious nation," said Major Parker. "To interest a Frenchman in a boxing match you must tell him that his national honour is at stake. To interest an Englishman in a war you need only suggest that it is a kind of a boxing match. Tell us that the Hun is a barbarian, we agree politely, but tell us that he is a bad sportsman and you rouse the British Empire."

"It is the Hun's fault," said the colonel sadly, "that war is no longer a gentleman's game."

"We never imagined," continued the major, "that such cads existed. Bombing open towns is nearly as unpardonable as fishing for trout with a worm, or shooting a fox."

"You must not exaggerate, Parker," said the colonel calmly. "They are not as bad as that yet."

Then he asked Aurelle politely if the boxing had amused him.

"I particularly admired, sir, the sporting discipline of your men. During the boxing the Highlanders behaved as if they were in church."

"The true sporting spirit has always something religious about it," said the major. "A few years ago when the New Zealand football team visited England, and from the first match beat the English teams, the country was as upset as if we had lost this war. Every one in the streets and trains went about with long faces. Then the New Zealanders beat Scotland, then Ireland; the end of the world had come! However, there remained the Welsh. On the day of the match there were one hundred thousand persons on the ground. You know that the Welsh are deeply religious and that their national anthem, 'Land of our Fathers,' is also a prayer. When the two teams arrived the whole crowd, men and women, exalted and confident, sang this hymn to God before the battle, and the New Zealanders were beaten. Ah, we are a great nation!"

"Indeed, yes," said Aurelle, quite overcome, "you are a great nation." He added, after a moment's silence, "But you were also quite right just now when you said you were a curious nation in some things, and your opinion of people astonishes us sometimes. You say, 'Brown looks an idiot, but he's not, he played cricket for Essex.' Or, 'At Eton we took him for a fool, but at Oxford he surprised us. Do you know he is plus four at golf, and won the high jump?'"

"Well?" said the colonel.

"Don't you think, sir, that cleverness——"

"I hate clever people—— Oh, I beg your pardon, messiou."

"That's very kind of you, sir," said Aurelle.

"Glad you take it like that," growled the colonel into his moustache.

He spoke seldom and always in short sentences, but Aurelle had learnt to appreciate his dry and vigorous humour and the charming smile which often lit up his rugged countenance.

"But don't you find yourself, Aurelle," went on Major Parker, "that intelligence is over-estimated with you? It is certainly more useful to know how to box than how to write. You would like Eton to go in for nothing but learning? It is just like asking a trainer of racehorses to be interested in circus horses. We don't go to school to learn, but to be soaked in the prejudices of our class, without which we should be useless and unhappy. We are like the young Persians Herodotus talks about, who up to the age of twenty only learnt three sciences: to ride, to shoot and to tell the truth."

"That may be," said Aurelle, "but just see, major, how inconsistent you are. You despise learning and you quote Herodotus. Better still, I caught you the other day in the act of reading a translation of Xenophon in your dug-out. Very few Frenchmen, I assure you——"

"That's quite different," said the major. "The Greeks and Romans interest us, not as objects of study, but as ancestors and sportsmen. We are the direct heirs of the mode of life of the Greeks and of the Roman Empire. Xenophon amuses me because he is a perfect type of the English gentleman, with his hunting and fishing stories, and descriptions of battles. When I read in Cicero: 'Scandal in the Colonial Office. Grave accusations against Sir Marcus Varro, Governor-General of Sicily,' you can well understand that that sounds to me like old family history. And who was your Alcibiades, pray, but a Winston Churchill, without the hats?"

The scenery round them was very picturesque: the Mont des Cats, the Mont Rouge, and the Mont Noir made a framework for the heavy, motionless clouds of an old Dutch painting. The peasants' houses with their weather-beaten, thatched roofs faded into the surrounding fields; their dull walls had turned the colour of yellow clay. The grey shutters bordered with green struck the only vivid and human note in this kingdom of the earth.

The colonel pointed with his cane to a new mine crater; but Major Parker, sticking to his point, went on with his favourite subject:

"The greatest service which sport has rendered us is that it has saved us from intellectual culture. Luckily one hasn't time for everything, and golf and tennis cut out reading. We are stupid——"

"Nonsense, major!" said Aurelle.

"We are stupid," emphatically repeated Major Parker, who hated being contradicted, "and it is a great asset. When we are in danger we don't notice it, because we don't reflect; so we keep