16 
LAND &> WATER 
November 28, 1918 
Colonel Alderson's Revenge : By Douglas Jerrold 
IT was late one winter afternoon when Rivers and I 
rode into Engelbelmar. The place was deserted ; the 
battalion which had been billeted there had left in the 
forenoon, and we had galloped on across country well 
in advance of ours. 
We drew up outside the church and looked round for 
some one to take us to the town major. It was getting darker 
every minute, and the place was empty as a catafalque. 
Suddenly Rivers left my side and rode straight towards the 
ruined church porch. No ordinary eyes could have picked 
out the officer leaning up in the shadow there ; but Rivers, 
the keenest-sighted man I ever knew, was on to him in a 
flash. He greeted him cheerily, and asked him to direct 
him to the town major's billet. 
"Right ygu are, I'll take )'ou round," the officer answered, 
and came out of the shadow. He was a distinguished looking 
fellow, with a bronzed aquiline iace and very keen eyes : 
a face one could hardly forget, yet, oddly enough, he was 
like a hundred others superiicially. It was merely his 
expression which lingered with one, I think, a look of refined 
rather weary audacity, as of a man who lived with a secret 
and bore himself superior to the burden of his care. 
"So you are in the Wessex ! " the stranger remarked, 
almost affectionately. " Did you ever serve under Alderson ? " 
Tiie question gave me quite a start. . . . Alderson's 
name had a habit of turning up in strange places, in quiet 
backwaters, and arousing the most poignant yet contentious 
memories. ' 
"Alderson." I heard Rivers answer. "I was with him 
when he died." 
"Alderson died alone," the stranger answered, without a 
moment's pause, adding, as if by an after-thought in the 
way of an apology for his certainty : "I thought every one 
knew the story." 
Then Rivers did a very remarkable thing, for him. He 
turned round and asked me for a cigarette. Rivers had 
never smoked for ten years to my knowledge, but I felt 
his hand on my- arm as he asked me, and I knew that for 
some reason he wanted a cigarette now, and quickly. I gave 
him my case. He took one, put it between his lips, and bent 
over and asked our guide for a match. He offered a box. , 
"Would you mind striking one for me," Rivers asked, 
rather apologetically, to my surprise, for he was the most 
punctilious person himself that you could have imagined, 
and bent over while the stranger, striking the match, held it 
between his hands to shelter it from the wind. The light 
from it lit up the stranger's face . . . certainly a remarkable 
face. 
"Thank you," Rivers said, as he puffed at his cigarette. 
"You're quite right about Alderson. As a matter of fact," 
he went on, "he did die alone ; but 'died' is hardly the word 
I should have used." 
^ "Killed, you mean," the other remarked, rather sadly. 
"Yes, of course." 
" Murdered ! " Rivers remarked very drily, with a surrep- 
• titious glance at his companion, which I would not quite 
understand. " Would you like to hear the story ? " 
"Very much, if it's not too painful to you," the other 
said. "I see you were a friend of his." 
_ "Believe me," Rivers answered, "the story interests me. 
I'll ^ell it now ; we can see the town major later." 
And Rivers followed the stranger and myself into a dimly 
lit estaminet, and sat down almost in the doorway. 
Rivers lent back in his chair, with his eyes on the ceiling. 
" Infandum jubes renovare dolorem," he murmured, almost 
tragically. "Well, well, I will tell you the story; it'll 
interest you." 
And Rivers looked with an indefifiable assurance at his 
companion. 
"We were sitting in our battalion headquarters one even- 
ing," he began, after a pause, "talking over the proposed 
attack. 
"I can see him now, smoking one of his execrable Dutch 
cigars, and ejaculating at intervals : ' You see, they expect 
us to attack. ... I tell you it's a matter of psychology 
. . . our brains against theirs. ..." 
"I agreed that it was a matter of psychology, but not 
very enthusiastically, I'm afraid. After all, all we could do 
was go by the map. It's the best information a soldier can 
ever get,\and I said as much to Alderson. 
" 'We propose to go by the map ; but the point is, ijeed 
we?' was Alderson's answer, spoken in that strange voice 
of his which sefemed as ever to carry one mysteriously to the 
edge of an unimaginable abyss. I couldn't understand his 
point, and told him so." 
"And Alderson didn't agree?" the stranger asked, in 
tones of quiet surprise. 
"Alderson agree?" Rivers exclaimed. "Alderson turned 
on me with the most perfect affectation of impatient con- 
tempt that you can imagine. 'Can't you see the naked 
fact staring you in the face ? ' was what he said to me ; but 
he didn't say it — he spat it across the table. Then he tcok 
out his note-book, and began writing. 
"There was a pause after Alderson's remark, as you can 
imagine, . . . then he tossed the note he had scribbled 
across the table to me. 
"I looked at it. 
" 'You see,' Alderson went on, in a very nasty, sarcastic 
voice. 'It's a question of guns.' 
"The curtain had gone up on the first act of that amazing 
evening drama, and Alderson had cast me for my part in 
the nick of time." 
"So there was another actor?" — the stranger's voice had 
sunk almost to a whisper. "My God, what a magnificent 
'story for the stage," he added, reflectively, with a really 
extraordinary serenity. He must have known, by that 
time, of course, though I could hardly guess. But lie rose 
superior to his destiny, if any man ever did. 
"You see," Rivers went on, "Alderson was incapable of 
sarcasm, and his sarcasm marked the rise of the curtain. 
In one line he'd told his audience that he was a conceited 
ass, and that I was — well, a person of no importance. 
"You mustn't think it all came to me in a flash. But I 
picked up the essential thing. He was not talking to me, but 
to some one who was not there ! Talking to a shadow — a 
presence forecasted, merely. I felt that unimaginable abyss, 
from which one was never quite sufficiently distant when one 
was with Alderson, opening beneath my very feet." 
"And yet you never said a word," the stranger murmured, 
with a note of admiration in his voice. His detachment was 
marvellous — the detachment of the artist, of course. 
"I recovered from my dreams," Rivers went on, "to find 
myself introduced to a colonel of artillery. So the unseen 
presence had materialised ; and, believe me, I was never 
less surprised in my life. 
" I got up, and was introduced. Then Alderson had 
another flash of inspiration. 
" 'You'd better put off your round. Rivers,' he said, 'and 
stay and give us the benefit of your advice,' and his voice 
had a most persuasive charm. 
"What an actor ! — what a gambler ! He was playing for 
high stakes, I knew, and he took that risk. After all, I 
might have stayed." 
"Yet you understood ... all that . . . without a re- 
hearsal ? " the stranger said, speaking very slo\yly, and 
bewildered. 
"Alderson made me understand," Rivers answered, almost 
humbly. 
"And yet men say the English Army has no discipline," 
the stranger commented. He was resigned by now to what- 
ever end the storj' might unfold. Another victim had sur- 
rendered to Alderson's mysterious power. 
"'Our brain against theirs'— I remembered Alderson's 
phrase," Rivers went on, almost disregarding the interrup- 
tion, "and I knew from that minute that the game Alderson 
was playing could have only one ending. No one could 
have defeated him that night. 
" I went through to the next compartment of the dug-out ; 
it was one of those long, French contrivances, shaped like a 
tunnel, and cut into compartments at intervals by double 
thicknesses of blankets stretched on wooden frames. 
"Alderson and I slept in two bunks fitted up in the next 
compartment to the mess. I walked through it to the 
signallers' room at the end, took off my boots, put on a pair 
of canvas shoes, and stole back into my bunk. 
" A small slit cut in the blankets on the level of my eyes, 
and you had all the essential elements, for a drama. The 
actors were sitting opposite one another over the mean, 
battered table, a bottle of whisky, another bottle full of 
water, two spluttering candles in 'two other grease-bespat- 
tered bottles, and, sitting among all this muddled parody 
ofaviHsation, Alderson and his colonel of artillery. 
" 'My dear Boyton/ Alderson was saying, as I crept into 
my bunk. 'It's easy— perfectly easy.' 
"'1 don't agree, . . . their positions on the left are too 
strong, and they're the key to the whole thing. We can 
