H. C. McNeile

“ In an instant murder—raging, hot-blooded murder—had been let loose in a hotel full of the most commonplace tourists. There had been murder in Baron Stockmar's eyes as his hands went out toward Jim: the difference between the blow that stunned him and a bullet through his heart had been small in motive. And the original cause—a push in the back. Intentional true: a deliberate insult by a foul-mouthed bully. But, knowing Jim as I did, I couldn't disguise from myself the fact that, even had it been an accident, the result would have been the same. ”

“ He marvels that men can be such wonderful, such super-human fools; his philosophy changes. He recalls grimly the particular night on which he crept over a dirty ploughed field and scrambled into a shell-hole as he saw the thin green streak of a German flare like a bar of light against the blackness; then the burst—the ghostly light flooding the desolate landscape—the crack of a solitary rifle away to his left. And as the flare came slowly hissing down, a ball of fire, he saw the other occupant of his hiding-place—a man's leg, just that, nothing more. ”

“ But though I’ve seen and heard many things in my life that have impressed me—horrible, dreadful things that I shall never forget—the moment of all others that is most indelibly stamped on my brain is that moment when, leaning across the bar, I looked into the depths of the soul of the man who called himself Jimmy Mainwaring—the man who could not get drunk. ”

“ And then to some it may be the roar and bustle of Piccadilly that comes back to haunt them in their exile—the theatre, the music and the lights, the sound of women's skirts; or the rolling Downs of Sussex with the white chalk quarries and great cockchafers booming past them through the dusk.
To each and everyone there is one spot hallowed by special memory, and that spot claims pride of place in day dreams. But when the mind rambles on, and the lumber-room of the past is open—to all who have tasted of its peaceful spell there comes the thought of The River. ”

“ Elaborate your mechanical devices as you will, introduce the most complicated automatic machinery to control the regular sweep of the light, and the monotonous explosion of the maroons, it all comes back finally to the man who lives in that tall slender building rising out of the water. A dreary life to which not many men are suited: a life where strange thoughts and fancies might come drifting into one's brain—drifting as gently and slowly as the gray wisps of fog outside. ”

“ Night—and a working-party stretching away over a ploughed field are digging a communication trench. The great green flares lob up half a mile away, a watery moon shines on the bleak scene. Suddenly a noise like the tired sigh of some great giant, a scorching sheet of flame that leaps at you out of the darkness, searing your very brain, so close does it seem; the ping of death past your head; the clatter of shovel and pick next you as a muttered curse proclaims a man is hit; a voice from down the line: "Gawd! Old Ginger's took it. 'Old up, mate. Say, blokes, Ginger's done in!" ”

“ This is not a story; there is no plot; it is just what happens every day somewhere or other in the land of glutinous, stinking mud, where the soles are pulled off a man's boots when he walks and horses go in up to their bellies; where one steers a precarious and slippery course on the narrow necks of earth that separate shell holes, and huddled things stare up at the sky with unseeing eyes. ”

“ I can't think of life without ever seeing you again; and anyway, I suppose, we're bound to run across one another. Only just at the moment I can't think of any more exquisite torture than seeing you as another woman's husband. . . .
Good-night, my dear, dear Love, God bless and keep you.
JOAN. Oh! Boy—what Hell it all is, what utter Hell!
The fire was burning low in the grate as Vane laid the letter down on the table beside him. Bolshevism, strikes, wars—of what account were they all combined, beside the eternal problem of a man and a woman? ”

“ Then there came a heavy thud from just above us, and I saw Jenkins, the wireless man, pitch forward on his face half in and half out of his cabin door. He lay there sprawling, while another of the parsons proceeded to wreck his instruments with the iron bar which he had used to stun the operator. Just then, with a squawk of terror like an anguished hen, Mrs. Armstrong rose to her feet, and with her pink parasol in one hand and her rug in the other fled toward the bow of the ship. She looked so irresistibly funny—this large, hysterical woman—that I couldn’t help it, I laughed. ”

“ Thus did Jim Denver come back to his regiment. Once again the life of the moles claimed him—the life of the underworld: that strange existence of which so much has been written, and so little has been really grasped by those who have not been there. A life of incredible dreariness—yet possessing a certain "grip" of its own. A life of peculiar contrasts—where the suddenness—the abruptness of things strikes a man forcibly: the extraordinary contrasts of black and white. Sometimes they stand out stark and menacing, gleaming and brilliant; more often do they merge into grey. ”

“ The man fell back with a bullet through his brain, and slid head down to the bottom of the shaft. "Bomb 'em, boys; bomb 'em."
With a roar the bombs went off in the confined space below the ground; the lights went out, and a confused medley of shouts and groans followed them up the trench as they sought pastures new. Control was impossible: it was every man for himself, and to hell with everything he could see. Each man fought his own little battle, in his own little way, against one or two or three of the bewildered men who appeared suddenly from odd places. ”

“ Lady Cynthia Stockdale at Ascot, at Goodwood, in her motor-car, out of her motor-car, by the fire, by the gas stove, in her boudoir, out of her boudoir, in the garden, not in the garden—and always in a different frock every time. It doesn’t matter to me, but there are some people who haven’t got enough money to pay for the doctor’s bill when their wives are dying. And it’s such a comfort to them to see you by the fire. To know that half the money you paid for your frock would save the life of the woman they love. ”

“ Like great monsters out of the depths they wail dismally at one another and pass unseen, their sirens growing fainter and fainter in the distance. Only the roar of the maroons from the light- house goes on unchanged, while the gray fog eddies gently by, making fantastic figures as it drifts. Implacable and silent, it seems to mock such paltry man-made efforts to fight it, and yet there are amazingly few accidents, even in that crowded shipping area. ”

“ And so in the course of two or three days Vane drove up to the historic gates of Rumfold Hall in an ambulance. The house, situated in the heart of Surrey, was surrounded by extensive grounds. The view from it was magnificent, stretching away for miles and miles to the south, and terminating in the purple downs: and Vane, as the car waited for the gates to be opened, felt that indefinable thrill of pride that comes to every man when he looks on some glorious stretch of his own country. He noticed that the lodge-keeper had changed since he was there last, and not, it struck him, for the better. ”

“ For weeks his battalion was destined to remain in peace trenches, to live that dreary life of monotony which tests the capabilities of the leader as no big push can do. The excitement is absent, there is plenty of time—too much time—for thought. And boredom is of all things one of the hardest to combat. It calls for leadership of the highest type. There is many a man capable of supreme devotion in a crisis who is incapable of the steady, unseen strain, day in, day out, of keeping up his men's spirits—in fact, of appreciating human nature in one of its many phases. ”

“ In fact, the whirl of gaiety in which he has passed his seven days seems more unreal than his other life—than the dead German. And it is only when a man is wounded and comes home to get fit, when he idles away the day in the home of his fathers, with a rod or a gun to help him back to convalescence, when the soothing balm of utter peace and contentment creeps slowly through his veins, that he looks back on the past few months as a runner on a race just over. ”

“ She knew, as no one else did, what a wonderful wife and pal Cynthia would make to the right man. But it must be the right man; it must be the real thing. And like a blinding flash had come the thought of the Hermit—the Hermit who had come into the neighbourhood six months previously, and taken the little farm standing in the hollow overlooking the sea. For, as she frequently told John, if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was tied to a silly old idiot of a husband, she’d have married the Hermit herself. ”

“ Derek, we've just got to try to keep it alive."
"It's the devil," said Vane whimsically. "Jove! lady dear, isn't the blue of the sky and the sea and the gold of the sand just crying out to be the setting of a lovers' paradise? Aren't we here alone just hidden from the world, while the very gulls themselves are screaming: 'Kiss her, kiss her?' And then the fairy princess, instead of being the fairy princess to the wounded warrior, orders him to go back and look for work. It's cruel. ”

“ Dying? He—Billy Saunders! What about Molly—his Molly? What about. . . . Gentle fingers once again touched his head, and, looking up, he saw the doctor's eyes fixed on his.
"They're shelling the hospital, dear old man; we've got to get——
Great Scott, look out!"
Like the moan of a giant insect, the shrill whine came through the air, rising to an overwhelming scream. There was a deafening crash—a great hole was torn in the wall just by the window with the jagged pane, and the room filled with stifling black fumes. A sudden agonising stab, and the man, looking up, saw Molly in front of him. ”

“ For about three miles inland there stretched a belt of stinking swamp—one vast malaria hot-bed—and over this belt the straggling street meandered towards the low foot-hills beyond. At times it almost lost itself: but if you didn’t give up hope, or expire from the stench, and cast about you’d generally find it again leading you on to where you felt you might get a breath of God’s fresh air in the hills. As a matter of fact you didn’t; the utmost one can say is that it wasn’t quite so appalling as in the swamp itself. Mosquitoes! Heavens! they had to be seen to be believed. ”

“ Now it is possible that to those who sit at home, and regard war from arm-chairs as a movement of little flags on a large-scale map, the words of Toby Seymour may come in the nature of a surprise. It is possible that they have never really thought about the human side of killing: of killing as a hobby—as a trade. Vaguely they realise that a soldier does not go into the army to pick buttercups; vaguely they understand that men die and are killed in war, and that soldiers are the people who kill and are killed. ”

“ Suddenly Vane felt Joan's hand on his arm, and looking down he found her at his side.
"Don't you understand, dear man?" she said. "I'm frightened of being left to decide . . . just frightened to death."
"And don't you understand, dear girl," he answered, "that I'm frightened of deciding for you? If one decides wrong for oneself—well, it's one's own funeral. But if it's for somebody else—and it's their funeral. ”