The Test of Scarlet: A Romance of Reality — Background and Themes

n learnt to obey the orders “Shun” and “Stand at ease,” and would hold himself steady with “eyes front” to be inspected. It was about a fortnight after we had been billetted in the village that we discovered that we could no longer call him “Little Sister": he fell into the river when the horses were watering and had to go naked while his clothes were drying.

His parentage was a problem. Some said that he was the child of a rich married Frenchman; others that his father had been a quartermaster in a Highland battalion. We rather clung to the legend of his Scotch origin; his sturdy habit of throwing stones at people bigger than himself seemed to prove that he was British.

His mother is difficult to describe. She’s a pleasant, sun browned girl, with a happy smile and kindly ways of showing her contentment. She rarely looks at you; her eyes, which are gray, are always demurely cast down, and yet you feel that all the time she’s watching. Her head is always bare so that her hair, which would naturally be brown, is bleached to the colour of honey. Whenever you pass her she is humming a little song, and sometimes she laughs beneath her breath. Her hands are interminably busy, doing something for Bully Beef or some of our men. She devours her little son with a hungry passion and pushes him away from her in pretence that she does not care. Everything that she does she clothes in an atmosphere of tenderness. What her name is none of us know for certain, but we call her Suzette.

When we received the order to march out from her village, we thought that we were going into an attack, instead of which at the end of the long night march we found ourselves again on the Ridge. Because it was night when we moved, nobody noticed that Suzette was following. I don’t believe she walked; I suspect that she rode in a G. S. wagon with the connivance of the Captain and the Quartermaster-Sergeant. When we found her at our new wagon-lines in the morning, no one felt like reporting officially on her presence.

Since then she has made herself the mother of our battery; it’s to Suzette that we all go when we’ve lost a button or our clothes need patching. And it’s to Suzette that we go when the letters from our girls aren’t up to scratch. We just sit a little while and look at her; after that we renew our faith in women and feel better.

The men have built her a little bivouac a short distance away from theirs, yet within ear-range if she should need them. Woe betide any blackguard who tries to molest her. It’s happened twice; the men lay cold for the best part of an hour. They were strangers from another unit.

How does she exist on active service? The cook feeds her on the sly from the battery-kitchen. The men share with her the boxes that are sent to them from home. Our first thought on looking through a present of comforts is, “Ah, that will do for Suzette.”

For the rest, the Quartermaster supplies her with necessities and blankets. Of late she has taken to wearing a Tommy’s tunic and a khaki shirt.

Suzette has become an institution; the Colonel and General are aware of her; they both wink at her presence. They may well, for she keeps our men straight; there’s been no drunkenness since she came among us. She’ll be the last woman to be seen by many of our chaps; the casualties in our counter-offensive are bound to be heavy.

What I’m wondering is will she be allowed to accompany us if we go into open warfare; we can scarcely have a woman with us then. I’d bet the shirt off my back, however, that the Captain will manage it. He never speaks to her or of her—never seems to notice her; but if you watch him closely, you know that he listens for her laughter and her footstep. He’s a man to whom something shattering has happened—something not done by shells. He was badly wounded last year at Vimy; we none of us expected to see him back. He rejoined us suddenly in the spring. He’s come back to die; we all know that. By this time next year, if he can contrive it bravely, he won’t be listening for Suzette or any girl.