The Red Planet | Page 5

we drove off.
Perhaps when I get on a little further I may acquire the trick of telling a
story. At present I am baffled by the many things that clamour for prior
record. Before bringing Sir Anthony on the scene, I feel I ought to say
something more about myself, to explain why Lady Fenimore should
have sent for me in so peremptory a fashion. Following the model of
my favourite author Balzac--you need the awful leisure that has been
mine to appreciate him--I ought to describe the house in which I live,
my establishment-- well, I have begun with Sergeant Marigold--and the
little country town which is practically the scene of the drama in which
were involved so many bound to me by close ties of friendship and
affection.
I ought to explain how I come to be writing this at all.

Well, to fill in my time, I first started by a diary--a sort of War Diary of
Wellingsford, the little country town in question. Then things happened
with which my diary was inadequate to cope. Everyone came and told
me his or her side of the story. All through, I found thrust upon me the
parts of father-confessor, intermediary, judge, advocate, and
conspirator.... For look you, what kind of a life can a man lead situated
as I am? The crowning glory of my days, my wife, is dead. I have
neither chick nor child. No brothers or sisters, dead or alive. The Bon
Dieu and Sergeant Marigold (the latter assisted by his wife and a maid
or two) look after my creature comforts. What have I in the world to do
that is worth doing save concern myself with my country and my
friends?
With regard to my country, in these days of war, I do what I can. Until
finally flattened out by the War Office, I pestered them for such
employment as a cripple might undertake. As an instance of what a
paralytic was capable I quoted Couthon, member of the National
Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. You can see his chair,
not very unlike mine, in the Musee Carnavalet in Paris. Perhaps that is
where I blundered. The idea of a shrieking revolutionary in Whitehall
must have sent a cold shiver down their spines. In the meanwhile, I
serve on as many War Committees in Wellingsford as is physically
possible for Sergeant Marigold to get me into. I address recruiting
meetings. I have taken earnest young Territorial artillery officers in
courses of gunnery. You know they work with my own beloved old
fifteen pounders, brought up to date with new breeches, recoils, shields,
and limbers. For months there was a brigade in Wellings Park, and I
used to watch their drill. I was like an old actor coming once again
before the footlights.... Of course it was only in the mathematics of the
business that I could be of any help, and doubtless if the War Office
had heard of the goings on in my study, they would have dropped
severely on all of us. Still, I taught them lots of things about parabolas
that they did not know and did not know were to be known--things that,
considering the shells they fired went in parabolas, ought certainly to
be known by artillery officers; so I think, in this way, I have done a
little bit for my country.

With regard to my friends, God has given me many in this quiet market
town--once a Sleepy Hollow awakened only on Thursdays by bleating
sheep and lowing cattle and red-faced men in gaiters and hard felt hats;
its life flowing on drowsily as the gaudily painted barges that are towed
on the canal towards which, in scattered buildings, it drifts aimlessly; a
Sleepy Hollow with one broad High Street, melting gradually at each
end through shops, villas, cottages, into the King's Highway, yet
boasting in its central heart a hundred yards or so of splendour, where
the truculent new red brick Post Office sneers across the flagged market
square at the new Portland-stone Town Hall, while the old thatched
corn-market sleeps in the middle and the Early English spire of the
Norman church dreams calmly above them. Once, I say, a Sleepy
Hollow, but now alive with the tramp of soldiers and the rumble of
artillery and transport; for Wellingsford is the centre of a district
occupied by a division, which means twenty thousand men of all arms,
and the streets and roads swarm with men in khaki, and troops are
billeted in all the houses. The War has changed many aspects, but not
my old friendships. I had made a home here during my soldiering days,
long before the South African War, my wife being a kinswoman of Sir
Anthony, and so