"Humph!" said the general, much astonished.

"Doctor," said Aurelle gravely, "we may now be witnessing the last
days of a civilization which with all its faults was not without a
certain grace. Don't you think that under the circumstances there
might be something better for us to do than tango awkwardly to this
ear-splitting din?"

"My dear boy," said the doctor, "what would you do if some one stuck
a pin into your leg? Well, war and peace have driven more than one
spike into the hide of humanity; and of course she howls and dances
with the pain. It's just a natural reflex action. Why, they had a
fox-trot epidemic just like this after the Black Death in the
fourteenth century; only then they called it St. Vitus's dance."

CHAPTER XVI

THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN

"But the Glory of the Garden
Lies in more than meets the eye."
R. Kipling.

A farewell dinner was being given to Aurelle by the officers of
the Scottish Division, with whom he had spent four years of danger
and hardship.

Before they sat down, they made him drink a cocktail and a glass of
sherry, and then an Italian vermouth tuned up with a drop of gin.
Their eager affection, and this curiously un-British mixing of
drinks, made him feel that on this last evening he was no longer a
member of the mess, but its guest.

"I hope," said Colonel Parker, "that you will be a credit to the
education we have given you, and that you will at last manage to
empty your bottle of champagne without assistance."

"I'll try," said Aurelle, "but the war has ended too soon, and I've
still a lot to learn."

"That's a fact," grumbled the colonel. "This damned peace has come at
a most unfortunate moment. Everything was just beginning to get into
shape. I had just bought a cinema for the men; our gunners were
working better every day; there was a chance of my becoming a
general, and Dundas was teaching me jazz. And then the politicians
poke their noses in and go and make peace, and Clemenceau demobs
Aurelle! Life's just one damned thing after another!"

"_Wee, Messiou_," sighed General Bramble, "it's a pity to see you
leaving us. Can't you stay another week?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm to be demobbed with the third batch, and
I've got my warrant in my pocket. I'm to report to-morrow at
Montreuil-sur-Mer; from there I shall be sent to Arras, and then
dispatched to Versailles, after which, if I survive the journey, I
shall be at liberty to return