Foe Farrell
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FOE-FARRELL.
By Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch.
TO ANYONE WHO SUPPOSES THAT HE HAS A WORSE ENEMY THAN HIMSELF.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I--INGREDIENTS.
PROLOGUE.
NIGHT THE FIRST--John Foe.
NIGHT THE SECOND--The Meeting at the Baths.
NIGHT THE THIRD--The Grand research.
NIGHT THE FOURTH--Adventure of the Police Station.
NIGHT THE FIFTH--Adventure of the "Catalafina".
NIGHT THE SIXTH--Adventure of the Picturedrome.
NIGHT THE SEVENTH--The Outrage.
BOOK II--THE CHASE.
NIGHT THE EIGHTH--Vendetta.
NIGHT THE NINTH--The Hunt is Up.
NIGHT THE TENTH--Pilgrimage of Hate.
NIGHT THE ELEVENTH--Science of the Chase.
NIGHT THE TWELFTH--The _Emania_.
NIGHT THE THIRTEENTH--Escape.
BOOK III--THE RETRIEVE.
NIGHT THE FOURTEENTH--San Ramon
NIGHT THE FIFTEENTH--Redivivus.
NIGHT THE SIXTEENTH--Captain Macnaughten.
NIGHT THE SEVENTEENTH--No. 2 Boat.
NIGHT THE EIGHTEENTH--"And so they came to the Island . . ."
NIGHT THE NINETEENTH--The Castaways.
NIGHT THE TWENTIETH--One Man Escapes.
BOOK IV--THE COUNTERCHASE.
NIGHT THE TWENTY-FIRST--The Yellow Dog.
NIGHT THE TWENTY-SECOND--The Second Man escapes.
NIGHT THE TWENTY-THIRD--Counterchase.
NIGHT THE TWENTY-FOURTH--Constantia.
NIGHT THE TWENTY-FIFTH--The Paying of the Score.
EPILOGUE.
BOOK I.
INGREDIENTS.
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.
EMERSON: _Brahma_.
The best kind of revenge is not to become like him.
MARCUS AURELIUS ANTONINUS.
PROLOGUE
Otway told this story in a dug-out which served for officers' mess of
a field-battery somewhere near the Aisne: but it has nothing to do
with the War. He told it in snatches, night by night, after the
manner of Scheherazade in the _Arabian Nights Entertainments_, and as
a rule to an auditory of two. Here is a full list of:
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE
NARRATOR.
Major Sir Roderick Otway, Bart., M.C., R.F.A.
AUDIENCE AND INTERLOCUTORS.
Lieut. John Polkinghorne. R.F.A., of the Battery.
Sec. Lieut. Samuel Barham, M.C. R.F.A., of the Battery.
Sec. Lieut. Percy Yarrell-Smith. R.F.A., of the Battery
Sec Lieut. Noel Williams, R.F.A., attached for instruction.
But military duties usually restricted the audience to two at a time,
though there were three on the night when Barham (Sammy) set his C.O.
going with a paragraph from an old newspaper. The captain--one
McInnes, promoted from the ranks--attended one stance only. He dwelt
down at the wagon-lines along with the Veterinary Officer, and
brought up the ammunition most nights, vanishing back in the small
hours like a ghost before cock-crow.
The battery lay somewhat wide to the right of its fellows in the
brigade; in a saucer-shaped hollow on the hill-side, well screened
with scrub. Roughly it curved back from the straight lip overlooking
the slope, in a three-fifths segment of a circle; and the officers'
mess made a short arc in it, some way in rear of the guns.
You descended, by steps, cut in the soil and well pounded, into a
dwelling rather commodious than large: for Otway--who knew about
yachts--had taken a fancy to construct it nautical-wise, with lockers
that served for seats at a narrow saloon table, sleeping bunks
excavated along the sides, and air-holes like cabin top-lights,
cunningly curtained by night, under the shell-proof cover.
"It cost us a week," he wrote home to his sister, "to get the place
to my mind. Since then we have been adding fancy touches almost
daily, and now the other batteries froth with envy. You see, it had
to be contrived, like the poet's chest of drawers."
A double debt to pay:
Doss-house by night and bag-of-tricks by day.
And here we have lived now, shooting and sleeping (very little
sleeping) for five solid weeks. All leave being off, I have fallen
into this way of life, almost without a thought that there ever had
been, or could be, another, and feel as if my destiny were to go on
at it for ever and ever. And this at thirty-five, Sally!
"It must be ever so much worse for the youngsters, one would say.
Anyway I have had ten good years that they are missing . . .
Cambridge, Henley, Lord's; Ascot, and home-to-tidy, and afterwards
the little Mercedes, and you and I rolling in to Prince's and the
theatre, whilst good old Bob is for the House, to take _his_
exercises walking the lobbies; clean linen after the bath, and my own
sister beside me--she that always knew how to dress--and the summer
evening over Hyde Park Corner and the Green Park. . . . No, I mustn't
go on. It is _verboten_ even to think of a white shirt until the
Bosch hangs out the tail of _his_.
"My youngsters are missing all this, I tell myself. Yet they are a
cheerful crowd, and keep smiling on their Papa. The worst is, a kind
of paralysis seems to have smitten our home mails and general
transport for close upon a fortnight. No letters, no parcels--but
one case of wine, six weeks overdue, with half the bottles in shards:
no newspapers. This last specially afflicts young Sammy Barham, who
is a glutton for the halfpenny press: which again is odd, because his
comments on it are vitriolic.
"No books--that's the very worst. Our mess library went astray in
the last move: no great loss perhaps except for the _Irish R.M._,
which I was reading for the nth time. The only relic that survives,
and follows us everywhere like an intelligent hound, is a novel of
Scottish sentiment, entitled _But and Ben_. The heroine wears
(p. 2) a dress of 'some soft white clinging material'--which may
account for it. Young Y.-Smith, who professes to have read the work
from cover to cover, asserts that this material clings to her
throughout: but I doubt the thoroughness of his perusal since he
explained to us that 'Ben' and 'But' were the play-names of the lad
and his lassie. . . . For our personal libraries we possess:
"_R.O._--A hulking big copy of the _International Code of
Signals_: a putrid bad book, of which I am preparing, in odd
moments, a recension, to submit to the Board of Trade. Y.-Smith
borrows this off me now and then, to learn up the flags at the
beginning. He gloats on crude colours.
"_Polkinghorne_--A Bible, which I borrow, sometimes for private
study, sometimes (you understand?) for professional purposes.
It contains a Book of Common Prayer as well as the Apocrypha.
P. (a Cornishman, something of a mystic, two years my senior and
full of mining experiences in Nevada and S. America) always
finds a difficulty in parting with this, his one book. He is
deep in it, this moment, at the far end of the table.
"_Sammy Barham_, so far as anyone can discover, has never read a
book in his life nor wanted to. He was educated at Harrow.
Lacking the _Daily Mail_, he is miserable just now, poor boy!
I almost forgave the Code upon discovering that his initials,
S.B., spell, for a distress signal, 'Can you lend (or give) me a
newspaper?'
"_Yarrell-Smith_ reads Penny Dreadfuls. He owns four, and was
kind enough, the other day, to lend me one: but it's a trifle
too artless even for my artless mind.
"Young _Williams_--a promising puppy sent up to me to be
walked--reads nothing at all. He brought two packs of Patience
cards and a Todhunter's _Euclid_; the one to rest, the other to
stimulate, his mind; and I've commandeered the _Euclid_.
A great writer, Sally! He's not juicy, and he don't palpitate,
but he's an angel for style. 'Therefore the triangle DBC is
equal to the triangle ABC--pause and count three--'the less to
the greater'--pause--'which is absurd.' Neat and demure: and
you're constantly coming on little things like that.
'Two straight lines cannot enclose a space'--so broad and
convincing, when once pointed out!--and why is it not in
_The Soldiers' Pocket-Book_ under 'Staff Axioms'?
"When you make up the next parcel, stick in a few of the unlikeliest
books. I don't want Paley's _Evidences of Christianity_: I have
tackled that for my Little-Go, and, besides, we have plenty of 'em
out here: but books about Ireland, and the Near East, and local
government, and farm-labourers' wages, and the future life, and all
that sort of thing.
"Two nights ago, Polkinghorne got going on our chances in another
world. Polkinghorne is a thoughtful man in his way, rising
forty--don't know his religion. I had an idea somehow that he was
interested in such things. But to my astonishment the boys took him
up and were off in full cry. It appeared that each one had been
nursing his own thoughts on the subject. The trouble was, none of us
knew very much about it--"
Otway, writing beneath the hurricane-lamp, had reached this point in
his letter when young Barham exclaimed to the world at large:
"Hallo! here's a tall story!"
The C.O. looked up. So did Polkinghorne, from his Bible. Sammy held
a torn sheet of newspaper.
"Don't keep it to yourself, my son," said Otway, laying down his pen
and leaning back, so that his face passed out of the inner circle of
the lamplight.
Sammy bent forward, pushed the paper nearer to this pool of light,
smoothed it and read:
"'Thames-side Mystery
"'A Coroner's jury at C--, a 'village' on the south bank of the
Thames, not a hundred miles below Gravesend--'"
"Seems a lot of mystery about it already," observed Polkinghorne.
"Don't they give the name of the village?"
"No; they just call it 'C--,' and, what's more, they put 'village'
into inverted commas. Don't know why: but there's a hint at the
end."
"Proceed."
Sammy proceeded.
"'--Was engaged yesterday in holding an inquest on the body of an
unknown man, found lying at highwater mark in a creek some way
below the village. A local constable had discovered the body:
but neither the officer who attended nor the river police could
afford any clue to the deceased's identity. Medical evidence
proved that death was due to drowning, although the corpse had
not been long immersed: but a sensation was caused when the
evidence further disclosed that it bore an incised wound over
the left breast, in itself sufficient to cause death had not
suffocation quickly supervened.
"'The body was further described, in the police evidence, as that
of a middle-aged man, presumably a gentleman. It was clad in a
black 'evening-dress' suit, and two pearl studs of some value
remained in the limp shirt-front; from which, however, a third
and fellow stud was missing. The Police Inspector--who asked
for an open verdict, pending further inquiry--added that the
linen, and the clothing generally, bore no mark leading to
identification. Further, if a crime had been committed, the
motive had not been robbery. The trousers-pockets contained a
sovereign, and eighteen shillings in silver. In the waistcoat
was a gold watch (which had stopped at 10.55), with a chain and
a sovereign-purse containing two sovereigns and a
half-sovereign: in the left-hand breast pocket of the
dinner-jacket a handkerchief, unmarked: in the right-hand pocket
a bundle of notes and a worn bean-shaped case for a pair of
eyeglasses. The glasses were missing. The Police had carefully
dried the notes and separated them. They were nine one pound
notes; all numbered, of course. Beyond this and the number on
the watch there was nothing to afford a clue.'--"
Here Barham paused for a glance up at the roof of the dug-out, as two
explosions sounded pretty near at hand. "Huns saying good-night," he
interpolated. "Can't have spotted us. Nothing doing aloft these
three days."
Polkinghorne looked across the light at the C.O., who sat
unaccountably silent, his face inscrutable in the penumbra.
Taking silence for "yes," Polkinghorne arose and put his head outside
for a look around.
"Queer story, you'll admit, sir?" put in Sammy Barham during this
pause. "Shall I go on, or wait for the rollicking Polly to hear it
out?--for the queerest part is to come."
"I know," said Otway, after some two or three seconds' silence.
"Eh? . . . But it's just here, sir, the thing of a sudden gets
mysteriouser and mysteriouser--"
Polkinghorne came back. "Nerves," he reported. "They're potting all
over the place. . . . Here, Sammy, pass over that scrap of paper if
you've finished reading. I want to hear the end."
"It hasn't any," said Otway from the shadow.
"But, sir, when I was just warning you--"
"Dashed good beginning, anyway," said Polkinghorne; "something like
_Our Mutual Friend_."
"Who's he?" asked Sammy.
"Ingenuous youth, continue," Otway commanded. "Polky wants to hear
the rest of the paragraph, and so do I."
"It goes on just like a detective story," promised Sammy. "Just you
listen to this:--
"'An incident which may eventually throw some light on the
mystery interrupted the Coroner's summing up and caused
something of a sensation. This was the appearance of an
individual, evidently labouring under strong excitement, who,
having thrust his way past the police, advanced to the Coroner's
table and demanded to have sight of the body. The man's
gestures were wild, and on being asked his name he answered
incoherently. His manner seriously affected one of the jury,
who swooned and had to be removed from Court.
"'While restoratives were being applied at the 'Plume and
Feathers' Inn (adjacent to the building in which the inquest was
held), the Coroner held consultation with Police and Foreman of
the Jury, and eventually adjourned for a second inspection of
the body, the stranger accompanying them. From this inspection,
as from the first, representatives of the Press were excluded.
"'Returning to Court at the expiration of forty minutes--by which
time the absent juror had recovered sufficiently to take his
seat--the Coroner directed an open verdict to be entered and the
inquiry closed.
"'The intrusive visitor did not reappear. We understand that he
was found to be suffering from acute mental derangement and is
at present under medical treatment as well as under supervision
of the police, who are closely watching the case. They preserve
great reticence on the whole subject and very rightly so in
these days, considering the number of enemy plotters in our
midst, and that the neighbourhood of 'C--' in particular is
known to be infested with their activities.'"
"Is that all?" asked Polkinghorne.
"That's all; and about enough, I should say, for this Penny Reading."
"When did it happen?"
"Can't tell. The top of the sheet's torn off." Barham pushed the
paper across. "By the look, it's a bit of an old _Daily Chronicle_.
I found it wrapping one of my old riding boots, that I haven't worn
since I took to a sedentary life. Higgs must have picked it up at
our last move--"
"Do you want the date?" put in Otway. "If so, it was in January
last--January the 18th, to be exact."
"But--"
"I mean the date of the inquest. The paper would be next morning's--
Wednesday the 19th," Otway went on in a curious level voice, as
though spelling the information for them out of the lamplight on the
table.
Barham stared. "But--" he began again--"but _how_, sir?"
Polkinghorne, who also had stared for a moment, broke in with a
laugh. "The C.O. is pulling your leg, Sammy. He tore off the top of
your paper--it was lying around all this morning--noted the date and
thought he might safely make a pipe-spill."
"That won't do," retorted Barham, still searching Otway's face on
which there seemed to rest a double shadow. "For when I turned it
out of my valise this morning I carefully looked for the date--I'll
swear I did--and it was missing."
"Then you tore the thing in unpacking, and the C.O. picked up the
scrap you overlooked. Isn't that the explanation, sir?"
"No," said Otway after a pause, still as if he spoke under control of
a muted pedal. He checked himself, apparently on the point of
telling more; but the pause grew into a long silence.
Barham tried back. "January, you said, sir? . . . and now we're
close upon the end of October--"
He could get nothing out of the C.O.'s eyes, which were bent on the
table; and little enough could he read in his face, save that it was
sombre with thought and at the same time abstracted to a degree that
gave the boy a sudden uncanny feeling. It was like watching a man in
the travail of second sight, and all the queerer because he had never
seen an expression even remotely resembling it on the face of this
hero of his, with whose praise he filled his home-letters--"One of
the best: never flurried: and, what's more, you never catch him off
his game by any chance."
Otway's jaw twitched once, very slightly. He put out a hand to pick
up his pen and resume writing; but in the act fell back into the
brown study, the trance, the rapt gaze at a knot in the woodwork of
the table. His hand rested for a moment by the ink-pot around which
his fingers felt, like a blind man's softly making sure of its
outline and shape. He withdrew it to his tunic-pocket, pulled out
pipe and tobacco-pouch and began to fill. . . .
At this point in came young Yarrell-Smith. Young Yarrell-Smith wore
a useful cloak--French cavalry pattern--of black mackintosh, with a
hood. It dripped and shone in the lamplight.
"Beastly night," he announced to the company in general and turned to
report to Otway, who had sat up alert on the instant.
"Yes," quoted Otway,
"'Thou comest from thy voyage--
Yes, the spray is on thy cloak and hair.'"
That's Matthew Arnold, if the information conveys anything to you.
Everything quiet?"
"Quite quiet, sir, for the last twenty minutes; and the Captain just
come in and unloading. No accidents, though they very nearly met
their match, five hundred yards down the road."
"We heard," said Polkinghorne.
"I tucked the Infant into his little O.P., and left him comfy.
He won't see anything there to-night."
"He'll _think_ he does," said Sammy Barham with conviction.
"The Infant is quite a good Infant," Otway observed; and then,
sinking his voice a tone, "Lord, if at his age I'd had his sense of
responsibility . . ."
Barham noted the change of tone, though he could not catch the words.
Again he threw a quick look towards his senior. Something was wrong
with him, something unaccountable. . . .
Yarrell-Smith noted nothing. "Well, he won't see anything to-night,
sir; and if Sammy will pull himself together and pity the sorrows of
a poor young man whose trembling knees--"
"Sorry," said Sammy, turning to the locker and fishing forth a
bottle.
"--I'll tell you why," Yarrell-Smith went on as the tot was filled.
"First place, the Bosch has finished hating us for to-night and gone
to bye-bye. Secondly, it's starting to sleet--and that vicious, a
man can't see five yards in front of him."
"I love my love with a B because he's Boschy," said Sammy lightly:
"I'll take him to Berlin--or say, Bapaume to begin with--and feed him
on Substitutes. . . . Do you know that parlour-game, Yarrell dear?
Are you a performer at Musical Chairs? Were you by any chance
brought up on a book called _What Shall We do Now?_ The fact is--"
Sammy, who could be irreverent, but so as never to offend, stole a
look at Otway--"we're a trifle hipped in the old log cabin.
I started a guessing-competition just now, and our Commanding
Officer won't play. Turn up the reference, Polky--Ecclesiastes
something-or-other. It runs: 'We are become as a skittle-alley in a
garden of cucumbers, forasmuch as our centurion will not come out to
play with us.'"
Otway laughed. "And it goes on that the grasshopper is a
burden. . . . But Y.-S. has given you the name, just now."
"_I_, sir?" Yarrell-Smith gazed, in the more astonishment to find
that Otway, after his laugh, reaching up to trim the lamp, looked
strangely serious. "I'm blest if I understand a word of all
this. . . . What name, sir?"
"_Hate_," said Otway, dropping back into his chair and drawing
at his pipe. "But you're warm; as they say in the nursery-game.
Try '_Foe_,' if you prefer it."
"Oh, I see," protested Yarrell-Smith, after a bewildered look around.
"You've all agreed to be funny with a poor orphan that has just come
in from the cold."
Barham paid no heed to this. "'Foe' might be the name of a man.
It's unusual. . . . But what was the Johnny called who wrote
_Robinson Crusoe?_"
"It _was_ the name of a man," answered Otway.
"_This_ man?" Barham tapped his finger on the newspaper.
Otway nodded.
"The man the inquest was held on?"
"That--or the other." Otway looked around at them queerly. "I think
the other. But upon my soul I won't swear."
"The other? You mean the stranger--the man who interrupted--"
At this point Yarrell-Smith sank upon a locker. "I beg your pardon,
all of you," he moaned helplessly; "but if there's such a thing about
as First Aid--"
"Sammy had better read you this thing he's unearthed," said
Polkinghorne kindly.
Barham picked up the newspaper.
"No, you don't," Otway commanded. "Put it down. . . . If you fellows
don't mind listening, I'll tell you the story. It's about Hate; real
Hate, too; not the Bosch variety."
NIGHT THE FIRST.
JOHN FOE.
John Foe and I entered Rugby together at fourteen, and shared a study
for a year and a term. Pretty soon he climbed out of my reach and
finally attained to the Sixth. I never got beyond the Lower Fifth,
having no brains to mention. Cricket happened to be my strong point;
and when you're in the Eleven you can keep on fairly level terms with
a push man in the Sixth. So he and I were friends--"Jack" and
"Roddy" to one another--all the way up. We went through the school
together and went up to Cambridge together.
He was a whale at Chemistry (otherwise Stinks), and took a Tancred
Scholarship at Caius. I had beaten the examiner in Little-go at
second shot, and went up in the same term, to Trinity; where I played
what is called the flannelled fool at cricket--an old-fashioned game
which I will describe to you one of these days--
"_Cricket? But I thought you rowed, sir?" put in Yarrell Smith.
"Yes, surely--_"
"_Hush! tread softly," Barham interrupted. "Our Major won't mind
your not knowing he was a double Blue--don't stare at him like that;
it's rude. But he will not like it forgotten that he once knocked up
a century for England v Australia. . . . You'll forgive our young
friend, sir; he left school early, when the war broke out_."
_Otway looked across at Yarrell-Smith with a twinkle. "I took up
rowing in my second year," he explained modestly, "to enlarge my
mind. And this story, my good Sammy, is not about me--though I come
into it incidentally because by a pure fluke I happened to set it
going. All the autobiography that's wanted for our present purpose
is that I went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in the footsteps
(among others) of Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, and--well, you see
the result. May I go on?_"
_But although they were listening, Otway did not at once go on.
Sammy had spoken in his usual light way and yet with something of a
pang in his voice, and something of a transient cloud still rested on
the boy's face. Otway noted it, and understood. When the war broke
out, Sammy had been on the point of going up to Oxford_. . . .
_Before the cloudlet passed, Otway had a vision behind it, though the
vision came from his own brain, out of his own memory--a vision of
green turf and of boys in white on it, a small regiment set orderly
against a background of English elms, and moving orderly, intent on
the game of games_.
O thou, that dear and happy Isle,
The garden of the world erstwhile. . . .
Unhappy! shall we nevermore
That sweet militia restore?
_Snatches of an old parody floated in his brain with the vision--a
parody of Walt Whitman--_
Far off a grey-brown thrush warbling in hedge or in marsh; Down there
in the blossoming bushes, my brother, what is that you are
saying? . . .
The perfect feel of a "fourer "! . . .
The jubilant cry from the flowering thorn to the flowerless willow,
"smite, smite, smite."
(Flowerless willow no more but every run a late-shed perfect bloom.)
The fierce chant of my demon brother issuing forth against the demon
bowler, "hit him, hit him, hit him."
The thousand melodious cracks, delicious cracks, the responsive
echoes of my comrades and the hundred thence-resulting runs,
passionately yearned for, never, never again to be forgotten.
Overhead meanwhile the splendid silent sun, blending all, fusing all,
bathing all in floods of soft ecstatic perspiration.