SHORT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3467, 24 August 1920, Page 58

SHORT STORIES.

BATMAN AND KNIGHT-

ERRANT.

By W. B. Hoskxng

Not far behind one of the neat sandbagged shelters used by the traffic police in the vicinity of St. Jean in the Ypres sector there used to be a grave marked by a tiny cross made by nailing two pieces of a biscuit case together, with an inscription thereon -written with an ink pencil to the effect tnat Private T. Tarrant had been killed in action. I suppose the G.R.U. have since removed the remains of Tim to a less lonely cemetery, and have substituted for the rude cross the regulation gravestone. No, this is no tale of f a soldier's valour on the field of battle—no decoration, posthumous or otherwise, has been awarded Private Tarrant, yet when ■ I passed that isolated grave the last and only time mentally my hand went up m salute, and I can never recall memories of Tim Tarrant without feeling the tug of a queer emotion at my heart —and I am a soldier, mind you, and have seen a lot of strange things. Out battalion was enjoying a wellearned rest in a small rural village not twenty miles from Boulogne. Battalion headquarters was in a farmhouse on one side of a big square yard with the inevitable manure heap in the centre. There' was a young French girl—a bonne or servant —working there who used to hang around and make eyes at Tim Tarrant, 'and have her overtures of affection meet with success. Heaven knows what Tim saw in her. All French girls are not pretty, and this one had no claim to beauty unless a sort of doglike devotion in her eyes could be counted unto her a grace. But then Tim was no Adonis. He was undersized and thin, with red hair and freckles. Neither was hi, position an heroic one. for Tim en joyed the unique regimental distinction of being batman to the padre. He was a good batman was Tim, and a very attentive waiter, too, at mess. He was solicitous for your welfare to a fault. Possibly he appreciated the "cushiness" of his job on headquarters, but I rather think it was his nature anyhow. And he was the servant to the manner bom: No grudging civility here, no sullen, shamefaced demeanour in the performing of menial tasks. His prompt "Yes, sir" when his name was called, and his quick return to duty—even if he happened at ihe time to be conversing with his sweetheart—was done in a manner more suggestive of pride than of shame. One couldn't help liking the lad, and his cheery, infectious grin, cheerful and painstaking service were essential to the wall-being of the mess. Tim, polishing his master's boots, and whistling in atrocious time "Till the sands of the desert grow cold," was as necessary to the Headquarters atmosphere as, say, the sentry stalking up and down on his beat or the tapping of the hammers of the regimental bootmakers across the yard. Marie—that was the name of the girl—undertook to give Tim lessons in French. -Tim, of course never questioned her ability to teach, but I don't think he made' much progress in his linguistic studies. For a while, in the first exuberance of expanding knowledge, he made promiscuous use of such expressions as "Bong, toot sweet, mercy," and showed a partiality to words which he pronounced as "jolly" and "bayser," until his mates got exasperated and threatened to duck him in the yard pond. Then Tim practised upon Petit Peter—otherwise the Brat—Marie's young brother. The Brat didn't understand him, neither would ho have responded if he had, for this Frsuih youngster had a countenance about aa expressive as one of the Rameses on view in the British Museum, and as far as we could gather a temperament to match. Hsaven knows what his age was. Ho was a tiny wisp of a boy in the habit cf waddling around the yard with a mask of dirt upon his face and various samples of such attached to his pei-son, crawling b&tween one's legs if one wasn't careful, and playing transfers with his freight. I hnd it hard to explain, but somehow his presence seemed to call forth the dormant unsuspected cruelty of a man's nature, and one's fingers fairly itched to change tho expression—or rather lack of expression—on the Brat's face. This feeling was not peculiar to me, others told !Eio they often felt tho same way, and so 1 was always glad that the Brat was at a safe distance whenever Brenmuhll was about.

Brenmuhll was instinctively a bully. I am inclined to think it was the Teuton strain showing through. And he was as strong as he was brutal. It takes an able man to make a successful adjutant of a battalion, and Brenmuhll was the most efficient adjutant the battalion had ever had. He was one of those men who, though not professionally soldiers, are by instinct and inclination the finest tyne of soldier. They seem to assimilate rn.ilita.ry science, army law, and army etiquette—the whole business, the frills as well as the practical—as a babe absorbs milk. Brenmuhll was for ever exposing the ignorance of the "sub," and doing it with that polished crueltv that seemed to afford him special pleasure. Often I have seen an officer not normally overburdened with sensitiveness squirm under Brenmuhll's favourite beginning, "The position, my dear fellow is- " Innocent little subterfuges practised by platoon commanders took on the aspect of heinous crimes under Brenmuhll's exposition of army law. The men in the ranks hated and feared Trim, but they could not despise him; nowhere in his armour of efficiency could he found a vulnerable place. And there were times —in the field and on parade—-

when his cold, confident voice and cool resourceful brain had restored the shaken confidence of officers and men, and turned the edge cf many an awkward incident, that the battalion felt it could have almost liked him had he been less of a bully. Knowing him for what he was, whenever I happened to see him in the yard instinctively I glanced around to see if the Brat was near. Somehow I felt that a meeting would not be to the benefit of Marie's little brother.

One morning—it was a sort of off dutyday for the companies, and only the Headquarters artisans were busy—l Avas sitting in the bootmakers' shop having one of my boots repaired. From my seat near the window I had a good view of the yard. Tim was sitting en a box polishing the padre's Sam Brown, with Marie not far away scrubbing the kitchen step and taking a long time over the task, as I gathered from the voluble upbraiding that issued from inside the house. The only other occupants of the yard were a transport driver, evidently awaiting a message, and another man having a belated shave outside the cookhouse. The bootmakers were kicking up a deuce of "a row, but above all rose the Bound of Tim's whistle in his unmusical rendering of his favourite tune. He went through it once, and was proceeding a second tinw with undiminished vigour—despite a vigorous "Dry up!" from the cookhouse when Brenmuhll entered the yard. I have said that Tim was a favourite in the mess, and was- treated with more indulgence than the average batman, besides not being over-troubled with timidity; but it shows the sort of awe with which Brenmuhll was regarded, that, as soon as Tim became aware of the adjutant's presence, the strident whistle dropped from fortissimo to piano, and proceeded with a lamentable lack of zeal. Tho shaiyer in the corner had-, as good as eyes in the back of his head— water, towel, and man vanished with a suddenness that was nothing less than marvellous. But Brenmuhll had other business to attend to. His keen eyes must have descried a certain hirsute tendency in the face of the transport driver, for he stopped and spoke to him, and I heard the word "shave" mentioned and read the guilty fear in the driver's face as he stood to attention. That driver was lucky; for as he stood there listening to BrenmuhU's curt words, the Brat whoni my first glance had assured me was in ■safety suddenly appeared in the doorway. He was as ditry as usual, and with a sort of wicked deliberation he waddled towards the pair. Dispassionately, yet with a deliberation that was appalling, he rolled his weo framo up against BrenmuhU's immaculte mittied legs—and they were no longer immaculate. Glancing down quickly, tho adjutant saw the stain on his puttees and stared into the grimy face of the perpetrator. I was not surprised at what followed. With a snarl of rage Brenmuhll dragged his leg from the grimy embrace of the Brat with a suddenness that made the boy totter and swung his cane aloft and— A girl's shriek rang out, and Tim Tarrant, batman, assumed the role of knighterrant. Down dropped Sam Brown and polish, and with a leap and bound that I would not have credited Tim's untrained body ■ with, the freckled knight had sprung across and grabbed BrenmuhU's arm. The next few moments were crammed full of silent drama. Marie's shriek had brought the whole headquarters staff on the scene. The bootmakers dropped their tools and crowded to the door, the armourer sergeant, cleaning rod in hand, appeared in tho doorway of his workshop. The tailor's shop presented a study in curiosity and deshabille. Soot-smudged faces peered from the cookhouse. And all gazed in fascinated silence where Tim Tarrant, his freckles showing up startlingly in a white face, stood facing the great Brenmuhll. Marie, who had run forward and pulled the Brat out of the danger zone, stood near, her hand to the breast of her soiled blouse, her eyes large with fear.

Brenmuhll spoke but once. "Get back to your work," he said curtly, and turned on his heel and entered the orderly room.

We wondered for a while whether Brenmuhll would be magnanimous enough to overlook the breach of discipline on account of the spirit that had prompted it. But our doubts flattered the man. Had he been other than Brenmuhll Tim might still have retained his job; as it was, there came a day when the mess missed the services of the freckled waiter and heard no more that strident whistle'; a day when Tim was learning with infinite pain the evolutions of platoon and squad drill, and finding in his sergeant a harsher master than the- good old padre. I met him one afternoon returning from the canteen munching some biscuits he had bought. He gave me an awkward salute, and I stopped to speak to him. "And how do you like the platoon, Tim?" "It's not so bad, sir," replied Tim, and I was glad to note that he had not lost his cheery grin. "The chapses are very decent, but," he added with a sort of wistful note, in his voice which even his cheery grin did not camouflaKe, "I'd sooner be back on headquarters." "Wo miss you there, Tim," I said truthfully, and went on my way.

When Tim was picked for his first guard, Marie came down to see him pei--fo-rm. No doubt sfie thought, poor girl, that she was paying him an honour, but her presence seemed to embarrass her lover, who drew on himself the wrath of the sergeant-major for his awkwardness. When the battalion marched out from the village en route for the trenches, Marie and the Brat were at the gate to watch the column go by. Tim went by, essaying a swagger under the huge pack that seemed as big as himself, his grin more expansive than ever. When Brenmuhll galloped by to take the head of the column, Marie saluted him with the sight of a small pink tongue, and I could have sworn that the Brat's face relaxed into an expression that was almost human.

I did not see Tim any more. Three days later, one wet miserable night, when the battalion was marching up to act as reserve to another regiment, a Hun plane droned overhead and dropped two bombs aa samples of his hate. One bomb exploded harmlessly in the ditch, the other burst on the edge of the road in the vicinitj'' of a section in No. 2 Platoon, A Company. Two men were wounded and a third one killed.

We could not imagine Tim as a warrior, and that Hun airman saved us the spectacle. I believe the padre wrote to Marie and broke the news to her. Not all padres would have bothered their heads about an obscure peasant girl.