the first news she got from him was posted at st. vincent. he wrote to her alone, with a jocose hope that his father would be satisfied with his sufferings on the voyage. not only had the sea been rough, but he had suffered diabolically from the inoculation against enteric fever, which, even after he had got his [67]sea-legs, kept him to his berth and gave him a 'day of atonement' thirst.
'ah!' growled s. cohn; 'he sees what a fool he's been, and he'll take the next boat back.'
'but that would be desertion.'
'well, he didn't mind deserting the business.'
mr. cohn's bewilderment increased with every letter. the boy was sleeping in sodden trenches, sometimes without blankets; and instead of grumbling at that, his one grievance was that the regiment was not getting to the front. heat and frost, hurricane and dust-storm—nothing came amiss. and he described himself as stronger than ever, and poured scorn on the medical wiseacre who had tried to refuse him.
'all the same,' sighed hannah, 'i do hope they will just be used to guard the lines of communication.' she was full of war-knowledge acquired with painful eagerness, prattled of basuto ponies and mauser bullets, pontoons and pom-poms, knew the exact position of the armies, and marked her war-map with coloured pins.
simon, too, had developed quite a literary talent under the pressure of so much vivid new life, and from his cheery letters she learned much that was not in the papers, especially in those tense days when the c.i.v.'s did at last get to the front—and remained there: tales of horses mercifully shot, and sheep mercilessly poisoned, and oxen dropping dead as they dragged the convoys; tales of muddle and accident, tales of british soldiers slain by their own protective cannon as they lay behind ant-heaps facing the enemy, and british officers culled under the very eyes of the polo-match; tales of hospital and camp, of shirts turned sable and [68]putties worn to rags, and all the hidden miseries of uncleanliness and insanitation that underlie the glories of war. there were tales, too, of quarter-rations; but these she did not read to her husband, lest the mention of 'bully-beef' should remind him of how his son must be eating forbidden food. once, even, two fat pigs were captured at a hungry moment for the battalion. but there came a day when s. cohn seized those letters and read them first. he began to speak of his boy at the war—nay, to read the letters to enthralled groups in the synagogue lobby—groups that swallowed without reproach the tripha meat cooked in simon's mess-tin.
it was like being gabbai over again.
moreover, simon's view of the boer was so strictly orthodox as to give almost religious satisfaction to the proud parent. 'a canting hypocrite, a psalm-singer and devil-dodger, he has no civilization worth the name, and his customs are filthy. since the great trek he has acquired, from long intercourse with his kaffir slaves, many of the native's savage traits. in short, a born liar, credulous and barbarous, crassly ignorant and inconceivably stubborn.'
'crassly ignorant and inconceivably stubborn,' repeated s. cohn, pausing impressively. 'haven't i always said that? the boy only bears out what i knew without going there. but hear further! "is it to be wondered at that the boer farmer, hidden in the vast undulations of the endless veldt, with his wife, his children and his slaves, should lose all sense of proportion, ignorant of the outside world, his sole knowledge filtering through jo-burgh?"'
as s. cohn made another dramatic pause, it was [69]suddenly borne in on his wife with a stab of insight that he was reading a description of himself—nay, of herself, of her whole race, hidden in the great world, awaiting some vague future of glory that never came. the important voice of her husband broke again upon her reflections:
'"he has held many nights of supplication to his fetish, and is still unconvinced that his god of battles is asleep."' the reader chuckled, and a broad smile overspread the synagogue lobby. '"they are brave—oh, yes, but it is not what we mean by it—they are good fighters, because they have dutch blood at the back of them, and a profound contempt for us. their whole life has been spent on the open veldt (we are always fighting them on somebody's farm, who knows every inch of the ground), and they never risk anything except in the trap sort of man?uvres. the brave rush of our tommies is unknown to them, and their slim nature would only see the idiocy of walking into a death-trap, cool as in a play. were there ever two races less alike?"' wound up the youthful philosopher in his tent. '"i really do not see how they are to live together after the war."'
'that's easy enough,' s. cohn had already commented to his wife as oracularly as if she did not read the same morning paper. 'intermarriage! in a generation or two there will be one fine anglo-african race. that's the solution—mark my words. and you can tell the boy as much—only don't say i told you to write to him.'
'father says i'm to tell you intermarriage is the solution,' mrs. cohn wrote obediently. 'he really is getting much softer towards you.'
[70]'tell father that's nonsense,' simon wrote back. 'the worst individuals we have to deal with come from a boer mother and an english father, deposited here by the first transvaal war.'
s. cohn snorted angrily at the message. 'that was because there were two governments—he forgets there will be only one united empire now.'
he was not appeased till private cohn was promoted, and sent home a thrilling adventure, which the proud reader was persuaded by the lobby to forward to the communal organ. the organ asked for a photograph to boot. then s. cohn felt not only gabbai, but town councillor again.
this wonderful letter, of which s. cohn distributed printed copies to the staff of the emporium with a bean-feast air, ran:
'we go out every day—i am speaking of my own squadron—each officer taking his turn with twenty to fifty men, and sweep round the farms a few miles out; and we seldom come back without seeing boers hanging round on the chance of a snipe at our flanks, or waiting to put up a trap if we go too far. the local commando fell on our cattle-guard the other day—a hundred and fifty to our twenty-five—and we suffered; it was a horrible bit of country. there was a young chap, winstay—rather a pal of mine—he had a narrow squeak, knocked over by a shot in his breast. i managed to get him safe back to camp—heaven knows how!—and they made me a lance-corporal, and the beggar says i saved his life; but it was really through carrying a fat letter from his sister—not even his sweetheart. we chaff him at missing such a [71]romantic chance. he got off with a flesh wound, but there is a great blot of red ink on the letter. you may imagine we were not anxious to let our comrades go unavenged. my superiors being sick or otherwise occupied, i was allowed to make a night-march with thirty-five men on a farm nine miles away—just to get square. it was a nasty piece of work, as we were within a few miles of the boer laager, three hundred strong. there was moonlight, too—it was like a dream, that strange, silent ride, with only the stumble of a horse breaking the regular thud of the hoofs. we surrounded the farm in absolute silence, dismounting some thousand yards away, and fixing bayonets. i told the men i wanted no shots—that would have brought down the commando—but cold steel and silence. we crept up and swept the farm—it was weird, but, alas! they were out on the loot. the men were furious, but we live in hopes.'
the end was a trifle disappointing, but s. cohn, too, lived in hopes—of some monstrous and memorable butchery. even his wife had got used to the firing-line, now that neither shot nor shell could harm her boy. 'for he shall give his angels charge over thee.' she had come to think her secret daily repetition of the ninety-first psalm talismanic.
when simon sent home the box which had held the chocolates presented by the queen, a boer bullet, and other curios, s. cohn displayed them in his window, and the crowd and the business they brought him put him more and more in sympathy with simon and the empire. in conversation he deprecated the [72]non-militarism of the jew: 'if i were only a younger man myself, sir....'
the night mafeking was relieved, the emporium was decorated with bunting from roof to basement, and a great illuminated window revealed nothing but stacks of khaki trouserings.
so that, although the good man still sulked over simon to his wife, she was not deceived; and, the time drawing nigh for simon's return, she began to look happily forward to a truly reunited family.
in her wildest anxiety it never occurred to her that it was her husband who would die. yet this is what the irony of fate brought to pass. in the unending campaign which death wages with life, s. cohn was slain, and simon returned unscratched from the war to recite the kaddish in his memory.
