By SIR PHILIP GIBBS
THE STREET OF ADVENTURE
WOUNDED SOULS
PEOPLE OF DESTINY
THE SOUL OF THE WAR
THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME
THE STRUGGLE IN FLANDERS
THE WAY TO VICTORY, 2 Vols.
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD
MORE THAT MUST BE TOLD
THE MIDDLE
OF THE ROAD
A Novel
BY
PHILIP GIBBS
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. II
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The Middle of the Road
I
For the twentieth time Bertram Pollard went to the doorof the little room he called his “study” and listened.He heard nothing but the slow tick-tock of a grandfather’sclock at the end of the narrow hall; that, and his own breathingwhich seemed loud.
The silence of the house in Holland Street, Kensington,was horrible to him; yet better than the rapid footsteps ofa doctor, the quick rustle of a nurse’s starched dress, thestrange inexplicable noises of something being draggedacross the room upstairs, water being poured out, a glassfalling and smashing, and other sounds which had scaredhim when his wife was in pain.
He’d heard her moaning once or twice, had gone backinto his room, shutting the door quietly, and saying,“Lord! . . . Lord! . . .” and nothing else but that againand again.
In that room of his—twelve feet by fourteen, as he knewby measuring it from skirting-board to skirting-board, asa mechanical occupation for his nerve-tattered brain—hehad prayed, cursed, groaned, and even wept a little. Hehad paced up and down, sat down at his desk, put his foreheadagainst the wall, gripped the mantelpiece, clenched andunclenched his hands, behaved with a ridiculous lack ofself-control.
He was frightened by his own cowardice. “This won’tdo!” he had said once or twice, and then used the wordswhich he had said to his own soul, not without effect sometimes,when men had lain dead about him and his chanceof death had been as good as theirs. “Keep a stiff upperlip, my lad!”
That’s what his father had said sharply to him as a smallboy when he had taken a toss from a pony or cut his k