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Show . . i 'NO HERO THIS' j Telegram's Great New Serial By Warwick Deeping I am a country doctor, age 35, in partnership with a man of 53, whose kindness and wisdom have made me more than respect him. I am married. mar-ried. My marriage has been a happy one, and perhaps I have been tempted to be sentimental about it' Mary and I have always understood ,each other, perhaps because the problems we have had to face have been simple and actual. As yet I we have no children. We had decided to wait jfor a time before having children. I suppose I lam a somewhat unadventurous person. My work in this corner of Sussex has satisfied me. I do not want to go to war. I Let me be honest about it. What is it that makes me shrink? Fear, yes, some fear, but of I what? A doctor may never pass into the danger I zone. On the other hand, he may be with a battalion bat-talion in the trenches. Fear of what? Death, 'mutilation, or of a strange new anonymous life full of alien faces, a kind of going back to school like some raw but sensitive child? Am I so old at 35 that I fear change, insecurity, the stripping of one's comfortable self on the edge of this sinister, dark sea? I am a somewhat separative creature. I cannot laugh easily, and smack "shoulders, and I lay my head on the breezy world 's buxom bosom. 1 am apt to become mute in a crowded room, and to retreat into a corner. Mary says nothing. I often wonder what the secret Mary thinks about the war. I am beginning to realize this blinding universal rage has brought a kind of silence between be-tween us. We talk the conventional stuff about Belgium and Ypres, and the Russian steamroller, and the Miracle of the Mame, and of the heroism of our men in Flanders, but I notice that we both shrink from intimate personal confessions. I seem to be divining some other and essentially secret creature in my wife. We saw Roger off last night at the station. A dead. December dusk, a few gas jets glazed and solitary. His people did not come, which I understood. under-stood. Roger is 38. and an old volunteer. He goes to an infantry battalion somewhere in Dorsetshire. Roger very quiet, but with a look in his eyes that hurt me. we stood there .fidgeting an a kind of dreadful silence waiting for his train to come in. I felt that he was yearning for that train to arrive. Afterward in the car Mary said to me, "I feel, that he won't come back." I tried to be cheerful and she added, "And Roper knows it." ' I had nothing to sav. Surgery. Warmth and lights, the familiar odor of drugs., the rows of bottles like friendly faces. tCuiluioM Oa Faca IU Cohlau 2-J. . . 9 NO HEROTHIS By WARWICK DEEPING (Continued from Pip On) Randall, my partner, has gone to bed with one of his attacks of migraine and all the work is mine. I am glad of it, for it seems to safeguard something in myself, and to justify my being here. The waiting room is full. It has been raining and the stuffy room smells of warm damp clothes. I have little Freddie Lavender in with his mother, a nasty compound fracture of the bones of the forearm. My case and doing excellently. I am pleased. Old Bannister up with his eternal cough. He has a nasty habit of coughing in one's fare. Dispense medicines and wrap up and seal bottles. The smell of the hot wax is curiously reassuring. Back to Old Routine Write up books and records. Wash out measuring glasses. I notice that I have dropped some sealing wax on the dispensing counter, which is brown and stained with use and age. Clean it off with a spatula. Randall is likely to be fussy about small things and completely serene when the big things come along. I go out into Brackenhurt High street. My home is a little Georgian Geor-gian house beyond the church. It has a white door and a graceful fanlight. fan-light. There is a smell of cooking as I open the door. This perfume from the kitchen is always a delicate deli-cate offense to Mary, but to me it is somehow homely and pleasant, especially on a dead December night. Steak and onions and . a raspberry tart. We sit by the fire. There are oak logs on it. I have a book and a pipe. Our drawing room looks out on the long garden with its low hedges and high walls. In this room it is very silent at night, save: when a wind is blowing. No foot-! steps, no sound of traffic. Mary has a book, but I notice that she ; keeps putting the book down in . her lap to stare at the fire. Her' face haa a kind of tense, inward stillness. I wonder, and am vaguely vague-ly uneasy. Suddenly she look at me almost like a atranger; it is only for a moment. Her eyes are back fazing! at the fire. She tells me that she has been with Roger's wife and helping to bathe the children. I ajk about No rah and am puzzled at the way aha eludes my question. Why doesn't she want to talk about Norah? Roger's wife is a partic ularly transparent and happy person, per-son, so bright and sane, not the sort of woman to dissolve into emotion. emo-tion. I am sure that Norah has been utterly brave. Mary says something about sacrifice. Sacrifice? Sacri-fice? A kind of embarrassment seems to stumble in between us. I find that my pipe has gone out. I relight it. Mary picks up her book and goes on reading. A wind seems to spring up from nowhere and I hear it making a little restless moaning in the chimney. A sunny day, one of those rare days in winter when the air is like iced hock. I am driving to Thorn-hill Thorn-hill Place to see Lady Hazzard ; about the fitting up of Thornhill as an auxiliary hospital. I find Lady Hazzard rather like a tall thin figure in ivory, distant and delicate, with enigmatic ice-blue eyes. She tells me that Lay ton of St. Helen's is to take charge of the surgical cases and that he will i drive over daily. I feel snubbed land wonder if her Lady Superior iair is fortuitous or willful, j We have a Kitchener battalion billeted in the town. The men come mainly from some Industrial area in the Midlands. One company is in khaki, the rest In dark blue suits jand Glengarry caps. I saw them 'coming in from a route march this morning, and the business depressed me. The physique is very poor, and in some cases grotesque. Many of the men were very done. Poor thin 'straining necks, and little pinched j faces. I As I came out of The George after seeing the lessee, who is in bed with ; bronchitis, I found the battalion paraded on the Abbey Green. Half the town looking on. I fall in with the Misses Ponsonby, large, hand-some hand-some young women in tailor-made 'tweeds and hard hats. They have been very active in all patriotic alarms and excursions. Two brothers broth-ers are in the guards, good looking men with small heads and very pale blue eyes. I take off my hat to the Misses Ponsonby and pause. They look at me in a queer oblique way. and I notice that both of them have deeply cut nostrils. Honoria says to her sister, "I j hear this battalion hasn't yet got a medical officer. It's a perfect ; scandal." Talk of War I dare to correct Miss Ponsonby. The battalion has a medical officer, a little Glasgow man rather like a gruff and self-satisfied Scotch France. I want to say that I am sorry for the ambulance. He goes on to assert that if the young men don't go, others who are older but who have more guts will have to fill the ranks. I walk on realizing that he had considered it his duty to be offensive offen-sive to me. If all the Guthries in the world were 20 years younger there might be less of this rage for pushing other people into a kind of bottomless pit. Guthrie is so 'safe. Neither in age nor in physique phy-sique is he fit for anything but to strut about and hector the young. There are wounded at Thornhill. I go there to look around the wards and to give anesthetics for Layton. jThe.se wounded men who have suffered suf-fered are so much more human than the people at home. The one I thing that hurts me most is their cheerfulness. I 'question it, and should like to question them. Can they smile because they hope that they will not have to go bark? Or do they think that they have to play up to all these women? They Know The Truth But they do not look at me coldly with eyes of reproach. They have faced the ultimate horror of the 'great reality and perhaps they know in their vitals what is the truth. Lady Hazzard said to me rather j frigidly this morning, "We are very iglad to have your services. Dr. j Brent, until we can arrange for an j older man to help Dr. Randall with, the wards." Something has upset Mary. I was in early for tea and sitting in i front of the fire with the lights out1 j waiting for her. She came into the; room and I saw her reflection dark-i ly in the long mirror. She stood a moment quite still staring at nothing. noth-ing. She had not realized my presence. pres-ence. I sat up in the chair, and she gave a kind of gasping cry. j 'I didn't know you were here." j Vague anger and resentment! But why? She turned on the lights, i took off her hat and coat and rang. for tea. Her face looked cold, and the weather waa not cold. I asked her where she had beenj and she answered rather curtly. I "Oh. to theN Red Cross working ! party." ' I I felt that she did not want to be I iquestioned. Has some good woman been hinting that I ought to be in khaki? j Randall and I are In the surgery together. i "Oh. Stephen. he says. T have; I tell her. her face suddenly becomes be-comes fresh and tender. She jumps up. puts her arms around my neck and kisses me. 'Oh, my dear. I'm so proud, so glad. After all. it isn't so dangerous for a doctor. You may be in a hospital hos-pital all the time." I realize how final the choice la and that Mary will go about with a kind of new radiance, unashamed before all these other women. Why had I not understood this before? The strsngeness between us, the silence. (Continued Tuesdsy.) (Copyright. 1837, for The Telegram.)! terrier, xie cuu vn ma joj in khaki, and was so conscious of it that I found him rather offensive. offen-sive. Miss Ponsonby gives me another oblique look. Both of them are very head In air. I hear her say to her aister. "I'm flad aomeone has a sense of duty." I edg away feeling hot about th ears. I run into Rob Guthrie at the corner of Mont street. Guthrie Guth-rie is a histrionic person who wears large hats and a flamboyant manner, man-ner, th amateur country gentleman gentle-man in clothes and color. He is aged about SO. possesses one of those brown-bread faces and a drooping mustache. He has an offensive of-fensive breath, and. as I happen to know, it ia the breath of alcoholic dyspepsia. Guthrie cocka his head at m and atops. He says. "Doesn't that thrill you., Brent? Lads who ars not afraid of the muck and the shells. It is hell in Flanders." I say that things are not so bad aa all that and that th Germans' are held. . He tell me that he has volunteered volun-teered to drive an ambulance in, uttn meaning, w .,,.. .w j jso.nething It isn't my business.! and yet in a sense it is ours. Besides, Be-sides, in k way. being the senior "j he pauses swkwardly. . ' "You have always been very loyal, jto me. If it is consideration for) 'me that is holding you back " I understand. He is trying to tell me that I can and ought to be spared. I feel stubborn and miser-1 able. I "Do you think I ought to go?" I "It's your choice, my dear man.' 'not mine. It's a choice eiery man, has to make Why not talk it overj with Mary?" ; "Mary!" i "Yes. Women ran be curiously : brave in hurting themselves in such a crisis." I make my confession to Mary in the drawing room before dinner. Mary has been entertaining the Red Cross working party and signs of its activities still ars apparent. I tell Mary quite casually that Randall Ran-dall and I have been talking it over and that I think of joining the R. A. M. C. Mary is on the tuffet by the fire and looking tired, but as |