' 
 
 Y 
 
 I OH would hardly expect to find a popular novelist 
 in the tobacco business, would you? It is a fact. 
 
 h.owever, that Gilbert Frankatt founded a firm well known 
 
 EGYPTIAN FLAPPERS 
 (Original print in the Metropolitan Museum of Art) 
 
 From "The Customs of Mankind" (Doubleday, Pagre) 
 
 in the tobacco trade. He based his novel, "Peter Jack- 
 son: Cigar Merchant," upon the firm's early history, and 
 the cigarettes that helped to make Peter Jackson's fortune 
 were actually a popular brand. Mr. Frankau is also a 
 case of "following in mother's footsteps," for he undoubt- 
 edly inherited from his mother (who under the nom de 
 plume of "Frank Danby" wrote many popular novels) 
 the genius for turning out "best sellers." Another present- 
 day novelist in the same category is W. B. Maxwell, who 
 is the son of the famous Miss Braddon of happy memories. 
 
 of a oorke* -/lit Son o f 
 
 neg-
 
 PETER JACKSON 
 CIGAR MERCHANT
 
 With the issue of this volume Gilbert Frankau's 
 published works comprise : 
 
 JUVENILIA. 
 
 ETON ECHOES. 
 
 THE X Y Z OF BRIDGE. Illustrated by Lance 
 Thackeray. 
 
 THE SATIRES. 
 
 ONE OF US. A novel in verse. 
 
 ONE OF THEM. A novelette in verse. 
 
 DRAMATIC VERSE. 
 
 "TID'APA." (What does it matter ?) 
 
 THE CITY OF FEAR. 
 
 THE JUDGEMENT OF VALHALLA. 
 
 THE PROSE ROMANCES. 
 
 THE WOMAN OF THE HORIZON. A romance 
 
 of 1913. 
 PETER JACKSON, CIGAR MERCHANT. A 
 
 romance of Married Life. 
 
 There is in preparation : 
 FLOWER FOLK. A romance of the Golden Land. 
 
 The romance " Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant," is 
 copyright for Gilbert Frankau by Alfred A. Knopf, 
 Inc., 220, West Forty-Second Street, New York, for 
 the United States of America ; and will be published 
 simultaneously with this volume under the title, " Peter 
 Jameson.' 1
 
 PETER JACKSON 
 
 CIGAR MERCHANT 
 
 <A "Romance of Married Life 
 By CjIUBERT FRANK AU 
 
 SEVENTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON: HUTCHINSON fef CO 
 PATERNOSTER ROW. 1920 :: :,
 
 
 A portion of this book has appeared serially 
 
 in Land and Water. 
 
 The complete uncensored version now for the first time 
 published is respectfully dedicated to the average 
 man and woman of the English-speaking peoples.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD 9 
 
 I. HOME AND THE OFFICE - l8 
 
 II. NIRVANA, LIMITED - - - 32 
 
 III. THE CREST OF THE WAVE - - - 39 
 
 IV. CRISIS - ... 48 
 V. DECISION - - - - 54 
 
 VI. THE NEW GAME - 64 
 
 VII. PLAYING AT SOLDIERS - - 72 
 VIII. ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS - - 82 
 
 IX. DISSENSIONS - - - - QO 
 
 X. TWO EXCUSES FOR FAILURE - - - 101 
 
 XI. GUNS AND COUNTING-HOUSES - 112 
 
 XII. MEN AND HORSES - - - -121 
 
 XIII. CONCENTRATIONS - - - - 132 
 
 XIV. PREPARE FOR ACTION ! - - - 146 
 
 xv. ATTACK! - . 158 
 
 XVI. FORWARD ! - - . . IJQ 
 
 XVII. ACTION LEFT 1 .... ^2 
 
 XVIII. THE SUICIDE CLUB - - - - 193 
 
 2038856
 
 vi Contents 
 
 PART PAGE 
 
 XIX. RESPITE .... - 204 
 
 XX. THE SALIENT - - - - - 215 
 
 XXI. TRENCH WARFARE - * 225 
 
 XXII. THE HOME FRONT - - 236 
 
 XXIII. THE DROSS AND THE GOLD - - 243 
 
 XXIV. EARTH AND AIR - 254 
 XXV. " SUNFLOWERS " - 265 
 
 XXVI. GENERAL POST - - 277 
 
 XXVII. " BEER " BATTERY - - 286 
 
 XXVIII. IN THE NIGHT - 295 
 
 XXIX. THE LAST OUNCE - 304 
 
 XXX. BROKEN MEN - - 319 
 
 XXXI. THE NEW SCIENCE - - 330 
 
 XXXII. WOMANCRAFT - 33 8 
 
 XXXIII. THE LIFTING OF SHADOWS - '351 
 
 XXXIV. COMMENCEMENT OF DREAMS - 3&2 
 
 xxxv. OUT OF IT 
 
 XXXVI. END OR BEGINNING ? 
 EPILOGUE - -
 
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 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 A Romance of Married Life 
 FOREWORD 
 
 i 
 
 IF you take the Central London Tube to the Bank station ; 
 fight for your place in the lift ; climb the tortuous 
 staircase to Lombard Street ; pass along that narrow 
 money-glutted thoroughfare, where scarlet-vested, top- 
 hatted bank-messengers take dignified way from the sign of 
 the Grasshopper to the swinging doors of the Credit Lyonnais : 
 if, crossing Gracechurch Street below the clock of the London 
 & South- Western Bank, you enter less-aristocratic Fenchurch 
 Street and take the first zig-zag turning on your left, you will 
 find hidden between a stationer's shop and a grocer's two 
 swing-doors, each with a brass name-plate, from which the 
 black lettering, " P. JACKSON AND COMPANY, CIGAR IM- 
 PORTERS," has been almost erased by forty years of incessant 
 polishing. And if you care to penetrate yet further round 
 that gray, curving Lime Street, past the church of St. Andrew 
 Undershaft, into the heart of Havana cigardom, St. Mary 
 Axe, you will still find clustered round the maroon marble 
 of the Baltic Exchange the warehouses of Schornstein & 
 Co., of Beresford & Beresford, of Samuel Elkins and 
 Son, and others with whom Peter traded, intrigued, lunched 
 and gossiped, between the years 1903 and 1914. 
 
 But you will not find, search the City as you may, Peter 
 Jackson, sometime senior partner in Peter Jackson & Com- 
 pany, and Chairman of Nirvana Limited, Manufacturers of 
 High-grade Cigarettes. Because whatever War may have 
 accomplished of good or evil to us other millions whom it caught 
 up into its vortex to Peter it came like a great cleansing 
 storm, terrifying in its violence, unfathomable in its purposes, 
 but bearing him at last, past many rocks of doubt and 
 fear, to sure harbourage, to certainty of body and of soul 
 and, better even than these, to Love.
 
 io Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 This, in so far as one man may tell another's story, is the 
 completed tale of that voyaging. 
 
 2 
 
 Three families the Jacksons, the Gordons, and the 
 Baynets are mainly concerned in this romance. All three 
 were originally English yeomen, country not county folk ; 
 probably peasants in the best sense of the word. In the 
 Jacksons and the Gordons there is an admixture of exotic 
 Hebraic blood : that of the Sefiora Elvira de Miranda y 
 Miraflores, who married a Captain Bradley of the British West 
 India Regiment, then stationed in Jamaica, and had by him 
 two daughters, one of whom married Peter's father in 1880, 
 and the other, John Gordon, father of Peter's cousin Francis. 
 The Baynet stock is pure English. 
 
 Peter's grandfather Peter the First deserted the country 
 for the town at the beginning of the great manufacturing age 
 (about 1840) ; married a ' cit's ' daughter ; tried his luck in 
 the City ; couldn't stand it ; and wandered out to the West 
 Indies, trading first at Georgetown, Demerara, then in 
 Bridgetown, Barbadoes (those were the days when the British 
 Empire still produced its own sugar) ; and finally settling 
 down in the then Spanish colony of Cuba, where he bought a 
 small estate near Guanabacoa, and grew tobacco more for a 
 hobby than a living, as he was a person of few wants, and 
 tolerably careless about most things except his son, Peter the 
 Second, whom he had educated in England, and to whom 
 on his death in the late seventies at grief from losing his wife 
 through yellow fever he bequeathed the sum of three 
 thousand pounds, the verandah 'd hacienda, and some hundred 
 acres of not very saleable land. 
 
 It was on the Royal Mail steamer to Havana that our 
 Peter's father thinking more of the newly-acquired heritage 
 and how best to turn it into cash, than of matrimony first 
 met Captain and Mrs. Bradley (nee Miranda y Miraflores), 
 returning with their two flapper-daughters to Kingston, 
 Jamaica. . . . 
 
 To cut a long story short, Peter the Second sold the 
 tobacco-farm ; found himself in love with Tessa Bradley ; 
 followed her to Jamaica ; married her ; realized that the 
 interest on his capital could not possibly support them in 
 comfort ; and returned to England in the spring of 1882 with 
 his wife, his wife's sister (who found garrison-life in the 
 tropics hardly to her taste), and twenty cases of Sefior
 
 Foreword n 
 
 Larranaga's very best ' Regalia Reyna Finas ' in which he had 
 invested a considerable amount of money, and of which he 
 subsequently disposed, owing to the machinations of his brokers 
 and ignorance of the cigar trade, at a very unsatisfactory 
 profit. 
 
 But Peter the Second like his son, Peter the Third, hero 
 of this story was an obstinate devil who disliked being 
 beaten, especially over money. Taking from an old school- 
 friend, John Gordon (who may have had ulterior motives in 
 granting the facilities) a little room in the big dingy offices 
 of Gordon's Limited, General Merchants, he imported another 
 consignment of Havana cigars ; had them sampled ; hired a 
 brougham ; and hawked (he was, although he had married 
 an officer's daughter, by no means a snob) his sample-boxes 
 round the West End tobacconist shops, until he had disposed 
 of his second shipment at a very different figure to that which 
 he had received on the first. 
 
 So began the firm of P. Jackson & Company, Cigar 
 Importers, which aided by the financial support of John 
 Gordon (who married Dolores Bradley very shortly after that 
 second shipment had been disposed of) and the boom-crop 
 of 1884 soon needed offices of its own, two clerks, a country 
 salesman, and all the paraphernalia of a pukka business. It 
 was not, of course never would be a huge undertaking like 
 Gordon's, who dealt the world-over and in every conceivable 
 commodity from quinine to molasses; still, it was a solid, 
 money-making, not too arduous concern ; and moreover 
 both Peter's father and his salesman, Tom Simpson, whom he 
 subsequently took into junior partnership, needed con- 
 siderably less to live on than the profit which it earned. 
 
 3 
 
 Peter the Third, our Mr. Jackson, was not born until his 
 parents had been married nearly four years : John Gordon's 
 son, Francis, ante-dating him by about a week. In both of 
 them you can trace the Miraflores strain quite clearly. They 
 are both of them of medium height ; stocky rather than tall. 
 Both have the same curious eyes which seem to change 
 colour from gray to darkest black with their thoughts. 
 Both are small-handed, small-footed, rather determined 
 about the nose, dark-haired, intelligent-headed. But life 
 and war, which is the same thing have dealt with them 
 so differently that, nowadays, you would have great diffi- 
 culty in finding more than a fugitive likeness. You would
 
 12 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 say, and perhaps rightly, that Peter is less, Francis more the 
 Miraflores. 
 
 Dolores Gordon presented her husband with no more 
 children ; but Tessa Jackson had another son Peter's 
 brother Arthur, born in 1888. 
 
 Meanwhile, both businesses flourished : Gordon's Limited, 
 the larger ; Jackson & Co., the sounder : providing John 
 Gordon with a rather elaborate mansion in Curzon Street (to 
 which he would return, late, tired and neurotic, from the new 
 offices in London Wall), and the Jacksons with a solid, rather 
 tyrannous edifice in Lowndes Square, wherein Peter's father 
 found comfortable refuge from the reflector-lit warehouse in 
 Lime Street. 
 
 By the late nineties, Peter the First's few thousand 
 pounds had grown thanks largely to the sole agency for 
 Beckmann cigars (of which more later) into a fairly 
 comfortable fortune, so that when John Gordon suggested 
 to Peter the Second that both Peter the Third and Francis 
 Gordon had better be sent to Eton, money did not stand in 
 the way. 
 
 The two cousins (Peter's brother Arthur went to a less 
 exalted school) did not distinguish themselves greatly at 
 Mr. Impey's. Francis was rather too flamboyant, Peter too 
 self-concentrated, for easy friendships. However, Peter 
 managed to get his 'boats,' his 'house colours,' and two 
 stripes on his volunteer tunic, before he left ; while Francis 
 undoubtedly acquired there in some mysterious way of his 
 own the beginnings of a literary technique. 
 
 From Eton, Peter went straight into the business. He 
 had always found idleness intolerable, and Jackson's seemed 
 regarded as " something to do " made to his hand. To 
 Francis and other Etonian acquaintances, the choice appeared 
 an amazing one : but the boy's father lonely since his wife's 
 death about a year before, and conscious that his other son, 
 Arthur, whatever else he might become, would never be a 
 business man both understood and stimulated this desire 
 for work. 
 
 4 
 
 Peter's entry into Jackson's, early in 1903, synchronised 
 with the formation of the Havana Tobacco Company com- 
 monly known as ' The Trust ' ; and the attempt by J. B. 
 Duke and his colleagues (who, having fought the English 
 cigarette and tobacco manufactures to a standstill, were now 
 controlling almost unknown to the public eighty per cent.
 
 Foreword 13 
 
 of the world's smoking-trade) to corner the market in Havana- 
 manufactured cigars. Though a very small affair of outposts 
 when considered in relation to the pitched battles which 
 preceded it, the fight at the outset was not without interest 
 to those whose livings were menaced by the billion-dollar 
 corporation controlled from in, Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 To the boy, fresh from the monastic atmosphere of school, 
 it gave just that touch of romance which his enthusiasm 
 needed. 
 
 For Jackson's as agents of the German-owned but 
 Havana-domiciled concern, Heinrich Beckmann & Co. lined 
 up with the so-called ' Independents/ and did doughty battle 
 with tongue and typewriter against the invader. 
 
 Old Jackson and Tom Simpson, who, by now, had a fourth 
 share in the concern, found the lad's keenness amusing. Both 
 oldish men their capital intact and their blood chilled with 
 twenty years of money-making they did not take the situa- 
 tion very seriously. Even when Beckmanns, greedy for more 
 trade, insisted that both Beresford & Beresford and Samuel 
 Elkins & Co. should (under certain secret conditions) receive 
 direct shipments of their goods, they only laughed tolerantly 
 at the infringement of a profitable monopoly leaving indigna- 
 tion to the newcomer. 
 
 Indignant, Peter certainly was. There had never been an 
 actual contract about the Beckmann brand ; but the boy, 
 accustomed to his public-school code, perceived something 
 in the transaction dishonourable to the other side, weak on 
 his own. Unreasonably as it seemed at the time reasonably 
 enough as it shews in the light of history he thus early con- 
 ceived an instinctive dislike, a distrust, not only of Beck- 
 manns, but of German business-people in general. 
 
 However, a year in the City effectively replaced the 
 public-school code by the legal. 
 
 At the end of eighteen months the ' fight ' resolving 
 itself into a mere question of strong competition ; each side 
 j more or less holding its own, with a slight sentimental balance 
 in favour of those outside ' the Ring ' Peter had settled 
 down to the complacent routine of office-life : ten till five, 
 with an hour off for lunch, and two Saturdays out of three 
 absolutely workless. Sport he was a safe shot, except at 
 snipe, for which he lacked the temperament; a good rider; and 
 a really fine hand with the trout-flycompleted his existence. 
 Dissipation, after one or two experiments, he avoided not 
 from scruples, but because it bored him. 
 
 Then, just after his twenty-first birthday, the ' old man,'
 
 14 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 never very strong, caught pneumonia and died within the 
 week. 
 
 5 
 
 The death of his father was a vivid grief to Peter. For 
 his mother, he had never experienced more than a lukewarm 
 affection : Arthur had always been her favourite, and Peter 
 even as a child had been conscious of the preference. But 
 the 'governor,' the 'old boy' that seemed somehow or 
 other different. They had worked together, talked together, 
 driven home together, drunk their port of an evening at the 
 big mahogany table in the Lowndes Square dining-room, had 
 their little rows, made them up again. . . . "Sentimental 
 ass ! " the boy said to himself, as he sat alone in the library 
 that first night. But there were real tears in his eyes : tears 
 that only work could dry. 
 
 And of work, in the days that followed, there was enough. 
 As co-executor, with Simpon, for his father's estate, even 
 Peter found himself sufficiently occupied. The business, the 
 Crown lease of the Lowndes Square house, sundry outside 
 investments all required valuation, tabulation, preparation 
 for probate. Death duties, accountants' fees, solicitors' fees 
 each had ,to be scrutinised, queried, and ultimately over- 
 paid. Arthur who, | at seventeen, was already wearied of 
 school demanded an advance of trust -monies ; got it ; 
 departed for Australia. 
 
 In the end Peter recognised himself absolute possessor of 
 some thirty thousand pounds (practically all in the business) ; 
 and trustee for the ten thousand pounds in stocks and shares 
 which became his brother's when he, too, reached twenty-one. 
 
 " You will be an ass," said Francis Gordon, newly returned 
 from two years of aimless wandering on the Continent, "if 
 you go on slaving away in that office of yours." 
 
 " Can't stand doing nothing, " Peter had answered," and be- 
 sides,if I wanted to get married,twelve hundred a year wouldn't 
 be enough." With both of which ends in mind, he signed a 
 rather peculiar ten years' partnership-deed with Simpson, and 
 resumed his hardly-interrupted activities in Lime Street. 
 
 6 
 
 That same year, 1905, Francis's own parents both died, 
 leaving him master undisputed of a five-figure income ; and 
 the two cousins very nearly decided on living together, till 
 Peter vetoed the idea on the grounds that " as Francis never
 
 Foreword 15 
 
 got up before lunch or came home to dinner, he didn't see 
 much sense in the proposed arrangement." 
 
 Nevertheless, bachelor existence in that barrack of a 
 house at Lowndes Square soon began to pall. " I shan't be 
 dining at home to-night, Smith," became the almost daily 
 word to the elderly parlourmaid as she handed our Mr. Jackson 
 his top-hat of a morning ; and on the rare evenings when he 
 did dine at home, it was usually in the company of business- 
 acquaintances, school-friends, or and this frequently of the 
 Baynets. 
 
 Heron Baynet, the Harley Street diagnostician who, it 
 will be remembered, was knighted in the 1918 Birthday List 
 for his research-work in the treatment of shell-shock and 
 other nervous disorders, had been one of the consultants 
 attending Jackson senior in his illness. He had taken an 
 instinctive liking to the young man ; asked him to call. 
 Peter, accepting the invitation, met a married daughter, 
 Violet, a son in the Army, and Patricia tall, blond, 
 twenty-one, dignified, rather reserved in her speech, tolerably 
 contemptuous of the average young man, cultivating alter- 
 nately the critique of pure reason at home and the outside 
 edge at Prince's skating-rink. . . . Twelve months after their 
 first meeting, in March, 1906, these two married. 
 
 A marriage of affection, kindred tastes, and mutual respect. 
 A marriage which appealed to them (both had a strong, 
 youthful contempt for sentiment) as ' eminently reasonable.' 
 A marriage into which both entered with the definite certainty 
 that there would be no passion, no misunderstandings, no 
 petty economies, no vital divergencies of opinion. A marriage 
 which as most marriages ended by utterly confuting all 
 their original ideas about it. 
 
 7 
 
 Followed two years of palship ; at the end of which their 
 first daughter, Evelyn, was born. Peter, who had hoped for 
 a son, felt disappointment ; shewed it, perhaps a little too 
 plainly : thereby heightening his wife's love for the kiddie. 
 But the disappointment faded ; easy relationship renewed 
 itself. 
 
 About this time, Ivan Turkovitch became a frequent 
 visitor to the Lime Street warehouse. A quaint man born 
 in some nameless province of Austria-Hungary ; speaking 
 English with an amazing accent ; small ; paunchy ; tawny- 
 bearded ; very neat in his clothes, in his habits he had come
 
 16 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 to England with nothing but his wits, and built up in some 
 subterranean manner the struggling firm of ' I. Turkovitch, 
 Manufacturer of Nirvana Cigarettes.' 
 
 Turkovitch, an artist in his way, loved that business ; 
 cared less for its financial achievements than the joy of 
 running it with the result that he invariably found himself 
 short of capital. Peter liked listening to the little man when 
 he talked about his " vork-peoples " ; visited the factory, for 
 the first time from curiosity, for the second time out of sheer 
 interest. His own business existence at Jackson's had settled 
 down into a pretty humdrum affair. As senior partner he 
 drew a steady three thousand a year, leaving Simpson 
 to do the inside work and contenting himself with the 
 selling end, which as it meant pitting his brains against 
 other people's rather amused him. 
 
 But when Turkovitch finally broached the point towards 
 which he had been finessing, he found anything but al?tnguid 
 young capitalist to deal with. Peter Jackson was quite willing 
 to put up the money, five thousand pounds of it if necessary 
 (considerably more than the Hungarian either required or 
 expected), but on one condition only that, as majority share- 
 holder, he should control the business. 
 
 Turkovitch, even in those early days, found Peter's ideas 
 of press-advertising, of new machinery, of up-to-dateness 
 generally, rather terrifying ; but in the end, pressed by many 
 long-suffering creditors, he yielded. 
 
 To Peter, the new concern grew swiftly from mere 
 plaything into a passion. He felt, for the first time, the real 
 zest of commerce, the creative joy of it. This was no in- 
 herited money-making machine, but a task that needed a 
 man's every thought, all his energy : uphill work, worthy of 
 accomplishment. Gradually it drew him, from Lime Street, 
 from his shooting, from his hunting, from his fishing, from his 
 home. So that the coming of his second daughter, Primula, 
 seemed to him less of a disappointment than an extraneous 
 incident, vastly concerning to Patricia, but to himself little 
 more than item of interest. 
 
 Superficially the palship between husband and wife still 
 existed ; but the woman began to feel herself, more and 
 more, an accessory and not a necessity to this absorbed young 
 husband. His real love, she felt, was would always be, 
 unless some miracle happened ' Nirvana.' 
 
 For the plant, irrigated and irrigated again with gold, 
 began to grow ; promised a great harvest. There were 
 difficulties, of course ; but these only served to intensify
 
 Foreword 17 
 
 Peter's ardour. Tobacconists wouldn't stock Nirvana : 
 tobacconists must stock Nirvana, he would advertise until 
 they were forced to. The export trade was hopeless, because 
 one couldn't get a reliable export -traveller : he, Peter Jack- 
 son, would do that part himself, And travel he did, from 
 Christiania to Lisbon, from Aden to Shanghai, from Buenos 
 Aires to Valparaiso. 
 
 So the thirty thousand pounds in Jackson's dwindled to 
 twenty thousand ; and the five thousand in Nirvana 
 rose to ten. But already they were 'round the corner,' 
 covering expenses. True that most of the capital was 
 represented in the balance-sheet by that intangible 
 mystery, ' Goodwill and trade-marks ' ; true that Turkovitch 
 grumbled, and Sam Bramson, ' Pretty ' Bramson (the 
 newly-engaged sales-manager) required more and more 
 travellers for the home trade, seemed to do less and less work 
 himself ; true that old Tom Simpson began to shake his head 
 at so much voyaging, and successfully urged a heavy life- 
 insurance : still, it grew, it grew ; and Peter, working four- 
 teen hours a day between the two businesses, felt success very 
 near, gloried in it. ... 
 
 Meanwhile as has been elsewhere narrated that resplen- 
 dent person, Francis Gordon, wrote a book of verse which 
 excited some comment ; married for caprice ; lost his wife ; 
 wandered off, a not too disconsolate widower, round the 
 world ; lost most of his income ; fell in love ; renounced love ; 
 renouncing, found his vocation ; and returned to England 
 shortly before the opening chapter of this our romance, which 
 now begins.
 
 PART I 
 HOME AND THE OFFICE 
 
 i 
 
 JANUARY, 1914. A cold, dry, foggy, London evening. 
 The children after much protesting safely asleep. 
 All the electric lights in the big first-floor double- 
 drawing-room pink-walled, parquet-floored, elab- 
 orately, comfortably, but by no means artistically furnished 
 glowing. A red coal-fire heaped profusely on the tiled 
 steel-fendered hearth. And, standing before the fire, firm fine 
 hands smoothing the folds of her low-neck black charmeuse 
 evening-gown, Patricia Jackson. 
 
 Not a beautiful woman, this Patricia ; yet by no means 
 the ' bland, blond Kensingtonian nonentity ' which Francis 
 Gordon had once called her. Very English : in the poise of 
 the quiet head on the well-sloped shoulders ; in the repose of 
 the full figure ; in the lines of the athletic limbs. Very 
 English, too, about the well-formed, almost Roman, nose, the 
 red, healthy lips, the perfect teeth, the firm cheeks. Lacking, 
 perhaps, in vivacity unless the brown slumbrous eyes, dark 
 and dark-lashed, were an index to something deep, something 
 as yet but half-awakened : something which, given but its 
 chance, might yet turn the Mother into the Mate. 
 
 But to-night, a hint of trouble shewed in those eyes. 
 Patricia was thinking. Her thoughts came to her clear-cut, 
 logical, in orderly and courageous sequence. Sloppiness 
 owing to her father's teaching had no place in this woman's 
 mental outfit. 
 
 And she thought : ' I am nearly thirty. ... I have been 
 married eight years. ... I like this house, though it takes a 
 lot of running. ... I have no money troubles. ... I adore 
 Evelyn and Primula. . . . And I am very fond of my 
 husband. . . .' 
 
 But here Heron Baynet's system of common sense, of 
 reason against sentiment, broke down as it had broken down 
 once or twice before when applied to the intimate relation of 

 
 Home and the Office 19 
 
 married life. The cold creed of pure reason did not work. 
 It was no good for Patricia's brain to tell her that she ought 
 to be satisfied : her heart informed her, quite emphatically, 
 that she wasn't. 
 
 "Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Rawlings, ma'am," announced 
 Smith, the sour-faced but efficient parlourmaid. 
 
 Violet came in first a slightly older, slightly tawdrier 
 edition of her sister ; thinner about the lips, fluffier of hair, 
 not so neat in her over-elaborate clothes ; but sprightly 
 unpleasantly sprightly. 
 
 "Good evening, darling," she cried, kissing. "Isn't it 
 perishingly cold ? We walked from the Tube. Do let me 
 come to that gorgeous fire." 
 
 Hubert Rawlings tall, clean-shaven, foxy-faced, five years 
 older than his wife followed at her heels ; shook hands. 
 
 " Where's Peter ? " he asked. 
 
 " In Hamburg," answered Patricia ; and noticed, rather 
 annoyed, the disappointment caused by her reply. Though 
 not by any means poor relations (H. H. Rawlings, 
 Publicity Specialist, made quite a decent income) Hubert 
 and Hubert 's wife had an intolerable habit of making private 
 life an adjunct to business. Patricia was perfectly aware that, 
 had Peter been at home, her brother-in-law would have seized 
 the opportunity to convince him, once and for all, that the 
 Nirvana advertising account could be better handled by 
 Hubert Rawlings than by Charlie Higham. Remembering a 
 phrase of her husband's, " I never do business with relatives : 
 they always expect to be paid in advance," she smiled to 
 herself, and turned the conversation. 
 
 " Doctor Baynet and Mr. John Baynet, ma'am." 
 
 " Then you can bring up dinner at once, Smith," 
 
 " Not late, are we, Pat ? " 
 
 " No, pater, punctual to the second." Patricia and her 
 father shook hands. They were not in the least alike, these 
 two. The doctor two inches shorter than his younger 
 daughter had dark brown hair, just graying ; the hands of 
 a surgeon ; pince-nez ; a fine forehead, and an almost colour- 
 less face, set in stern lines. Since his wife's death (he had 
 been a widower twelve years) the already celebrated diagnos- 
 tician had concentrated on work to the exclusion of every 
 other interest but his children. His face shewed the price 
 paid for success. 
 
 " Well, Jack, and how are things at Hillsea ? I hear 
 you've been disappointed in love ? " 
 
 " Oh, shut up, Pat." Jack Baynet pulled uncomfortably
 
 20 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 at his white evening waistcoat ; fingered his clipped mous- 
 tache : trifled with his butterfly tie. As a subaltern in the 
 Field Gunners, almost a senior subaltern too, he disliked 
 being ragged by his older sisters and particularly he dis- 
 liked being ragged about Alice Sewell. So, of course, Violet 
 took up the running. 
 
 " Poor dear 1 Fancy your own Major cutting you out 
 with her. It's too bad." 
 
 " Stark isn't a Major yet ; only a Captain," snapped 
 Jack ; then, realizing a tactical error, " And anyway, I never 
 was in love with her." 
 
 " Dinner is on the table, ma'am," announced Smith. . . . 
 
 Dinner, quietly served by two maids in the dark, square 
 dining-room oak-panelled, lit only by electric candles, 
 mauve-shaded, on the oval table and the huge Chippendalish 
 sideboard was a leisurely meal. Thick soup followed the 
 smoked salmon, grilled sole the soup, a chicken en casserole 
 the sole. Talk, family gossip of no interest to outsiders, 
 flowed slowly at first, quicker as Peter's second-best 
 Burgundy loosened constraint. 
 
 "And why," asked Rawlings suddenly, "has Peter gone 
 to Hamburg ? " 
 
 " I think," answered Patricia, always on guard against her 
 brother-in-law's curiosity, "that it's something to do with 
 cigars." 
 
 " Cigars ? You mean cigarettes, don't you ? He hardly 
 bothers about the cigar business nowadays." 
 
 "Perhaps you're right," said Patricia knowing he 
 wasn't. 
 
 " When is he coming back ? " 
 
 " To-morrow, as far as I know." 
 
 " Have you seen Francis lately ? " put in Violet. " I was 
 trying to read something of his in the English Review just 
 before we came out to-night. He's a bit beyond me, you 
 know." 
 
 " Francis Gordon " Heron Baynet spoke slowly, almost 
 professionally " might become a great writer, if he weren't 
 such a neurotic." 
 
 " Oh, pater, do keep off your hobby, just for this one 
 evening," Patricia protested. But, once launched, herfather 
 was not an easy person to stop. 
 
 " My hobby," he said, "is merely life. Not animal life 
 only, but mental life which is the most important. Francis 
 Gordon's hobby is Francis Gordon. That's where he, and 
 most of our literary young men to-day, are making their
 
 Home and the Office 21 
 
 mistake. They're half-baked ; emasculate. Instead of fac- 
 ing life, they run away from it ; shut themselves up in their 
 studies usually with some equally epicene petticoat to assist 
 their musings. Life, the battle of life, is the only thing worth 
 writing about. Or," he added, " reading about." 
 
 Again Patricia turned the conversation : " Anyway, he's 
 much nicer, much more human than he used to be." 
 
 " You mean since he lost his money," interrupted Violet. 
 
 Patricia nodded. 
 
 On the arrival of port and cigars, the three men were left 
 alone ; and Hubert Rawlings, who felt just a little out of 
 the picture, attempted to talk himself into it. 
 
 " Gunnery," he said to the young soldier, " must be 
 amazingly interesting. A client of mine he's in the steel 
 trade was talking to me only this morning about the Creusot 
 factory. He says the French field-guns are infinitely superior 
 to ours. . . ." 
 
 " Really." Jack Baynet had been trained not to talk 
 ' shop ' in Mess. 
 
 " Oh, yes. My friend saw them firing tests. And he was 
 amazed, absolutely amazed." 
 
 " I've no doubt." Jack relented a little, finding it beyond 
 him to keep off his hobby. " I remember when our battery " 
 (he pronounced it ' bettery ') " was in India, we were ordered 
 to demonstrate at dummy-targets just to shew the infantry 
 the effect of modern shrapnel-fire . . ." He paused. 
 
 " And . . . ? " queried his father. 
 
 " After inspecting the targets, the general thought it better 
 that the infantry shouldn't see them. Bad for their morale, 
 you know." 
 
 " If ever we do have this European war that the Daily 
 Mail is so fond of talking about," said the doctor, "it will 
 last about a week. Modern nerves will never stand it." 
 
 " Oh, we shall have war, all right," announced his son. 
 
 The advertising-agent and the nerve-specialist smiled 
 cynically ; demonstrated till it was time to join the ladies 
 that the young man knew nothing whatever about 
 international politics. 
 
 They played family bridge, half-a-crown a hundred 
 Violet and her husband permanently partnered. Patricia 
 who had cut herself out of the first rubber stood watching 
 them. And again, thought troubled her. 
 
 This family parties, theatre-going, houses in Kensington, 
 five servants, a summer holiday with the children, mornings 
 at home and afternoons at the skating-rink oh, it was
 
 22 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 all right, a very reasonable and nice existence. But could 
 it go on? Obviously, it had to go on. . . . Mentally, she shook 
 herself, laughed a little. What did she want ? A lover ? 
 No, very definitely no 1 She was not that sort of woman ; 
 had too much self-respect. . . . What then ? ' Colour ' the 
 words came involuntarily to her mind ' colour ! That's what 
 I need. Colour and warmth.* 
 
 But when her family had departed, and she sat alone again 
 in the drawing-room, Patricia Jackson took herself firmly 
 to task. ' If I don't take more exercise,' she decided, ' I 
 shall become like one of those unpleasant creatures one meets 
 in novels : the misunderstood married woman.' 
 
 Before going to bed, she tiptoed through the night nursery ; 
 looked lovingly down on the two dark brown heads of Evelyn 
 and Primula ; and thereafter slept even as they dream- 
 lessly. 
 
 2 
 
 Punctually at nine o'clock next morning, Peter arrived. 
 
 Looking at him through the dining-room window, as he 
 stood paying the taxi, as he walked carrying his heavy 
 leather dressing-bag easily as though it had been a despatch- 
 case up the steps, he seemed to Patricia, above all things, 
 an adequate person. The long, blue, belted Chesterfield 
 overcoat, fur-lined but not fur-collared ; the gray squash 
 hat ; brown gloves ; ribbed socks ; brown, carefully-polished 
 brogue shoes ; all betokened, in her eyes, efficiency. And 
 when, after the usual greeting to Smith (" Mrs. Jackson in 
 the dining-room ? Right. Just take this coat of mine, will 
 you ? And you might unpack for me at once.") he came 
 into the room, the impression deepened. 
 
 The cheek she kissed was newly shaven ; the dark hair 
 smooth-brushed ; the moustache clipped soldier-fashion-. 
 He had an invariable habit taken his bath on the boat ; 
 arrived spick and span, ready for the day's work. The 
 gray eyes were clear, healthy; unusually merry, she 
 thought. 
 
 " Breakfast ? " she asked, after he had returned her kiss. 
 " It's quite ready." 
 
 " Rather. Eggs and. bacon for choice. Something 
 English after all that German tripe." 
 
 " Peter, your language is really getting atrocious." 
 
 " Sorry, old thing. But honestly, Hamburg is the limit. 
 I haven't averaged four hours' sleep all this week. What's 
 happened to the town in the last six years I don't know.
 
 Home and the Office 23 
 
 They're all crazy, I think. What with old Beckmann's 
 lobsters and young Beckmann's dressed crabs . . ." 
 
 He relapsed into silence ; seeing again the champagne 
 dinners at Forti's, the red-wine lunches at the Rathaus, the 
 smoky tinselled Tanz-klubs, the whole nauseous pageant of 
 heavy-handed vice and tawdry luxury with which the com- 
 mercial classes of Germany were trying to ape the natural 
 gaiety of France. 
 
 " Still, I got what I went for," he added, as Smith brought 
 in the Sheffield-plate breakfast-dishes, the big silver tea-pot. 
 
 They sat down. 
 
 !< And what did you go f or ? " asked Patricia, serving him. 
 
 " It's rather a long story," he began Peter rarely talked 
 business to his wife " but I'll tell you if you like." 
 
 " Yes, do." 
 
 "Well, you know Jackson's have had the Beckmann 
 cigar-agency for years and years ..." 
 
 " But those Beckmanns live in Havana, don't they ? " 
 
 "The old man, Heinrich Beckmann he's the senior 
 partner lives in Hamburg ; the junior partners his nephew 
 Albert, who'll inherit the business when Heinrich dies, is one 
 of them run the factory and the banking show in Cuba. 
 But nothing big is ever decided without the old boy's consent. 
 When that bally Trust started, Beckmann's thought our old 
 firm wasn't big enough to handle their English market. 
 So they took in two other concerns. That was when I first 
 went into business. The governor never had any contract 
 about the brand ; trusted to their honour." Peter sniffed : 
 even after eleven years the old sore still rankled. "Can I 
 have another egg ? By Jove, it's good to be home again." 
 
 " Really good ? " 
 
 I "Rather." He looked round the comfortable room 
 appreciatively. " But I was telling you about Beckmann's. 
 Sometime ago I said to Simpson, ' Simpson, let's get that sole 
 agency back again.' Simpson said he's a pessimistic blighter 
 'It can't be done.' That was six weeks ago. The contract's 
 in my bag upstairs." 
 
 He paused, preening himself, quietly but quite obviously 
 vain. She thought him very young at that moment ; more 
 like a boy of twenty-three than a man of thirty. 
 
 " But how ? " she asked. 
 
 "Bluff, my dear. Absolute and unmitigated bluff. 
 Albert's come home to get married, I think. So I wrote 
 him a chatty letter, saying well wrapped up, of course 
 that we were thinking very seriously of giving up our cigar
 
 24 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 business. I said Simpson wanted to retire, and that the 
 cigarette business was so profitable. . . ." He laughed. 
 " Anyway, it came off. The old man wrote imploring me 
 not to decide in a hurry ; Albert wrote to me ; they wired 
 Havana, and Havana wrote to me ; they invited me, at their 
 expense they're as mean as they're rich to come over to 
 Hamburg. I kept them waiting ten days. Then I went. 
 Pat, you would have laughed to see me allowing myself to 
 be persuaded on my own terms to sign a ten-year agree- 
 ment with them." 
 
 "But, Peter," interrupted his wife, "was it quite" she 
 hesitated " straight ? " 
 
 " Straight ? " He thought it over. " Yes. Just as 
 straight as calling ' two no-trumps ' on a weak hand. I 
 stood to look silly if they'd doubled me, didn't I ? And 
 anyway, it's jolly good business." 
 
 He picked a cigar from the silver box in front of him ; 
 scrutinized, lit it. 
 
 They sat silent for a minute or two. And again she was 
 conscious of his adequacy. What he went for, he got. By 
 his getting, she and her children benefited. That was the 
 law, inviolable since the days of the cave-man. Weaklings 
 to the wall to the strong man the fruits of his brain, of his 
 industry. . . . 
 
 " I'm glad about this contract, in more ways than one," 
 he said suddenly. " You see, it's a certainty. And cer- 
 tainties are always worth having. Nirvana isn't a certainty 
 not yet. It's a gamble." The confident tone eased off a 
 shade or two. " Once or twice I've been rather harassed 
 about it. Finance ..." 
 
 " We might run to a car next year now," he added. 
 
 Came nurse's tactful knock, and the children, merry-eyed, 
 attired for the Park. 
 
 " Hello, daddy," they chorused, and romped over to be 
 kissed. 
 
 " Where have you been, daddy ? " asked Primula. 
 
 " Germany." 
 
 " Where's Germany ? " 
 
 They catechised him for a few minutes ; informed him of 
 their own well-being, of a train recently purchased ; kissed 
 their mother; and hurried off having tasks to perform, 
 serious tasks with hoops and sticks, in which their parents 
 had no part. In concentration on the immediate job, Peter's 
 kiddies were uncannily like their father. 
 
 " I must be off to the office," he announced as soon as
 
 Home and the Office 25 
 
 they were out of the room. " Anything on for to-night ? " 
 
 " No, dear." 
 
 " Right. I may be a little late. About seven, I expect." 
 
 " He's very American," thought Pat, as she watched 
 him stride off, inevitable cigar in his mouth, towards the 
 Tube. 
 
 ' He's a splendid pal,' said Reason. 
 
 But, in Reason's despite, Instinct wished that he had 
 remembered to kiss her good-bye. 
 
 3 
 
 As the Tube jerked him spasmodically to Bank station, 
 Peter's mind ran over the clauses of his new contract ; pon- 
 dered how best to exploit it. This absolute control of the 
 Beckmann brand gave a new interest to the Jackson business ; 
 and with that interest came a little flash of sentiment. He 
 remembered his first year in the City, Tom Simpson's doubting- 
 Thomas attitude to a public school boy, his father's shrewd 
 help. But the our Mr. Jackson who pushed his way through 
 the swing-doors of 24c, Lime Street and down the dark passage 
 to the warehouse, was very far from appearing a sentimentalist. 
 
 " Morning, Parkins," he said to the young clerk who looked 
 up at him from the desk in the outside office glass-panelled, 
 electric-lit, heated by a glowing gas-stove. 
 
 " Good morning, sir," answered the boy. 
 
 Peter passed on through the warehouse ; cast a rapid eye 
 over the high wooden racks piled with cigar-boxes, at the 
 Triplex glass sky-lights, on George the old warehouseman who 
 was pottering about, duster in hand. 
 
 " Morning, George. How's the rheumatism ? " 
 
 " Thank you, Mister Peter, I can't complain. And are 
 you all right, sir ? " 
 
 " Never better, George," said our Mr. Jackson ; and added 
 (to himself), ' He won't last much longer. I must talk to 
 Simpson about pensioning him off. Two quid a week, I 
 suppose. Extravagance ! but the old chap's earned his last 
 bit of comfort , . .' 
 
 Tom Simpson sat at his desk an old-fashioned sloping- 
 top desk of ink-stained mahogany in the back office ; where, 
 despite the aid of reflectors, set slanting in the one high-up 
 window, green-shaded electrics burned for nearly ten months 
 of the year. A bluff man of fifty was Tom, fresh-complexioned 
 and brown-bearded still ; calm, of a certain limited shrewd- 
 ness, but unimaginative ; dressed in black morning-coat,
 
 26 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 City-tailored ; gold albert festooned across his ample paunch, 
 key-chain drooping from trouser-pocket. 
 
 " Well ? " he asked, looking up from the smeared type- 
 written pages of the Havana mail. 
 
 " Got it," said Peter laconically, hanging hat, coat, and 
 stick on the brass hook behind the glass door which he 
 carefully closed. 
 
 " No ! " Interrogatively. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Well, I'm damned." Simpson glanced admiringly at 
 his partner. He never quite understood Peter ; had always 
 been a little afraid of his ' recklessness ' ; had for that 
 reason refused to invest any capital in the Nirvana cigarette- 
 factory. 
 
 Peter drew the contract from his breast-pocket, and they 
 scrutinized it together. It was written in English. 
 
 " Who drew this up ? " asked Simpson. 
 
 " I did. A German lawyer went over it for me ; but it's 
 enforceable in London." 
 
 " Good." 
 
 They plunged into details. 
 
 " What's this ? Five thousand pounds open account ? 
 Anything over that to be drawn for at six months ? We don't 
 want all that credit, Peter." 
 
 " Yes, we do. I may have to take some more of my 
 capital out. The factory, you know." 
 
 Simpson put down the contract. " Of course, it's not for 
 me to advise you : but aren't you getting just a little out of 
 your depth ? " 
 
 " You charge me with the interest on the money which 
 I draw out," began Peter, temper swiftly frayed. Then 
 relenting, " Oh, it's quite all right, old man: I know what I'm 
 doing." 
 
 A huge black outline loomed against the gkss door, knocked , 
 said in a guttural voice, " May I come in ? " 
 
 Entered Julius Hagenburg, top-hatted, black-mous- 
 tached, patent-booted, flower at buttonhole ; Hagenburg, 
 naturalized Englishman, undoubtedly the best salesman of 
 fine cigars in Europe and the worst payer. What Peter's 
 investment in Nirvana meant to Simpson, Simpson's credit 
 to Hagenburg meant to Peter. Yet it was a profitable account ; 
 amazingly so. Hagenburg rarely bought less than fifty 
 thousand cigars at a time ; would pay anything from three 
 to seven pounds a hundred for them. 
 
 How he disposed of the goods, neither of the partners
 
 Home and the Office 27 
 
 knew ; though Peter, who had met the man frequently on 
 his own Continental cigarette-expeditions, had a shrewd idea 
 that most of the cigars which went, under bond, in plain 
 cases from London to Amsterdam, eventually found their 
 way, at entirely fictitious prices, to such places as the Sporting 
 Club in Monte Carlo, the Jockey Club in Vienna, and even 
 as far as the gipsy-haunted private rooms in the night 
 restaurants of St. Petersburg. 
 
 However, this time Hagenburg had brought money, 
 nearly a thousand pounds of it, in ' ready.' 
 
 " You will give me a receipt now, please," he said to 
 Simpson, who went out of the room, notes rustling in his hands, 
 leaving Peter and his pet aversion together. 
 
 " I hear you got back the sole agency of the Beckmann 
 brand," said the German, sitting down and lighting a black 
 cigar from the box that Peter pushed across to him. 
 
 " Where the dickens did you hear that ? " 
 
 "It's true, then ? " Hagenburg smiled knowingly. 
 
 "Possibly." 
 
 " I can increase my business with Beckmann cigars in 
 Holland, if you are in a position to help me with a small 
 discount, say five per cent." 
 
 ' Now I wonder how the hell he found out about that 
 contract ? ' Peter said to himself when the man had gone. 
 But Simpson, to whom he mentioned the matter, made light 
 of it. " There's been a good deal of gossip about your going 
 to Hamburg. Probably it was only guess-work. " 
 
 Peter put on his hat ; wondered, as he walked rapidly 
 along Fenchurch Street, why Simpson hadn't possessed enough 
 gumption to keep the destination of such an important journey 
 secret. ' Didn't think it mattered. Never thought I'd get 
 that contract,' he decided, turning down Lombard Court, 
 mounting the carpeted steps to the upstairs luncheon-room 
 of the Lombard Restaurant. 
 
 ' Downstairs ' in the Lombard, hatted men jostle at 
 communal tables ; steaks frizzle, crowded, on the grill ; 
 joints appear, dwindle, disappear and are replaced ; waiters 
 bustle, and the girl at the cash-desk has barely time to smile. 
 But ' upstairs,' luncheon is a solemn and a costly function. 
 
 At the small bar in the corner of the oak-panelled room, one 
 hand dallying with his vermouth, eye-glassed, faultlessly 
 attired, a miniature ' nut ' though well over middle age, 
 stood Peter's best acquaintance (and Jackson's most aggres- 
 sive competitor) Maurice Beresford of Beresford & Beres- 
 ford.
 
 28 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 He grinned at Peter, letting the monocle fall from 
 his eye as he did so ; said laconically : " The usual, 
 Peter." 
 
 "Thanks," answered Peter, smiling a greeting to the 
 lady behind the bar. 
 
 " We lunch together, I presume ? " quizzed Beresford. 
 
 " You presume correctly, Maurice." 
 
 " Toss you who pays drinks included." 
 
 "Not much. You asked me to have a drink. But I'll 
 toss you for lunch." The sovereign clinked on the bar-top. 
 Peter won. 
 
 They finished their drinks ; settled themselves at the usual 
 reserved table by the fire ; ordered after some wrangling 
 completely different lunches : for Beresford (who possessed, 
 despite his size, an enormous appetite) grilled sole, fricassee 
 of veal, and plum duff ; for Peter, surfeited with greasy food, 
 cold beef and pickled walnuts. 
 
 "And now," said Beresford, sipping his whisky and 
 Perrier, " be a good boy and tell me all you've been up to in 
 Hamburg." 
 
 " Lies, or the truth ? " 
 
 " The truth. Just for a change." 
 
 Peter cut a morsel of beef with great deliberation ; decided 
 that Beresford probably knew. 
 
 " I think I've done you in the eye this time, Maurice." 
 
 " I thought you had. We got a cable from Beckmann's 
 this morning. Nothing definite in it : but putting two and 
 two together, you know ..." 
 
 They looked at each other, and laughed. The Beresf ords, 
 both bachelors, were extremely well off ; their transactions 
 with the Beckmann factory of no great importance. Still, 
 by his next remark, Peter knew Maurice hit, in his business- 
 vanity if not in his pocket. 
 
 "What I like about you, Peter," he said, screwing the 
 monocle back into his eye, "is that although you are every 
 bit as unscrupulous as the rest of us, you manage to keep up 
 a pose of old-fashioned respectability, combined with modern 
 straightforwardness, which I, for one, find it impossible to 
 adopt. How many cases did you have to guarantee 
 Beckmann's ? " 
 
 " Oh, quite a lot," parried Peter. 
 
 " And what is going to happen about my pending orders ? 
 Will they be shipped, or not ? " 
 
 This being the crux of the conversation, Peter changed the 
 subject ; began talking about shade-grown wrappers, the new
 
 Home and the Office 29 
 
 schedule of trust prices, and other mysteries unintelligible to the 
 profane. 
 
 " It will be very unfair if they aren't," interrupted Beresford. 
 
 " I'll have to talk it over with Simpson." 
 
 "Great genius Simpson," said Beresford sarcastically. 
 
 "And, either way, you'll have to pay us a profit on 
 them. . . ." 
 
 Maurice Beresford walked back to his office distinctly 
 disgruntled. 
 
 4 
 
 Peter, on the other hand, returned to Lime Street in a 
 state of quiet elation. Money apart, it was amusing to have 
 scored off Maurice. Remained, now, to settle with the Elkinses. 
 He called up young Charlie Elkins ; asked him to come 
 round. 
 
 " All right. Four o'clock," said the voice at the micro- 
 phone. Then ' Pretty ' Bramson rang up from the factory ; 
 and, listening to his report (" fifty thousand Virginias from 
 Singapore ; twenty thousand Egyptian gold-tip from the 
 Argentine ; heaps of export orders, but home trade rather 
 quiet. Are you coming up to-morrow, sir ? ") Peter's new- 
 found interest in Jackson's suffered eclipse. 
 
 He hung up the receiver ; looked across at Simpson, re- 
 reading the contract for the tenth time. Undoubtedly the 
 selling of cigars, of other people's cigars, was even as a sole 
 agent a pretty dull affair. Simpson had been sitting at 
 that very same desk twenty-five years; would sit there 
 till he died. 
 
 The bell rang again. Reid this time, of Reid, Chatterton 
 & Reid, Chartered Accountants. " Mr. Reid wished to ask 
 Mr. Jackson if next Monday would be convenient for the 
 Nirvana board-meeting." 
 
 " Quite convenient, thank you." 
 
 Entered, from the side door which led to the booK-keeping 
 office, Miss Macpherson, chief of the clerical staff a dour 
 loyal Scotchwoman of forty, dressed in the usual cheap blouse 
 and skirt, the bad boots of her order. She carried ' the post ' 
 in one hand, her note-book in the other ; took the vacant 
 stool next to Simpson ; said " Your letters, Mr. Simpson," in 
 a firm, tired voice. 
 
 Simpson began to dictate, hesitatingly ; querying this : 
 consulting her about that. 
 
 " In reply to your favour of even date . . ." 
 
 Peter got up ; wandered out into the warehouse ; began
 
 30 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 a leisurely inspaction of some newly-arrived dock-samples, 
 pushed an oily Corona from the centre of a ribboned bundle ; 
 lit it. 
 
 Came Elkins. ' Smooth ' is the only adjective applicable 
 to the new-comer. He had a smooth voice, smooth hair; 
 smooth hands, a smooth manner, and a very smooth silk hat. 
 He was clean-shaven, jet-haired ; looked more like a junior 
 clerk in Rothschild's Bank than junior partner in a 
 mercantile business. 
 
 " Good afternoon, Peter," he said. " What's the trouble ?" 
 
 " Afternoon, Elkins. Come inside, won't you ? " 
 
 Peter led the way into a tiny room off the warehouse : a 
 room furnished with two chairs, a small gas-stove, and many 
 cedar cabinets of cigars. 
 
 "Coffin department?" queried Elkins, sitting down. 
 
 " I wanted to speak to you about Beckmann's," began 
 Peter, not acknowledging the trade jest. 
 
 " Oh, we've been doing very little with the brand lately. 
 The stuff's no good, you know. Too strong. And the 
 dollar-prices on current sizes are too high." 
 
 " Really," said Peter, who had for some years been draw- 
 ing a small clandestine commission on the imports of both 
 his competitors. "Then of course you won't mind having 
 to stop importing them." 
 
 At this, it seemed as though little wrinkles creased them- 
 selves all over Elkins' smoothnesses. 
 
 " Stop importing them ? What do you mean ? " 
 
 Peter told him ; not omitting to mention that ' pending 
 orders ' would not be shipped. 
 
 "But this is outrageous," burst out young Elkins. 
 " Positively outrageous. Why, we've been handling their 
 goods for years. For years and years. Got customers for 
 them. Customers who won't take anything else." 
 
 "Yes, I know," sympathized Peter: and named them. 
 
 Elkins changed his note. " You don't really mean to cut 
 us off, Peter." 
 
 " Of course I do." 
 
 " But we'd buy the goods from you ; pay you cash for 
 them." 
 
 "Till you'd persuaded your customers to try something 
 else. Not much. Besides, I want all the profit ; not just 
 a percentage." 
 
 " But the pending orders. They're mostly sold in advance. 
 It will make us look ridiculous. Positively ridiculous. I 
 don't know what my father will say. . . ."
 
 Home and the Office 31 
 
 It was five o'clock by the time that Peter having re- 
 luctantly promised to ' think over ' the matter of the pending 
 orders got rid of him ; joined Simpson for a cup of tea. 
 
 " You know," said Simpson, " I simply can't get over this 
 contract business." He pulled a piece of scribbling paper 
 towards him ; started figuring. " It means at least fifteen hun- 
 dred a year more profit. There's the Cunard Company 
 they've been buying from Beresfords. And Towle at the 
 Midland that's Elfins' account ... I must talk to the 
 travellers about this. Hargreaves is in the suburbs to-day ; 
 he won't be in till the morning. I've written Mallabone to 
 come up on Saturday . . ." 
 
 " Oh, forget the travellers," pronounced Peter. " They're 
 no good for this sort of job. We'll have to do it ourselves." 
 
 He took the Tube as far as Oxford Circus ; walked slowly 
 down Regent Street, past Robinson & Cleaver's, and the Cafe 
 Royal ; past the crackling arcs of Oddy's and the Gambrinus ; 
 under the darkling colonnade into Piccadilly Circus. All 
 about him lights blazed, motors thrummed and hooted, 
 people jostled. London, London as she was towards the end 
 of the Great Peace i London, tango-dancing, theatre-going, 
 night-clubbing London ! Shiny hats and fur coats, stiff 
 shirt-fronts and exotic opera-cloaks : flower-girls and shop- 
 girls : girls of business, and girls of pleasure. London 1 city 
 of the seven millions, where scum that floated upwards, 
 glistering, utterly useless loose women and vicious foreigners, 
 self-opinionated dramatists and self -impersonating actors, rag- 
 time dancers and company-promoters, preened and bloated, 
 spent and gambled, fooling away the night-tune. Yet 
 London for all this scum that fed upon her fineness solid 
 at heart, worthy if deceptive capital of an Empire compared 
 with whose achievements Rome was a weakling and Athens 
 a nonentity. 
 
 But Peter Jackson, worker, cared for none of these things ! 
 
 He looked up at the electric signs that winked and glinted 
 on the darkness : at the ' Paripan Paint ' sign, and the two 
 whirling clock-faces over Saqui and Lawrence's, at the 
 snaky twirls of ' Oxo ' and the high circles of ' O. O.' Whisky. 
 ' Confound it,' thought Peter Jackson, ' why should the home 
 trade of Nirvana lag behind the export ? ' 
 
 Then he glanced at his watch ; saw it was nearly half -past 
 seven ; remembered for the first time since leaving Lowndes 
 Square in the morning that he possessed a wife.
 
 PART II 
 NIRVANA, LIMITED 
 
 i 
 
 PRETTY' Bramson black well-oiled hair, curled 
 moustaches, blue eyes and general dapperness, had 
 earned the nickname when, as East County sales- 
 man for his cousin Marcus Bramson, owner of 
 Bramson 's ' Pulman ' Virginias, he had first gone ' on the road ' 
 sat pensive in the sales-manager's office of Nirvana, Ltd., 
 Manufacturers of High-grade Cigarettes. 
 
 The room was large, well carpeted, glinting with mahogany. 
 On the walls hung sales-charts, specimen advertisements for the 
 Press, show-cards gaudy but efficient for tobacconists' 
 windows. Through the thin partition he heard the whirr of 
 fly-wheels, subdued chatter of work-girls, Turkovitch's voice 
 raised in sharp expostulation, occasionally the thump which 
 told him that the new 'U.K.' machine their fourth was 
 being swiftly erected, But Pretty Bramson thought only in- 
 directly of ' Nirvana.' 
 
 He had dined, the night before, with his cousin Marcus ; 
 and Marcus had asked, quite casually, about the factory. 
 " Were they earning dividends yet ? Why didn't one see 
 the stuff about more ? How about the export trade ? " 
 Marcus had hinted too, barely hinted, that if at any time . . . 
 Pretty Bramson put the temptation resolutely behind 
 him. Jackson's had plenty of capital; could always find 
 more if they wanted it. Besides, he had a little money put 
 by himself. Probably, if things continued to go well, ' young 
 Peter ' would let him in as a minority shareholder. After- 
 wards, they would float it on the public. Meanwhile, five 
 hundred a year, plus a sliding-scale commission on the 
 constantly increasing output, was not to be sneezed at by a 
 man of thirty-two. 
 
 2 
 
 Peter Jackson paid his taxi (the Tube from Lowndes 
 Square to Brixton wasted more time than he could afford) ;
 
 Nirvana, Limited 33 
 
 threw away the stump of his after-breakfast cigar; and 
 walked straight through the open doors of the goods entrance 
 into his factory. 
 
 He was neither an over-imaginative nor a romantic person, 
 this quiet gray-eyed young man in the bowler hat and the well- 
 cut tweed overcoat : but he never could look at that big 
 glass-roofed building, at the work-girls in their clean smocks, 
 at the vague forms of machinery whirling away behind their 
 frosted-glass partitions, at the men pricking and soldering 
 the vacuum export-tins (plunged base-deep in hot sand to 
 expel the corrupting air) at the great bins of sweet-smelling 
 tobacco at the whole paraphernalia of this living entity 
 he was creating without a certain thrill of satisfaction. He 
 had given up a good deal for this same Nirvana leisure, 
 money, his gun in the little Norfolkshire shoot, trout-fishing, 
 the possibility of a car. But Nirvana, almost home 1 was 
 worth it. 
 
 Ivan Turkovitch bustled out from behind one of the 
 partitions ; trotted over. 
 
 " Veil, Petere. And how are you ? Come overe and see 
 de new machine. Ve are chust getting him put up. Peauti- 
 ful ! " 
 
 The small hands gesticulated satisfaction; the tawny 
 beard waggled accompaniment. Like the rest of his ' vork- 
 peoples,' Turkovitch wore a smock. It made him a rather 
 grotesque little figure. 
 
 But Turkovitch 's satisfaction, as an artist, with the growth 
 of the factory, was only superficial. As a man, a man of small 
 ideas, he could not grasp the ultimate scheme, the big concep- 
 tion which inspired Peter. Frankly, it frightened him. 
 More orders and more orders ! More expenses and more 
 expenses ! What would be the end ? He Ivan Turkovitch 
 had never wanted a vast business ; felt himself incapable of 
 controlling it. 
 
 " Peautiful," he said again, as they stood in the machine- 
 room. Overhead, fly-wheels whirred ; driving belts clacked. 
 On the clean hardwood floor the three machines stamped and 
 clicked at their endless tasks. Perched on high seats, girls 
 fed the hoppers with flocky golden armfuls of tobacco. The 
 i machines swallowed it ; spewed it forward, forcing it through 
 'Steel tubes into a rod ; drew up paper from the slow-moving 
 (reels ; wrapped it about the tobacco ; printed it ; chopped 
 the paper-covered rod into cigarettes ; delivered them to the 
 waiting hands of the girls, who patted them into wooden trays. 
 A shirt -sleeved mechanic tended each machine, now this part, 
 
 c
 
 34 Peter ^ Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 now that part. Sparks spurted as deft grindstone met swift- 
 revolving knife. The fourth and newest 'U.K.' was not 
 yet working ; by it, adjusting, measuring, screwing up a bolt 
 here and there, stood a German workman. 
 
 For the 'United Kingdom' cigarette-machine was not 
 made in this England, where craftsmen starved while Free 
 Traders preached to them 1 
 
 Turkovitch spoke to the German ; queried something. 
 
 " Dass ist mir verboten," said the man. " Es muss genau 
 so gemacht werden." 
 
 " What does he say ? " asked Peter. 
 
 "He says he cannot do what I ask him. It is 
 forbidden. Nevere mind, ven he goes back to Hamburg 
 ve do it ourselves. They do not know everything, these 
 Chermans." 
 
 They passed on ; through the drying-rooms ; and the 
 cutting-rooms where girls picked over the dried leaves and 
 ' blenders ' fed them into presses that forced the thick mass 
 forward to the dropping knife ; through the label-printing 
 room ; into the main factory again ; past the box-making 
 tables where more girls laboured with paste-brush and 
 zinc-board ; and the packing tables, piled high with filled 
 boxes waiting their seals ; into the stock-room. 
 
 " Rather low, aren't we ? " queried Peter, looking at the 
 half-empty shelves. 
 
 "Very low, sir," said the despatch-forewoman, busy 
 making up the day's orders. 
 
 " You go on with your vork, Mary," snapped Turkovitch. 
 The woman went out of the room, leaving them alone. 
 
 " Look here, Turkovitch " Peter's gray eyes had grown 
 just a shade darker " you know I won't stand that sort of 
 thing. I spoke to the girl, and she answered me. You've 
 no right to be rude to her." 
 
 The little man became apologetic. " But you do not 
 understand the vork-peoples, Petere. You have nevere been 
 one of the vork-peoples. I have. De vork-peoples they do 
 not respect you ven you talk nicely to them." 
 
 " Don't you believe it, Turkovitch " the quarrel between 
 them was an old one " the ' vork-peoples,' as you call them, 
 respect a man who respects them ; who knows what he wants, 
 and tells them how he wants it done decently." 
 
 I van, in venting an excuse, went back to the machine-room. 
 ' How on earth I shall ever be able to introduce the co-partner- 
 ship system into this place with that Hungarian obstructionist 
 in charge,' thought Peter, ' the Lord knows.' He stood there
 
 Nirvana, Limited 35 
 
 with his hands in his pockets for a minute or two : then, 
 lighting a cigar, strode off to Bramson's room. 
 
 " Bramson," said Peter greetings over " how much do 
 you know about the manufacturing part of this business ? " 
 
 " Well, sir . . ." 
 
 "Oh, never mind about the 'sir.' You're not a clerk." 
 
 " Well, when I was with my cousin, I used to spend a good 
 deal of time in the various departments." The Jew looked 
 up shrewdly, intimately. "Why? Is anything wrong 
 with T. ? " 
 
 "No. I was asking for information. One-man shows 
 are never safe. Supposing Turkovitch were taken ill, could 
 you run the place for say three months ? " 
 
 " I ran it while he was on his holidays." 
 
 "H'm. That's rather different. Know anything about 
 blending? " 
 
 " Not much." 
 
 " We could get a foreman to do that," remarked Peter 
 reflectively. " And I'm not entirely ignorant on the subject 
 myself. How about the rest of it printing, box-making, 
 looking after the girls ? That new master-printer seems a 
 pretty efficient kind of fellow." He broke off; said, "Don't 
 let this conversation go any further " ; and took up the 
 routine of the day. 
 
 Bramson, in addition to his principal duty of sales-manager, 
 acted as Peter's right-hand man in the not-always-smooth 
 financing of the concern : so that their discussion lasted 
 uninterrupted save for occasional telephone calls till the 
 whistle blew, and a shuffle of moved stools on the hardwood 
 floor presaged the midday break. Nirvana provided free 
 cooking for its employees ; and the three principals shared the 
 facility. 
 
 " Veil," said Turkovitch, peeling off his smock as he 
 entered, " now ve have some lunch. You join us, eh, Petere?" 
 
 One of the girls brought in a table ; laid it ; produced three 
 chops, potatoes, beer. The Hungarian had apparently got 
 over his huff. " Orders is plentiful, especially de export," 
 he said. 
 
 " Bramson and I have just been discussing that. Some- 
 thing's got to be done about the home trade. We must have 
 two more travellers. The press-advertising wants gingering 
 up. I've telephoned for Higham to come and see me this
 
 36 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 afternoon. And I think we ought to have one or two electric 
 signs. Big ones. Flashing, if we can afford them." 
 
 " But the money ? . . . " remonstrated Turkovitch. 
 
 " Oh, damn the money. Don't you worry about that. 
 I'll find the money right enough, if you'll only get the orders 
 out quickly. That last big lot for the Argentine took nearly 
 six weeks." 
 
 Turkovitch protested ; and a wrangle ensued. Bramson 
 sat very quiet. He was not a shareholder in the concern 
 yet. But, if he knew anything about anything, 'young 
 Peter ' would get his own way, even if he had to buy Turko- 
 vitch out. Then that thousand pounds of savings would go 
 into ordinary shares of Nirvana Ltd. . . . 
 
 " We'd better thrash all this out at the board-meeting next 
 Monday," said Peter finally. " Reid will have the year's 
 figures ready by then." 
 
 4 
 
 Reid, Chatterton and Reid, Chartered Accountants, 
 inhabit a cold, gloomy office on the fourth floor of Great 
 Winchester House. George Reid himself a deliberate- 
 looking, middle-aged man of University education, square- 
 chinned, clean-shaven, lined of face but twinkling of eye 
 welcomed Peter ; led him into the ' board-room ' a shabby 
 apartment furnished with twelve wood-seated chairs, an 
 enormous table, and a rather gimcrack safe. 
 
 " The others haven't arrived yet. Have some tea ? " 
 " Thanks," said Peter. " Tell me," he went on, after the 
 two cups had been brought, " has Turkovitch been to see 
 
 you ? " 
 
 " Unofficially," grinned Reid, " yes. What have you been 
 doing to the little man? He's in a rare stew. Says he 
 wishes he could get his money out." 
 
 " He can," said Peter laconically. " I'm about through 
 with friend Ivan. It isn't that I grudge him the eventual 
 profits. J^ut the chap's no good for a show like this. He 
 hasn't got the spunk." 
 
 " Well, don't lose your temper with him this afternoon," 
 warned Reid, who knew Peter of old. " By the way, how 
 are Jackson's getting on these days ? You really ought to 
 have their accounts audited, you know." 
 
 " Simpson won't. He's very old-fashioned ; says he can't 
 stand outsiders prying into his affairs." 
 
 Bramson and Turkovitch came in, shook hands, sat down.
 
 Nirvana, Limited 37 
 
 Reid opened the minute-book, gabbled off the minutes of 
 the last meeting, which Peter signed perfunctorily. (Nirvana 
 was a private company, the requisite number of shareholders 
 being made up by clerks.) 
 
 " And now," began Reid, "for the accounts. As far as I 
 can see there are one or two adjustments still to be made 
 we have managed, for the first time, to pay all our expenses 
 and earn a small dividend." 
 
 " Do ve pay out de dividend ? " asked Turkovitch. 
 
 " Of course we don't," snapped Peter ; " the money's 
 wanted for expansion." 
 
 " Den vot's the good of making it ? " growled Turkovitch. 
 
 " One moment, gentlemen," went on Reid. " I find, on 
 careful analysis of the figures, that, had it not been for the 
 high profits earned on the export trade, we should have 
 made, not a profit, but a loss." He gave details, and con- 
 cluded, " I don't think that's a sound position." 
 
 " Nor I," commented Peter. 
 
 But here Turkovitch tact thrown to the winds boiled 
 over. It was his business ; his name was on all the brands ; 
 he knew quite well what ' Petere ' wanted ; ' Petere ' wanted 
 to be a millionaire ; ' Petere ' wished to spend all the profits in 
 some crazy scheme of advertising. Why should they adver- 
 tise ? The cigarettes were the finest cigarettes in the world ; 
 he, Turkovitch, guaranteed them. . . . 
 
 " Oh, shut up ! " muttered Peter, exasperated. 
 
 " I vill not shut up. You are always interfering. You 
 interfere with me and de vork-peoples. You interfere vith 
 my tobacco merchants. And now you vant to interfere 
 vith de dividends." 
 
 " Hang it, you draw a salary of seven hundred a year ; 
 and I haven't had a penny piece out of the concern yet." 
 
 Turkovitch became plaintive, even less intelligible than 
 usual. " But vy not pay out de dividend ? A leetle divi- 
 dend. Drei per cent, on de cabital." 
 
 " Because there's no money to do it with ; because we're 
 trading on bank-credit ; because . . . Oh, you try and 
 explain things to him, Reid," said our Mr. Jackson hopelessly. 
 
 Reid plunged into an exhaustive bath of facts and figures. 
 There was big money to be made out of Nirvana. Reid knew 
 it ; Peter knew it ; Bramson knew it. The hopeless period 
 of an advertising business, the pay-pay-pay-and-not-a-bob- 
 of-it-back stage had been passed. Now, all they needed was 
 work, a little more capital, and supremely confidence. 
 But the Hungarian didn't, couldn't, wouldn't see it.
 
 38 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Dis is not business, eet is gambling," he kept on saying. 
 " You spend and you spend. And dere are no dividends. 
 I vish I had my gabital out of de gompany. . . ." 
 
 Reid glanced at Peter ; who took the cue, screwed the butt 
 of his cigar into the corner of his mouth, and said very 
 slowly : 
 
 " Look here, Turkovitch. You're being a frightful ass. 
 I don't like to see any man who has worked with me throwing 
 away a fortune ..." 
 
 "Fortune!" sniffed Turkovitch. "Vith no dividends." 
 
 " Do let me speak for a minute. As I was saying, you're 
 being very foolish. But if you really mean what you say, 
 you shall have your capital out. I'll buy your shares off 
 you at a fair price." 
 
 " Vot price ? " 
 
 Peter, who had devoted the week-end (poor Patricia !) to 
 a careful study of the anticipated problem, drew a piece of 
 paper from his pocket. 
 
 "When I first consented to join you in this show," he 
 began, " you were worth, at an outside estimate, two thousand 
 pounds. For six years you've been drawing seven hundred 
 a year." 
 
 " Dat," said Turkovitch, slightly mollified already, " vos 
 for my vork, for my experience." 
 
 " Quite right. I wasn't asking you to give it me back, 
 was I ? Then there's six years' compound interest at, say, 
 five per cent. Call it two thousand eight hundred. I'll 
 give you " Peter hesitated for a moment, went up two hun- 
 dred in his mind "three thousand pounds for your shares 
 in Nirvana. The lot, of course." 
 
 And so after about a fortnight of negotiation they got 
 rid of the obstructionist. He went, in the end, quietly; 
 delighted with his cheque ; saying : " Now, I and my vife, 
 ve take a little trip to Salonica. Perhaps, ven I come back, 
 ve do some business in de leaf -tobacco, eh, Pet ere ? " 
 
 " Right you are," said our Mr. Jackson, who had no 
 patience with fools but never bore malice.
 
 PART III 
 THE CREST OF THE WAVE 
 
 i 
 
 LIMOUSINE-LANDAULETTE body would be 
 best," said Peter. "We want something that 
 will do either for town-work or touring." 
 " How about a cabriolet ? " asked Patricia. 
 
 " If it's not too heavy for you to drive." 
 
 It was a Saturday afternoon, the first in July; and they 
 were lunching in the low-roofed, cabin-like grill-room of the 
 Carlton Hotel. The brass clock on the white mantelpiece 
 pointed a quarter to three ; most of the tables had emptied ; 
 but Peter and his wife sat on. The choice that of their first 
 car needed careful discussion. 
 
 It pleased her to see him sitting there, boy-like for the 
 moment, liqueur-glass poised steadily in his firm hand, 
 inevitable cigar between his lips. The six months since his 
 return from Hamburg had not been over-happy ones for 
 Patricia. Always she had felt the City pulling against her, 
 taking him from her. Always he grew more absorbed, more 
 reticent. But now it seemed as though, just for a flash, the 
 pal she had married was hers again. 
 
 " Aren't I getting a little old to drive a car ? " she asked. 
 
 He looked at her carefully before he spoke ; took in at one 
 glance smooth complexion, perfect teeth, the clear eyes and 
 the glossy hair under the gray toque. Then he said, " Don't 
 talk rot, old thing." 
 
 "And either way," she went on, "it's an extravagance." 
 
 " An extravagance we can afford." 
 
 For, really, it looked as though dreams would come true. 
 Turkovitch's defection owing to Bramson's application for 
 shares had only cost two thousand pounds instead of the 
 anticipated three. Nirvana's bank, approached with a 
 profit-earning balance-sheet and guaranteed by Peter, had 
 loaned the five thousand for their new advertising campaign. 
 Jackson's, in sole control of the Beckmann brand, were 
 making more money than ever before. Only that morning,
 
 40 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Hagenburg had placed an order on which the profit made 
 even Peter a little dizzy. 
 
 Of course there had been difficulties. Elkins and Beres- 
 ford did not surrender their customers without a struggle. 
 The reorganisation of the manufacturing staff proved a shade 
 less simple, Bramson a shade less capable, than anticipated. 
 Home trade climbed a trifle too slowly. Still, it climbed ; 
 and Peter was winning, winning all along the line. New, only 
 the finest of hairs divided gamble from certainty. 
 
 " An extravagance we can afford," he repeated. 
 
 " I'm so glad," she said, " not for the sake of having a car, 
 but because . . ." For the first time in their married life, 
 she felt shy with him. 
 
 " Because of what ? " 
 
 " Because I know you can't bear failure." 
 
 " Failure ! " he laughed ; then, growing serious, " No. 
 I've no use for failures. The man who ' goes under ' doesn't 
 strike me as pathetic only as idiotic." 
 
 " You mean the man who fails to make money." 
 
 " Good Lord, no. Money's nothing. At best, only the 
 counters with which we are paid for winning certain games. 
 Mine, for instance. By failure, I mean not getting what you 
 go for. Never mind what it is fame, money, tranquillity, 
 distinction ; a girl or a seat in the Lords. As long as you 
 know what you want, and get it, you're a success." 
 
 " But some people don't want anything in particular." 
 
 " I've no use for that kind." 
 
 Her trained mind told her that the man had voiced his 
 whole creed. Her woman's instinct resented it. He didn't 
 want her like that. She was only a side-issue. ' Something 
 better than his dog, a little dearer than his' cigarette- 
 factory. 
 
 ' Idiot ! ' said her reason. ' Idiot ! You've been married 
 eight years. . . .' 
 
 " If we want to be with Francis in time for tea," said her 
 voice, " you'd better ask for your bill." 
 
 Peter paid ; and they passed out, picking up his hat and 
 stick from the cloak-room ; climbed the carpeted stairs into 
 the Haymarket. 
 
 It was the zenith of London's last, maddest ' season ' ; 
 but her pleasure crowd the dancers in her night-clubs ; the 
 befeathered, scantily-draped women of her Opera House ; the 
 placemen, the panderers and the few honest nincompoops 
 who made pretence of governing her had departed ; were 
 ' week-ending ' in pseudo-rusticity, twenty, thirty, a hundred
 
 The Crest of the Wave 41 
 
 miles away. And real London, heart of Empire, glad to be 
 free of such parasites, rested quietly in the soft sunshine, 
 as Peter and Patricia made way through her empty streets to 
 Bloomsbury. 
 
 2 
 
 When a young man, who has never done a day's work 
 except ' to amuse himself,' comes down with a crash from ten 
 thousand a year to about five hundred, it seems to him at 
 first as though Life (with a capital L) were finished. Later 
 on, the adaptability of the human animal begins to assert 
 itself ; a new standard of values replaces the old one ; and the 
 man as apart from his chattels emerges: bruised, broken, 
 or strengthened according to his nature. 
 
 Peter's cousin, Francis Gordon, had come down with just 
 such a crash : but in Francis's case the human animal had 
 more than altered conditions to which it needed adapt itself. 
 For Francis Gordon, at the very moment when Life (with a 
 capital L) had looked its blackest, met a girl, the girl, the 
 ideal to whom his soul had been, was, and would always be, 
 faithful. 
 
 He looked up now from the papers on the table where he 
 sat working at her photograph, the only one in the room. 
 
 Beatrice Cochrane ! A very ordinary, very human, very 
 idealistic American girl. The sort of girl a man may meet in 
 her hundreds from Los Angeles to Atlantic City ; from New 
 Orleans to Flushing, Long Island, from Dubuque, Iowa, to 
 Dallas, Texas. A girl still in her teens ; slender-handed ; 
 with pale-gold hair and pale-gray thoughtful eyes. 
 
 A very ordinary American girl ! But, in the mind of 
 Francis Gordon, she stood for all romance, for poetry and 
 courage, for self-sacrifice and achievement, for every decent 
 impulse which had helped him through the black hours of 
 crisis. 
 
 He had not married her, not even asked her to marry him. 
 He had not in that brief fortnight of a shipboard friendship 
 deemed himself worthy. It had seemed to him as though 
 God a visible, speaking God forbade their union; com- 
 manding His creature, Francis Gordon, abandon that dream ; 
 take up, in its stead, the burden of vocation, the work of 
 writing for which He had endowed him with a tiny spark of 
 His own genius. 
 
 And so Francis who imagined himself to have seen, for a 
 moment, behind that Veil of God which does not lift until the 
 time appointed returned to London ; sold his house in
 
 42 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Curzon Street, his cars and his pictures, his gold plate and his 
 Aubusson carpets ; and retired, taking with him only Prout, 
 his old manservant, to this high apartment at the top of the 
 eighteenth-century Georgian building in Mecklinburgh Square. 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, sir," announced the elderly man- 
 servant. 
 
 3 
 
 Nothing in the outward appearance of the Francis Gordon 
 who rose at the entrance of his cousin's wife suggested the 
 conventional (or unconventional) poet. Short dark hair 
 parted at the side, clipped moustache, well-cared-for hands, 
 creaseless gold-pinned soft collar, Saville-Row-tailored blue 
 suit all proclaimed the ordinary idle young man of the period. 
 
 His surroundings, too, helped this illusion of the idle 
 commonplace. The room was large, white-walled and green- 
 carpeted ; crowded mahogany book-shelves completely lined 
 one wall; a spacious writing-table scrupulously tidy, set 
 square in the centre of two big windows the other. Chippen- 
 dale chairs, a tea-table already laid, and a revolving bookcase 
 filled with foreign dictionaries, Roget's Thesaurus, and other 
 reference-works, completed the furniture. Two mahogany 
 doors one, through which Patricia and Peter had just entered, 
 leading to the narrow hall, and the other to the bedroom and 
 bath-room glowed darkly against the rough white of the 
 distemper. 
 
 " This doesn't look much like poverty," commented Peter. 
 (Francis had only just taken the flat. This was their first 
 visit to him.) 
 
 " I don't think you'd make much of a district visitor, old 
 man," replied Francis. " Fourth floor. No lift. No tele- 
 phone. Geyser-bath. Shilling-in-the-slot electric-light meter. 
 A complacent landlord. And the relics of the Curzon Street 
 furniture. Guess again about my poverty." 
 
 " And a manservant," commented Patricia, taking off hat 
 and gloves, sitting down as by right at the tea-table. 
 
 " Oh, Prout ! Prout would pay to stay on, I believe. 
 ' Francis Gordon and his faithful valet ; or the loyalty of an 
 old retainer! " 
 
 But Patricia knew that the supercilious remark hid real 
 affection for that ' old bounder Prout.' She had seen a good 
 deal of Francis since his return to England ; revised many of 
 her early unfavourable opinions about him. The goodwill 
 was mutual : though Francis, who still thought ' Pat ' rather
 
 The Crest of the Wave 43 
 
 a commonplace young woman, would have been more than 
 surprised to know how near she had come to divining the 
 change in his mentality and the real reason for that change. 
 
 " Who's this ? " commented Peter, his inspection of the 
 new quarters having brought him to Beatrice's photograph. 
 
 "Friend of mine," said Francis curtly. "Don't touch 
 those papers." 
 
 " I won't touch your precious papers." 
 
 At which little passage of arms, Patricia's last doubts 
 settled into a comfortable certainty. 
 
 Prout, bringing tea, restored harmony. They sat long 
 over it, smoking and talking mostly, as is the habit of near 
 relations, about themselves. 
 
 " By Jove," said Peter interrupting himself in the middle 
 of a long monologue about advertising " I almost forgot. 
 We've taken a house at Wargrave for a month, Lodden 
 Lodge. It's rather a decent place. Tennis lawn ; river- 
 frontage ; bath, h. and c. ; usual domestic offices ; et csetera, 
 et caetera. You are expected to stay with us." 
 
 " Hukkum hai? (Is it an order ?) " asked Francis. 
 
 "Oh, we all know you spent three months in India," 
 chaffed Peter. " Question is : are you coming ? " 
 
 " Of course I'm coming," said Francis ; " and so is Prout 
 if Patricia doesn't object." 
 
 4 
 
 ' Some car ! ' thought Peter, as he stepped into the front 
 seat ; slammed the door home ; said, " You take her for a 
 bit, Murray," to the uniformed chauffeur ; and acknowledged 
 Pretty Bramson's rather overdone salute with a wave of 
 his hand. They purred out from the factory gates into 
 Brixton Road ; swung first right, then left ; headed for 
 Hounslow. 
 
 Certainly, ' some car ' a long, low streamlined cabriolet, 
 royal-blue in colour, the Crossley cross on her radiator. 
 Peter had discovered her through the advertisement columns 
 of the Morning Post : clinched the deal a week before. But 
 his thoughts did not centre long on the new purchase. 
 
 It was the Thursday before August Bank Holiday, 1914. 
 To get away so early had meant cramming the week's work 
 into three and a half days. Still, he could afford to take a 
 rest now. For a few minutes he allowed himself the rare 
 luxury of a dream. Nirvana had arrived! July sales 
 proved it. Nothing could stop their automatic increase.
 
 44 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Already, the capital he had sunk was in sight again. Then 
 what a business he would make it. All over the world, 
 too . . . India, China, New Zealand, South Africa. He must 
 have his own factory in the States, in Canada ; defeat their 
 confounded protective tariffs . . . 
 
 " Will you take her now, sir ? " asked Murray, as they 
 wriggled out through Hounslow High Street. 
 
 " Not for another mile or so." 
 
 Peter's mind came back to details ; wandered off them 
 again. Nothing could stop that automatic increase. Nothing. 
 The political situation ? Blow the political situation ! 
 Nobody with any sense cared for political situations. Except 
 retail tobacconists, to whom they furnished a good excuse for 
 curtailing orders. 
 
 " I'll take her now, Murray." 
 
 The chauffeur slowed down sufficiently to allow a change 
 of places. Peter took the wheel ; opened the throttle ; 
 slammed her into top ; and whisked off down the Bath Road. 
 
 For the first time in six years, our Mr. Jackson felt a 
 little above himself! 
 
 5 
 
 Lodden Lodge, Wargrave, is a square, comfortable, late 
 Victorian house, ivy-covered, backing on a quiet side-road and 
 fronting the Thames main-stream with sloping close-clipped 
 lawns. 
 
 Peter arrived towards tea-time ; found his wife and 
 Francis (over-immaculate in white trousers and buckskin 
 shoes) just sitting down to the silver-laid sun-dappled table 
 under the willow-trees. 
 
 " Where's brother Jack ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " He's not coming after all," said Patricia. " I had a 
 wire this morning. Manoeuvres, I expect." 
 
 " Don't you believe it, Pat," put in Francis. " He's off 
 to fight the good fight in Ulster. What a lark! Fancy 
 Teddy Carson, mounted on a 'sable destrier,' charging the 
 guns." 
 
 " Idiot ! " commented Peter, and added, " Confound the 
 fellow ! That spoils our four for tennis." 
 
 " We shall be all right for tennis." Patricia filled the 
 cups, passed them. " Violet and her husband have invited 
 themselves for the week-end." 
 
 " Oh, Lord," began Peter ; but catching his wife's eye 
 desisted. After all, Rawlings didn't play such a bad game 
 of tennis; and Violet's bridge, though not pleasant, was
 
 The Crest of the Wave 45 
 
 perfect. Tea over, Peter changed into flannels ; came down 
 to find Evelyn and Primula, bare-legged, muslin-frocked and 
 sun-bonneted, waiting for him. 
 
 " We want to go on the river," they chorused ; " we want 
 to go on the river." 
 
 " It's too late for the river," said Patricia. 
 
 " It isn't too late. It isn't too late. Is it, daddy ? . . ." 
 
 " They do like him, don't they ? " Francis said to their 
 mother. Peter, over-ruling her objections, had picked up the 
 two laughing bundles ; packed them into the cushioned punt ; 
 and was now poling slowly out into the main-stream. 
 
 "Why shouldn't they? " laughed Patricia. But, all the 
 same, she felt a little twinge of jealousy. The children meant 
 so much to her, so little to Peter. Yet, at a lift of the finger, 
 they would desert her for him. . . . Perhaps it was because 
 that finger so seldom lifted. ... If only one of them had 
 been a boy ! 
 
 She watched her husband's strong figure, black now 
 against the glow of the water, bending to the pole as he met 
 the current. The punt glided under the railway bridge, out 
 of sight. 
 
 "Of course they ought to have been boys." Francis 
 Gordon's voice interrupted her reverie. He seemed as 
 often when they were quite alone to have dropped the mask 
 of superciliousness. She looked at him; wondered how 
 much he realized. A disturbing person, this new cousin of 
 hers. Almost uncanny at times, the way in which his mind 
 seemed to penetrate her thoughts. . . . And again that 
 night, at table in the long, low dining-room, she speculated 
 about this man. 
 
 He sat, facing the sunset, younger than ever but un- 
 usually silent. Every now and then it seemed to her as 
 though his eyes saw beyond the rose glow of the horizon 
 into vision-land. ' He's thinking about that girl,' she 
 reasoned, 'the girl whose photograph we saw at the flat.' 
 Till, remembering the eyes of a man she had once seen at a 
 revivalist meeting, she began to doubt her theory of a love- 
 affair. 
 
 Sunset darkened to twilight, twilight to blackness, as they 
 finished dinner. 
 
 Patricia, pleading tiredness, went upstairs early ; heard, 
 as she undressed in the cool fragrance of the river-night, the 
 sound of canvas-chairs dragging first across gravel, then 
 over grass ; saw the points of two cigars burning redly under 
 the willow-trees.
 
 46 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Beckmann, Coronas," announced Peter. " Good, aren't 
 they!? " 
 
 "Very," admitted Francis. 
 
 For nearly ten minutes neither spoke. It was a night for 
 confidences ; silent save for the river-chuckle ; star-dusted ; 
 peaceful. But the two Englishmen smoked on ; reticent, each 
 busy with his own dreaming : the one seeing a great business, 
 world-wide, endless in opportunity : the other, vignetted in 
 silver radiance against the sable background of his thought, 
 the features of a girl of a girl five thousand miles removed 
 from England a girl for whose sake and without hope of 
 reward he had vowed himself to the dissatisfying god of Work. 
 
 " Why don't you get married again ? " asked Peter 
 suddenly. 
 
 " Only because I can't afford it," lied Francis Gordon. 
 
 6 
 
 Violet Rawlings, sprightly as ever, even more fluffily 
 dressed than usual, and her husband Hubert, determined 
 that ninety-six hours of personal suggestion should at last 
 secure him some part of the Nirvana advertising account, 
 arrived in time for lunch next day. The foxy-faced publicity 
 agent lost no time in opening his campaign. 
 
 "We went to the Palace last night," he began, almost 
 before they had sat down to their meal. " On our way home 
 I noticed that your new sign in Piccadilly wasn't burning 
 properly." 
 
 " Really," said Peter stiffly. 
 
 " Lobster mayonnaise, or some of these cold eggs ? " asked 
 Patricia, hoping to turn the conversation. 
 
 But her brother-in-law took no notice. " I'm somewhat 
 of an expert on signs," he continued. " And, frankly, I don't 
 think they have much selling value on a high-grade article 
 like yours. / pin my faith to full pages in the sixpenny 
 weeklies. And, of course. Punch." 
 
 Peter, who knew that Rawlings, despite his personal 
 unpleasantness, possessed knowledge, listened interestedly 
 asking a question every now and then. The others started a 
 conversation on their own. 
 
 Said Violet, monopolizing it, " Oh, but we never leave 
 London while the House is sitting. I think politics so 
 interesting, Mr. Gordon. Don't you ? Though I suppose as 
 an author so clever, that last poem of yours you take more 
 interest in the affairs of the heart."
 
 The Crest of the Wave 47 
 
 She ruffled herself ; rattled on. 
 
 " But, of course, politics are the thing nowadays. I'm 
 afraid " her voice dropped to the confidential whisper of the 
 person who has no news to impart " we're going to have 
 trouble. Not with Servia, of course : but in Ireland. People 
 are saying ..." 
 
 Smith, bringing the joint, interrupted the Rawlings duo 
 in their monologues. 
 
 " I always wonder," went on Hubert a few minutes later, 
 " why you didn't take your brother into partnership. He 
 seemed an awfully nice fellow, the only time I met him." 
 
 " Arthur ? " queried Peter. " Why, Arthur wouldn't take 
 a partnership in Rothschild's 1 He ran away from school 
 when he was fifteen ; and he's been running away from some- 
 where or other ever since. The last time I heard from him, 
 he was in the Dutch Indies planting. Wrote to ask my 
 opinion about tobacco prospects in Java. Beastly stuff, 
 Javanese tobacco ; though they use a lot of it for making 
 so-called Borneo cigars." 
 
 Luncheon over, Peter and Patricia challenged the two men 
 at tennis. Violet, languid in a long chair, alternately watched 
 the match and picked her way expertly through the Taller . 
 To see her own photograph in that periodical, not once but 
 regularly, was a small part of Violet's many unrealized ambi- 
 tions : which included a knighthood and a seat in the House 
 of Commons for her husband, a Rolls-Royce limousine (painted 
 black and white for preference) for herself, and all the usual 
 appurtenances of the politico-parasitical set which both of 
 them alternatively aped and envied. Neither she nor her 
 husband belonged to the class who ' didn't want anything in 
 particular ' I 
 
 Peter, playing brilliantly at the net, and Patricia, backing 
 him up accurately from the base-line, defeated their opponents 
 in three straight setts. Followed tea, a languid paddle 
 towards Shiplake, the dressing-gong, stiff shirts and low 
 frocks, auction bridge. . . . 
 
 July the thirty-first, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen ! 
 Already the Beasts in Gray murder, rape, and plunder in 
 their swinish eyes were abroad. Already the Crime, so long 
 premeditated, had been committed. Even as these four sat 
 at their game, less than fifty miles away from them, up in 
 London, amiable old gentlemen of Westminster were scuttling 
 hither and thither, incredulous, anxious to compromise 
 fearful. 
 
 " Two no trumps," said our Mr. Jackson.
 
 PART IV 
 CRISIS 
 
 TO comprehend our Mr. Jackson it is essential you 
 should realize how very little he cared for money, 
 regarded purely as the purchase price of material 
 comfort. As a spender, he had small sympathy 
 with the luxury of his time. His amusements were essentially 
 simple a gun, a trout-rod, a horse, a good glass of wine. 
 
 But Peter had been picked up, while still a boy, into the 
 fascinating game of business ; and in that game had found 
 both work (which was vital to his temperament) and enjoy- 
 ment. Nirvana Limited, which would have been to the 
 average individual merely a machine for the making of an 
 income, represented to him on August Bank Holiday, 1914 
 the ultimate aim in life. He loved that business not only 
 for the sake of what it might eventually bring him, but for 
 itself. He loved it, like a good gardener loves his garden, as 
 much for the labour as for the result. 
 
 Therefore, England's declaration of war did not make our 
 hero ' burn to avenge gallant little Belgium, ' or eager, in the 
 phraseology of the period, ' to do his bit.' 
 
 He left Wargrave at ten o'clock on the morning of August 
 the fifth, and reached the outskirts of London in forty-five 
 minutes. Then he gave the wheel to Murray, and began to 
 think. Throughout, his hand had been perfectly steady at 
 the throttle, his foot firm on the accelerator. Their speed 
 had averaged forty miles an hour. 
 
 Behind him, in the tonneau, sat Francis Gordon, acting, as 
 always, on inspiration rather than reason, decision already 
 reached. Francis Gordon talked to himself, under his breath : 
 first in Dutch and then in German. He was testing, not his 
 knowledge of those languages, but his accent. " Ich kann es 
 tun. Ich bin einer der einzigen die es tun konnen," he mut- 
 tered. Then he began to recite, very slowly and almost 
 inaudibly, the first speech from Schiller's 'Republican 
 Tragedy':
 
 Crisis 49 
 
 Leonora. " Nichts mehr. Nichts mehr. Kein Wort mehr. 
 Es ist am Tag." 
 
 Peter was not talking to himself. Quietly his brain went 
 over the salient facts of the situation ; weighing them up ; 
 discarding details; selecting essentials. The Jackson-Beck- 
 mann problem must wait. How would Nirvana be affected ? 
 Home trade, for the moment atanyrate, would collapse. 
 The export business might hold up. Might. Probably 
 wouldn't. Remained the fact that if the worst came to the 
 worst he stood to lose seventeen thousand pounds. . . . 
 After all, people must smoke. Wars didn't last for ever. 
 Could he see the thing through ? Financially ? . . . 
 
 " London and Joint Stock Bank, Pall Mall," he said to the 
 chauffeur. 
 
 They swirled through Piccadilly ; nipped round past the 
 Ritz ; slowed down St. James' Street, and pulled up. 
 
 "Afraid I can't lend you the car, old man," said Peter. 
 " I shall want it all day. Are you coming down again to- 
 night ? " 
 
 "No," answered Francis. " Prout's bringing up my 
 things on the afternoon train." He stepped out of the 
 tonneau ; brushed himself carefully, and walked off down Pall 
 Mall. Peter, telling Murray to wait, climbed the flat steps 
 to the glass doors of the Bank. They were closed : but his 
 knock brought a commissionaire, who recognised him ; opened 
 them. 
 
 "No business to-day, sir," said the commissionaire. 
 
 " Manager in ? ' asked Peter. 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Ask him if hell see me. 
 
 The Bank, always quiet, seemed that morning like a 
 tomb. Clerks bent over their ledgers ; lights burned ; but 
 no customers waited at the iron-grilled counters, no sovereigns 
 clinked in the brass shovels. 
 
 " Step this way, sir," said the commissionaire. 
 
 Peter followed him across the stone floor, through the 
 glass doorway into the manager's parlour soft-carpeted, 
 lavishly furnished with dark mahogany and saddle-bag 
 chairs. 
 
 Mr. Davis, the branch-manager, was a gray-bearded man 
 with the clothes of a prince and the manners of a diplomat. 
 iAs a West End branch, ' Pall Mall ' did not seek mercantile 
 business. They had taken the Nirvana account, officially, 
 ' to oblige their old client Mr. Jackson, whose private account 
 
 D
 
 50 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 they had handled for so many years.' This courtesy had not 
 gone as far as a reduction in their usual rates of interest ! 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Jackson. I half expected you." 
 Mr. Davis rose ; shook hands. " Won't you take a seat ? " 
 
 " Thanks. I came to ask you about the financial position. 
 This war, you know. The papers talk about a moratorium. 
 I understand that to mean a suspension of credit. . . ." 
 
 " Only in extreme cases, Mr. Jackson. Only in extreme 
 cases. Of course we are not desirous, at the moment, of 
 increasing facilities. We are, if I may use the expression, 
 sitting on the fence. But my directors are anxious for me to 
 impress on all our clients that they do not anticipate any 
 financial crisis. Measures, as I am given to believe, have been 
 taken j temporary expedients adopted ; by which ..." 
 He went on to explain them, at some length. 
 
 " Then I take it," said Peter, " that on the resumption of 
 banking business ..." 
 
 " Matters will be exactly as they were a week ago." Mr. 
 Davis rose again, shook hands, made his point courteously. 
 " Naturally, Mr. Jackson, as Nirvana Limited will not be 
 under the necessity of making payments, they will not require 
 any addition to the overdraft which you have guaranteed for 
 them." 
 
 " Of course not, " said Peter. The interview had turned 
 out according to anticipation. If Nirvana wanted any more 
 money, it would have to be found in cash. 
 
 He stood for a moment on the steps of the Bank. London 
 had not altered in a night. The straight aristocratic 
 thoroughfare seemed a little busier than usual. That was all. 
 Then he looked for the gaudy sentries outside Marlborough 
 House ; saw that they were in khaki 1 
 
 "The factory, please, Murray ; and as fast as you can," 
 said our Mr. Jackson. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 To describe Pretty Bramson as nervous would be a 
 gross understatement. The man was scared stiff ; had been 
 for two days. Peter found him wandering up and down the 
 half-empty building, damp cigarette between his lips, white 
 about the gills, alternately fidgeting and depressed. The 
 famous black moustaches were distinctly out of curl; the 
 brilliantined hair lacked its usual polish. 
 
 " Morning, Bramson. You look rather out of sorts." 
 Bramson led melancholy way into the private office.
 
 Crisis 51 
 
 "It's all U.P. with us now," he said. "We're ruined. 
 That's about the long and short of it." 
 
 " Rats I " snapped Peter, lighting a cigar. 
 
 " The Bank will be down on us for that overdraft . . ." 
 
 " Don't be a fool. To begin with, they can't call in any 
 loans. There's a moratorium. Secondly, if they do want 
 their money, I can pay it. Do you really think I guarantee 
 liabilities I can't meet ? " 
 
 " I hadn't thought of the moratorium," began Bramson, 
 plucking up courage. 
 
 Peter, puffing slowly at his cigar, got over the flash of 
 temper. 
 
 " Worried about that thousand of yours ? " he queried 
 suddenly. 
 
 " No-o. Not exactly. But . . .' 
 
 " You are worried. Of course you're worried. So am I. 
 So's everybody else. Let me remind you that I've got twelve 
 thousand pounds in the concern, in addition to that con- 
 founded overdraft. But we shan't either of us save our 
 money by worrying. For goodness' sake pull yourself 
 together, man. Let's have a look at last month's figures." 
 
 Bramson went to the safe ; opened it ; took out some 
 papers. "Get a pencil," said Peter, "and write down 
 what I tell you. . . . Ready. . . . Right. . . . Now then : 
 Assets . . ." He dictated steadily, picking out the amounts 
 from the big typewritten statement. "Liabilities . . ." 
 The dictation continued. "That's the lot, I think. Add 
 them up, please." 
 
 Bramson read out the figures : " Assets 27,862. Lia- 
 bilities, including overdraft, 22,396." 
 
 " Which means," commented Peter, " that your thousand 
 and my twelve are worth about five between them. Roughly 
 eight shillings in the pound if we could sell the factory as a 
 going concern." 
 
 " You haven't taken anything for the goodwill of the 
 business," put in Bramson. 
 
 " Of course I haven't. That's the whole question. Up 
 to the end of last month we were making profits. That was 
 why you bought Turkovitch's shares, wasn't it ? Do you 
 think we're going to make a profit this month ? " 
 
 " We might." 
 
 " Forget it," said Peter genially. " The best we can hope 
 for is to nurse the show through this damned war if it doesn't 
 last too long. Now listen to me. ..." 
 
 He plunged into details, giving his orders succinctly. This
 
 52 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 must go; that be curtailed. Publicity account, selling 
 expenses, manufacturing charges, clerical work Peter dealt 
 with each seriatim, hardly referring to the figures on the table. 
 "As for the finance," he concluded, "111 deal with that 
 myself. But mind you, the whole thing's a gamble. . . 
 Play poker, Bramson ? " he asked suddenly. 
 
 " Occasionally." 
 
 " Well, if you ever put up your last table-stake to bluff 
 the jack-pot on a busted flush you'll understand the present 
 position of Nirvana Limited." 
 
 Two minutes later the car was purring Citywards. 
 
 3 
 
 Passing over London Bridge, through Gracechurch Street 
 and Fenchurch Street, Peter saw that the City had in no wise 
 altered. The same drays, motor-omnibuses, taxicabs, and 
 motor-cars fought their way through its streets. The same 
 bareheaded clerks hurried along its pavements. The same 
 hawkers proffered the same wares. Only the closed doors of 
 the banking-houses portended the unusual. 
 
 In his own office at Lime Street nothing spoke of world- 
 crisis. Parkins still sat at the inquiry desk. Old George was 
 still dusting cigar-boxes. Miss Macpherson's typewriter 
 clicked and tinkled from the clerk's office beyond the stock- 
 rooms. Simpson, just back from his chop at the George and 
 Vulture, shewed no signs of depression. He, too, had inter- 
 viewed his bank manager. 
 
 " And what did Smollett say about Beckmann's bills ? " 
 asked Peter. 
 
 " It looks as though we shall have to meet them," said 
 Simpson. " You see, they've been discounted through an 
 English Bank. As far as I can make out, Beckmann's aren't 
 technically Germans at all. The firm's domiciled in a neutral 
 country so Smollett says. ..." 
 
 " Do you mean to say we shall be allowed to go on import- 
 Ing the brand ? " 
 
 " I don't see why not," said Simpson. 
 
 That there could be any patriotic reasons for not trading 
 with Beckmann's did not yet strike them. 
 
 " Elkins and Beresford will be sure to try and use this to 
 prejudice customers against the brand," suggested Peter. 
 
 " Let them." Somehow, the crisis seemed to have nerved 
 Simpson. Peter never remembered him so decided. 
 
 " We must go slow," was his verdict. " Of course trade
 
 Crisis 53 
 
 will absolutely disappear for the first week or so. Then it'll 
 begin to pick up again. There'll be no difficulty about 
 supplies. Whatever happens on land, our Navy's got the 
 Germans beaten at sea. Go slow, and keep our resources 
 liquidthat's my idea. ... By the way, how about that 
 factory of yours ? " 
 
 Peter hesitated a moment Simpson had always been 
 rather hostile about Nirvana then said, " I've been up there 
 this morning. Bramson's rather rattled. We shall have to 
 go slow there, too. It's a pity the brand couldn't have had 
 another two years' hard advertising before this happened. 
 As it is everything depends on how long the war lasts. If 
 it goes on more than six months, I may have to find a partner. 
 That means parting with a big slice of my shares. You see, 
 I don't feel I ought to take any more of my capital out of 
 this business." 
 
 "No. I agree with you there. Though if it became 
 absolutely necessary. ... By the way, you won't mind my 
 saying so, but I never understood why you took on Pretty 
 Bramson. He hasn't got a very good reputation in the trade. 
 And then his cousin Marcus being a competitor ..." 
 
 " Oh, he's not a bad little chap." Peter, like all good men 
 of business, was over-loyal to his staff. " The only trouble is 
 that he hasn't got much guts. But he's all right as long as 
 you keep an eye on him. . . . Good Lord, it's nearly three 
 o'clock, and that poor devil of a chauffeur of mine hasn't had 
 his lunch yet." 
 
 " Had any yourself ? " asked Simpson. 
 
 It was the one detail of the day which our Mr. Jackson 
 had forgotten 1 
 
 4 
 
 " And are we quite ruined ? " chaffed Patricia, as they 
 finished dinner the same evening. Prout and the Rawlings 
 had taken the afternoon train to town, leaving her lonely and 
 to tell the truth more than a little worried. 
 
 "Not quite, old thing," retorted Peter. . . . 
 
 But that night, for the first time in years, he woke up 
 suddenly ; saw her sleeping peacefully in the white bedstead 
 next his own and realized that his responsibilities were not 
 exclusively confined to the financing of Nirvana Limited.
 
 PART V 
 
 DECISION 
 
 i 
 
 PASSED the first week a week of rumours and counter- 
 rumours, barren of certainty. Amiable old gentle- 
 men protected by a Navy they had done their 
 best to weaken gabbled high words of hope. The 
 few trained men, laughed at for years, departed silently about 
 their business : the half-trained set themselves to learn. But, 
 already, the spirit of Britain was astir. Slumbering, the 
 spirit awoke : a blind spirit, conscious only of resentment, of 
 independence mysteriously threatened, of something Wrong 
 in the world ; finding its quaint vent in shibboleth phrases, 
 in deep drinkings, in wagging of flags ; but growing, growing 
 always, not to be denied. Already, through the domino-cafes 
 of London, at the long bar in the English Club at Shanghai, 
 in dank bungalows of the Malay Peninsula, on Canadian 
 ranches and Australasian ' stations ' and South African 
 farms, there ran the Words : " I think I ought to go, old boy." 
 " Well, mate, are you going ? " 
 
 But no Word had yet reached Peter Jackson. The City 
 held him. For the moment, the old game played itself on. 
 
 It was a ' quiet ' time ; but not so bad as he had an- 
 ticipated. Jackson's customers, disregarding the moratorium, 
 paid their accounts ; gave niggling orders. The week's 
 shipment arrived punctually from Havana. Nirvana, to the 
 untrained eye, seemed hardly to have suffered. The four 
 machines stamped and clicked all day ; girls bent over the 
 packing tables ; the tin-men pricked and soldered as before. 
 Only the pink slips of ' unfilled orders ' dwindled and dwindled, 
 the piles of unsold cigarettes in the stock-room rose and rose. 
 
 Peter was sitting alone in the back-office at Lime Street, 
 thinking how soon he would have to begin paying off his 
 hands, when Parkins announced " Mr. Raymond P. Sellers." 
 
 " What does he want ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " I think it's an American gentleman, sir. He said he had 
 a ' proposition ' to put before you."
 
 Decision 55 
 
 " Ask him to come in." 
 
 There entered a clean-shaven young man with gold eye- 
 glasses, in square-shouldered clothes, square-tipped patent- 
 leather shoes, carrying a panama hat in one hand and a 
 reporter's notebook in the other, who ejaculated : " Say, Mr. 
 Jackson, I'm real glad to meet you," in a voice which no 
 citizen of the United States ever used on land or sea. 
 
 Peter started to shake hands ; looked up at his visitor ; 
 and burst out, " Francis, you blithering idiot, what on earth 
 are you doing in that get-up ? " 
 
 Francis looked round to see if the door were closed. Then 
 he said, in his ordinary voice : " It is a bit grotesque, isn't it ? 
 But as the special representative of an anonymous American 
 newspaper syndicate, I think it will pass for the next few 
 days." 
 
 " You always were a bit of a lunatic," said Peter gruffly, 
 " but this is the limit. What do you propose doing in your 
 fancy-dress ? " 
 
 " I'm leaving for Amsterdam on to-night's boat, if you 
 want to know," answered Francis. "After that, my plans 
 depend on circumstances. Look here," he became suddenly 
 serious, " this isn't a joke. I should get into the devil's own 
 row if 'they ' knew I'd been down here. You mustn't tell 
 a soul, Peter. Honestly. Not even Patricia. I know it 
 sounds like a penny novelette but most of the penny novel- 
 ettes are coming true at the moment. Word of honour, old 
 man, you won't tell a soul." 
 
 Peter glanced at his cousin ; saw that the slackness had 
 disappeared from his face. The lips were tight-set, the eyes 
 dark with suppressed emotion. 
 
 " Word of honour, Francis. I won't tell a soul. Not even 
 Patricia. Why did you come here, though, if it was against " 
 he stumbled over the word " orders ? " 
 
 " Because there's no one else I can trust. It's a question 
 of my correspondence, and the flat. I want you to look Prout 
 up occasionally. He thinks I've enlisted. Here " he 
 fumbled in his pocket " are eight letters for him. From me. 
 Have one posted every three weeks. I've pencilled the dates 
 on the flaps. You can get someone to post them from the 
 country, I suppose." Peter took the letters ; nodded com- 
 prehension. " There's a cheque in each of them, so you 
 needn't worry about giving the old bounder any money. 
 I've told him you'll call and that he's to give you any 
 correspondence that comes for me." 
 
 " What am I to do with it ? " asked Peter.
 
 56 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Francis hesitated a perceptible second before saying : " I 
 want you to open everything that comes except letters from 
 America. Answer them all. Say I'm away, if you like. 
 Joined the Army. I don't think there'll be any bills. If 
 there are, they can wait." 
 
 " And the letters from America ? " 
 
 " Those, I don't want you to open on any account. Keep 
 them for me till I come back. If you don't hear from me in 
 six months, better say eight months, burn them. And post 
 this." He took another envelope from his pocket, handed it 
 to Peter, who saw, in his cousin's sprawly handwriting, " Miss 
 B. Cochrane, c/o The Guaranty Trust Company of New York. 
 To be forwarded." 
 
 There was the usual awkward silence which betokens 
 sentiment among English people. Then Peter got up, 
 walked over to the safe, pulled out his private cash-box, and 
 locked up the letters. 
 
 " That'll be all right, " he said. " But why eight months ? 
 You don't expect the war to last as long as that, do you ? " 
 
 Came footsteps outside, a hand at the door-catch. 
 
 " Well, good-bye, Mr. Jackson. I'm surely much obliged 
 to you for the information." 
 
 ' Mr. Raymond Sellers ' shook hands effusively ; half 
 bowed to Simpson, and departed. 
 
 " Who was that chap ? " asked Peter's partner. 
 
 " That was only ..." Peter stopped himself in time, " an 
 American newspaper fellow cadging advertisements for one 
 of their trade-journals." 
 
 " Tobacco Leaf, or the other one ? " 
 
 " The other one," said Peter nonchalantly. 
 
 2 
 
 To Peter Jackson's rather narrow imagination, as yet 
 untouched by the new melodramatic world, the whole inter- 
 view with Francis appeared fantastic. He could neither 
 visualize the steps which preceded that interview the coming 
 of the idea, the remembering of an old school-friend in the 
 Foreign Office, the chivvying about from pillar to post neces- 
 sary for the securing of ' peculiar ' employment, the two days 
 of schooling by the quiet little civilian at ' S, ' the final in- 
 structions ; nor the resultant arrival of ' Mr. Raymond P. 
 Sellers ' at a certain hotel in Amsterdam, where he waited in 
 his clean bedroom overlooking the canal, till a very ordinary- 
 looking Dutch merchant having closed the door carefully
 
 Decision 57 
 
 behind him said, " Hello, Gordon. I didn't know you were 
 one of us ? " . . . 
 
 No ! Peter certainly couldn't visualize his cousin in the 
 r6le of a secret-service agent. And such a secret-service 
 agent Phillips Oppenheim hero in the flesh 1 He remembered, 
 of course, that Francis had always been rather a dab at 
 languages ; remembered his talking German at a not too 
 savoury dancing-hall in Singapore where they had once 
 foregathered. 
 
 But surely there never was a man so utterly unfitted for 
 such a job, so absolutely certain to make a muck of it, as 
 Francis Gordon. 
 
 ' Fantastic, ' decided our Mr. Jackson ; and went on with 
 his work. 
 
 3 
 
 Nevertheless, the interview left its mark in more ways 
 than the pencilled notes ' Post F.'s letters ' in Peter's business 
 diary. 
 
 Two more weeks drifted by ; news, unsatisfactorily scanty 
 at the beginning, grew unsatisfactorily complete. So far, the 
 enemy had it all their own way. Business, on the other 
 hand, shewed a tendency to revive Nirvana business 
 especially. With the economies effected, a little more trade 
 provided nothing interfered with their exports would ensure 
 them against actual loss. Bramson had cheered up ; Simpson 
 and the cigar-business dropped back into their usual lethargy. 
 But our Mr. Jackson, for the first time in years, felt himself 
 lacking in concentration. 
 
 This lack of concentration, as he carefully explained to 
 himself, was in no wise due to the bad news. As an English- 
 man, and one who vaguely recollected the South African 
 campaign, he had never expected a walk-over. Things looked 
 pretty bad at the moment. Paris might possibly fall though 
 it hardly seemed likely. That would be awkward, of course ; 
 but by no means an irretrievable disaster. . . . 
 
 Nor, he decided, had business anxieties affected his grip of 
 things financial. Nirvana could be saved. The main problem 
 had been grappled with. Now granted his continued 
 personal attention it was only a question of patience. . . . 
 Then, why the devil this strange inability to concentrate, this 
 growing annoyance ? 
 
 A good many people had begun to annoy Peter Julius 
 Hagenburg among others. The man, proud possessor of a 
 British naturalization certificate taken out in 1912, had of
 
 58 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 course every right to change his name if he thought fit. But 
 Peter could not get accustomed to him as ' James Hartopp, 
 Esq.' And his loud-mouthed patriotism, even though he had 
 squared off almost all his old account and given a large new 
 order, somehow offended. 
 
 There were a good many naturalized Germans in the 
 Havana cigar-trade ; many of them with sons who had already 
 enlisted. But every time Peter met one of them old 
 Schornstein, for instance, with his " Ve must vait and see, my 
 poy. Ve must vait and see ", or Blumberg, eager to explain 
 that " De liperal barty had saved de gountry " he 
 experienced a new prejudice. 
 
 And Jackson's connexion with Beckmann's provided the 
 crowning annoyance of all. Peter and Simpson had decided 
 as soon as the legal position became clear that it would be 
 ridiculous to stop importing the brand immediately. They 
 must, of course, do their best to replace the goods with those of 
 another factory. On the other hand, to give them up without 
 finding a substitute would merely mean turning over an 
 important advantage to some less-scrupulous competitor. 
 Still whatever the ' Proclamation as to trading with the 
 Enemy ' might say about ' firms domiciled in neutral 
 countries ' Peter could not get out of his mind that the 
 actual owners of the concern were Germans. 
 
 Every Friday afternoon, as Simpson dictated his careful 
 letter to Havana, ending with the old stereotyped phrasing 
 'with kind regards, Yours very sincerely,' Peter would 
 remember Heinrich Beckmann, in his heavy boots, his black 
 tail-coat, his hard bowler hat, iron-moustached and curt of 
 phrase, gobbling oysters and swilling wine at Forli's ; would 
 see young Albert Beckmann, fat, flabby, blond, over- 
 manicured, frothing glass at his lips, eyeing the tdnzerinnen in 
 the gaudy night-club where they had celebrated the signing of 
 the contract. "Huns," Peter would say to himself (the 
 appellation ' Hun ' had just come into vogue) " bloody 
 Huns I " 
 
 4 
 
 But in addition to this growing revulsion against the 
 enemy (dislike of the Germans had been ingrained in the 
 man's character since his first day in business) the thousand 
 emotional phenomena of the period began to affect Peter. 
 That he could be hearing whispers of the ' British spirit ' the 
 spirit that was even then driving Francis Gordon, nervous to 
 the depths of his imaginative soul, into dangers that had to
 
 Decision 59 
 
 be faced in cold blood and absolutely alone never struck the 
 chairman of Nirvana Limited. 
 
 He was conscious only of a Questioning ; it seemed as 
 though everyone and everything asked him something, some- 
 thing he could not answer. 
 
 The morning newspaper began that Questioning. It 
 lurked, somehow or other, behind the war-news, the casualty- 
 lists. More than one name which conjured up the face of a 
 boy known at Eton figured in those early columns. Chain's 
 minor, in his own house, who had held on to his position till 
 the last moment : " dying," wrote his colonel to his mother, 
 " as I am sure you would have wished him to die." Latham, 
 of the Artillery, who had fought his gun single-handed till he 
 dropped dead over the breech-block. . . . Peter caught him- 
 self trying to explain to a shadowy Challis minor how impossible 
 it was for certain people, people with responsibilities like his 
 own, to join the Army. . . . 
 
 Evelyn and Primula, too, now back at Lowndes Square, 
 accentuated uncertainty. They could talk of nothing but 
 the soldiers they had seen drilling in Kensington Gardens, the 
 motor that had dashed astounding phenomenon down 
 the Broad Walk. They reminded him of the episode, trivial 
 at the time, but constantly recurring, of Patricia's brother, Jack 
 Baynet. Jack had been mobilized with the Sixth Division ; 
 had asked Peter and Patricia to visit him in camp at Cam- 
 bridge. Peter had promised to go, cried off at the last moment. 
 One couldn't very well mingle, an able-bodied civilian in 
 mufti, with men who were going to France within the week. 
 
 An eternal Questioning ! Everything, everybody, seemed 
 an embodied and personal demand. Everything, everybody: 
 the khaki, blossoming now like a brown flower at every 
 street-corner ; the boy Parkins who had to be assured that 
 his place would be kept open before he enlisted ; a traveller 
 and two mechanics at the factory, who went first and asked 
 afterwards ; Miss Macpherson's eyes when she dictated the 
 Havana mail ; Pat. For Patricia grew very silent those 
 days. . . . 
 
 By the first week in September Peter had solved the 
 Questioning ; reduced it to a question. And the question, 
 briefly, was this : ' To join up meant the almost certain 
 sacrifice of Nirvana. Not to join up, meant the definite loss 
 of self-respect. Which should he do ? ' 
 
 He had no fear of the soldiering part : on the contrary 
 being entirely and blessedly ignorant of warfare's actualities 
 it seemed to him the obvious, glorious and easy solution
 
 60 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 of his problem. To abandon his business responsibilities, 
 on the other hand, implied quite apart from the already- 
 discounted pang of giving up the thing he most loved a 
 lack of moral courage, a yielding to popular clamour. 
 
 Curiously enough, Hubert Rawlings clinched Peter's 
 decision. 
 
 5 
 
 It was a month and three days since the outbreak of war. 
 Paris thought Peter, as he sat alone in the back office at 
 Lime Street was practically safe. Still, it might easily be 
 six months before the Cossacks got to Berlin. Meanwhile . . . 
 
 The telephone bell jangled ; he took up the receiver, 
 heard his brother-in-law's voice. 
 
 " Peter Jackson speaking . . . That you, Hubert ? . . . 
 Right, I'll be in if you come along at once." 
 
 Hubert Rawlings, publicity agent, had not been worried 
 with any whispers of the ' British spirit.' The contemptible 
 cry of ' business as usual ' found in him an able propagandist. 
 Government officials, eager to do anything except fight, had 
 decided on a campaign of advertising, as wasteful to the 
 country's purse as it was degrading to its patriotism ; for 
 this campaign, Hubert Rawlings proved himself an invaluable 
 henchman. Posters, leaflets, newspaper-stereos one more 
 revolting to decent folk than the other spawned themselves 
 hi his lower-middle-class mind, spewed themselves over 
 London and the provinces. Officially, he made no profits 
 on these transactions. Actually and in addition, there was 
 always the advantage of being 'in with the government.' 
 One might get . . . Heaven knows what one mightn't get. . . . 
 Also, one had ' opportunities.' 
 
 Such an ' opportunity ' brought Hubert Rawlings to Peter's 
 office. 
 
 He came in, silk-hatted, morning-coated, flower in button- 
 hole, perfectly at ease. Already his voice had assumed a faint 
 touch of the ' Whitehall manner.' 
 
 " How do you do, Peter ? " he said. " I hope you didn't 
 wait for me." 
 
 " Afternoon, Hubert. Take a pew. What's the trouble ? " 
 
 "I came," announced Rawlings mysteriously, "to ask 
 you if you'd like to have a share in a little deal some friends 
 of mine are interested in. I need hardly tell you it's all fair 
 and above-board, or of course / shouldn't have anything to 
 do with it. Still " he dropped his voice " naturally, 
 anything I say remains strictly between the two of us."
 
 Decision 61 
 
 " Of course," said Peter. 
 
 "It's like this," went on Rawlings. " I we happen to 
 know that there will shortly be a big demand for a certain 
 article." Encouraged by Peter's non-committal attitude, he 
 waxed confidential. " I may as well tell you what the article 
 is. It's overcoats." 
 
 " Overcoats ? " 
 
 " Yes. For Kitchener's Army. You know, I presume, 
 that, owing to shortage of dye, there has been a delay in the 
 deliveries of khaki. A very serious delay. So the men are 
 to be provided, as a temporary expedient, with civilian great- 
 coats. Ready-made. Do you follow me so far ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," said Peter stiffly. The other, had he been 
 looking, might have noticed a dangerous quietness in his 
 brother-in-law's attitude. 
 
 " Now I we have an option on ten thousand of these over- 
 coats. There are four of us in the deal so far. The coats 
 work out, for cash, at fifteen shillings. . . . The War Office is 
 paying twenty-five. That " the voice became unctuous 
 " means a profit of . . ." 
 
 " Five thousand pounds," snapped Peter. For a moment, 
 old habits asserted themselves ; he was tempted. A thousand 
 more for Nirvana ! Then all the emotions of four weeks 
 blazed into cold flame. He got up from his chair, eyes black 
 with rage ; controlled himself in time ; and said slowly : 
 
 " Don't slam the door as you go out, Rawlings." 
 
 " But surely ..." began the other. 
 
 " Did you hear what I said ? " 
 
 " Yes, but . . ." 
 
 " Damn your eyes I Will you get out of this office before I 
 throw you out . . . ." 
 
 Rawlings went. 
 
 6 
 
 Two nights later at the very moment when the Beasts 
 in Gray, muttering " Grosses Malheur " as they shuffled 
 through darkling towns, were reeling back to the Aisne before 
 the armies of France and a handful of Englishmen Peter 
 Jackson and his wife sat over their coffee in the drawing-room 
 at Lowndes Square. 
 
 All through dinner he had been absorbed and reticent. 
 Now he put down his empty cup on the little table by the side 
 of his armchair ; took a long pull at his cigar; began to speak. 
 For a month she had watched him ; speculated about him ; 
 hoped ; doubted ; realized a little of his difficulties. But she
 
 62 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 had given no hint of her feelings : this was a matter for a 
 man's own conscience ; no woman, not even his wife, possessed 
 the right to influence him. 
 
 " I want to talk to you," he said. 
 
 " Yes, dear." A little of what he must say, she knew. 
 Her eyes kindled at the prospect of it. 
 
 " Pat," he began, " I don't think I can keep out of this 
 thing any longer. It wouldn't be " he fumbled for the 
 expression " quite playing the game. But if I go, there 
 are risks . . ." 
 
 " Naturally." She schooled her voice to calmness. 
 
 " I don't mean those sort of risks. If anything happened 
 to me, the insurance would be paid. I went round to see the 
 Phoenix people about that this morning." Unaccountably, 
 the reasonableness of the view irritated her. " I mean busi- 
 ness risks. To begin with, there's the factory." 
 
 He began to talk about Nirvana ; tried to shew her only 
 the financial position. His personal feelings, he felt, must 
 not be allowed to complicate a simple issue. But the intona- 
 tion of his voice betrayed the emotions behind it ; and she 
 realized, for the first time, how much Nirvana meant to him . 
 
 " You would hate to give it up," she interrupted. 
 
 "It would be rather," he hesitated for a moment, " a 
 wrench. Still, I've discounted that. Of course, the whole 
 thing's a gamble. But I'm not going to throw my hand in 
 yet. After all, I shan't go out for some time. Meanwhile, I 
 can keep in touch. Only I won't put up any more capital. If 
 Reid and Bramson between them I saw Reid yesterday 
 and he'll do his best can manage to keep her going, well and 
 good. If not, we must cut our losses." 
 
 " Will they be very heavy ? " 
 
 " They might be. But that isn't all. . . ." 
 
 ' Oh, what do you care about losses ? ' her heart cried 
 out in her. ' He's going. He's a man. What else matters ? ' 
 And then, suddenly, fear held her, battling down reason, 
 patriotism, pride, everything except itself. 
 
 But the man went on talking coolly, logically, imperson- 
 ally. That he was voicing the spirit of a great sacrifice, that 
 Patricia realised the sacrifice, loved him for it, that the ' pal ' 
 he had known for eight years existed no longer, had become at 
 a word his mate, his woman to do with as he would these 
 things were hidden both then and for long after from Peter 
 Jackson, cigar merchant. . . . 
 
 " So you see," he said, summing up the case as he saw it, 
 " it means a big risk. If the factory goes down, if Jackson's
 
 Decision 63 
 
 business doesn't improve, if Simpson won't renew the partner- 
 ship agreement in January, if one or any of these things 
 happen, it might mean giving up this house." 
 
 Inwardly, the bathos of it made her laugh. If he could 
 give up so much, surely she could give up her little. Reason 
 and the training of years came to her aid. To him she was 
 still the pal. Only the pal. Nothing more than that ! 
 
 " I quite follow, dear," she said. 
 
 " But we won't consider the black side, old thing. Don't 
 let's panic. The war may be over by Christmas. Till then 
 we'll carry on just as we are. I shan't even get rid of the 
 motor." 
 
 Now that the awkward task of putting the position before 
 his wife was over, optimism held him. For a moment, the 
 sense of having done the right thing blurred his business 
 judgment. 
 
 "You're a topping pal, Pat," he said to her as they kissed 
 good-night. 
 
 But Patricia, waking to the first shimmer of dawn through 
 the chinks of the silk curtains, felt herself for the first time 
 woman indeed. For now she loved him, utterly beyond 
 friendship; and lying there, quite still in her own narrow 
 bed, she vowed this new love to his service in whatsoever 
 guise he most should need it. ... 
 
 Peter Jackson slept on.
 
 PART VI 
 
 THE NEW GAME 
 i 
 
 AJOR ANSTRUTHER is interviewing applicants 
 for commissions, sir, but he won't be here 
 
 Iff 
 
 III for another half -hour." 
 
 " Very well. I'll come back." 
 
 The sergeant-clerk at the Horse Guards turned to his 
 work ; and Peter sauntered out, under the archway, past 
 the two mounted sentries, white-breeched and black-booted, 
 motionless on their glossy chargers. 
 
 It was the i6th of September, 1914, a morning of warm 
 sunshine, that silhouetted the dome and wireless masts of 
 the Admiralty in sharp sable against the glinting gravel of 
 the square ; that glistened gold on the foliage of the gardens 
 beyond, and accentuated the breakfast-time emptiness of 
 the tented recruiting-station. 
 
 Telling Murray to wait, Peter sauntered on into the Park ; 
 sat down. 
 
 Decision once reached, he had wasted no time in the writing 
 of useless letters. Four days had been spent in the settling- 
 up of affairs : dictation of instructions for Bramson, revision 
 of his will, talks with Simpson, with Reid, with Mr. Davis 
 of the London Joint Stock Bank, with Mr. Smollett of the City 
 and Midland. Everywhere he had encountered astonish- 
 ment that he should be going, veiled opposition, attempts 
 to dissuade. "Single men first," said one. "Your duty is 
 to your business," the other. Only Simpson had expressed 
 full accord. Peter, no propagandist, did not argue. Methodi- 
 cally, and with his usual concentration, he perfected his arrange- 
 ments. Then he called on Hugh Barton at the offices of the 
 National Service League. 
 
 Hugh Barton's letter of recommendation to Major 
 Anstruther was in Peter's pocket now. It had not been obtained 
 altogether without guile ; had necessitated, to secure Barton's 
 goodwill, a couple of days' clerical work in the bare offices 
 at Victoria Street, where voluntary helpers sorted and
 
 The New Game 65 
 
 classified applications from retired officers for re-employment 
 in the army. 
 
 Curiously human, those documents ; curiously inhuman 
 the precis of them required by the War Office. Sitting there 
 in the sunshine, Peter remembered two : one from a veteran 
 colonel of infantry, who enclosed a ' statement of services ' 
 beginning at the Indian Mutiny and ending with Tel-el-Kebir : 
 " although eighty-seven years old I am still in possession of all 
 my faculties and feel confident of being able to lead troops 
 in the field " : and the other, a personal letter to Lord 
 Kitchener, claiming acquaintance in South Africa and asking 
 for a Staff billet on the strength of it" Too talkative for 
 Staff. K." had been blue-pencilled underneath the elaborate 
 signature. 
 
 Peter looked at his watch ; saw it pointed ten o'clock ; 
 strode back to the Horse Guards. 
 
 2 
 
 " The Scout will shew you the way, sir." 
 
 Peter followed the bare-kneed flannel-shirted youngster up 
 narrow wooden stairs, along a panelled corridor. His guide 
 knocked on a door at the end of the passage ; a voice said, 
 " Come in." 
 
 Peter found himself in a small bright room. Two Staff 
 officers, one affable and eye-glassed, the other clean-shaven 
 and saturnine, sat at separate tables, paper-littered. 
 
 " Major Anstruther ? " queried Peter impersonally. 
 
 The affable one looked up from his work, said : " That's 
 me." 
 
 " I've a chit for you from Barton, sir. Hugh Barton of 
 the N.S.L." 
 
 " Commission, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Well, let's have a look at it. Sit down, won't you ? " 
 He opened the envelope ; began to read. " H'm. Ha. 
 What's the name ? Jackson. You're an O.E., are you ? 
 Whose house ? " 
 
 " Impey's, sir." 
 
 Major Anstruther had not troubled to finish Barton's 
 letter. He was an old Etonian himself, and the qualification 
 sufficed. 
 
 ' Good chap, Impey. Going to send my brat to him next 
 half. Sarcastic devil, though. Ain't he ? " 
 
 " Yes, he is rather," admitted Peter.
 
 66 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Done any soldiering, Jackson ? Were you in the Dog- 
 potters beg pardon, Volunteers ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. I was a Corporal my last half." Not for 
 nothing had Peter spent six years ' on the road ' ! 
 
 " Good. Now about this commission. What do you want 
 it in ? " 
 
 " Cavalry," suggested Peter. 
 
 " Ain't going to be no cavalry.' 
 
 " Artillery, then ? " 
 
 " As far as I know there ain't going to be no artillery 
 either. Not in the New Armies. Bothered if I know why 
 Barton sent you to me. Colonels are choosing their own 
 subalterns nowadays. That's so, ain't it, Larking ? " 
 
 The saturnine one looked up from the table ; said : " I 
 believe so." 
 
 It was Peter's first experience of War Office methods ; 
 and he sat there, rather nonplussed. 
 
 " Tell you what I can do," went on Anstruther, brighten- 
 ing visibly, " I can give you a chit to one of the new Generals. 
 How would that suit you ? " 
 
 " Very well indeed, sir." 
 
 " Right -o. Any preference as to where you'd like to be ? 
 . . . Near London as possible ? . . . Well, what about Brigh- 
 ton ? . . . Cheery spot; do it in two hours in my car." He 
 turned to the other man. " Dunning 's at Brighton, ain't 
 he? " 
 
 " Shoreham, I think." 
 
 " Oh, well, same thing." He pulled a buff slip towards 
 him, began writing. " Dunning 's the chap we can't get those 
 returns from ? " he asked his colleague. " Right-o." Then 
 to Peter, " S'pose you can go down to-day. Got a car out- 
 side, have you ? Stout fellow. Well, here's your chit ; 
 and you can tell Dunning with my compliments that if he 
 don't send in those returns I've mentioned at once, we shall 
 lose the war." He got up ; passed over the chit ; shook 
 hands. " Hope you get on all right. Turn to the left as 
 you go out." 
 
 3 
 
 They made Brighton by twelve o'clock ; Shoreham-on- 
 Sea twenty minutes later ; inquired at the station for General 
 Dunning's headquarters. The vacuous-eyed porter had 
 never heard of General Dunning ; but there was a camp at 
 the Golf Club ; they might know there.
 
 The New Game 67 
 
 They did. 
 
 "Dunning? Dunning? Oh yes, that's our new G.O.C. 
 Division. He hasn't arrived yet," said an officer standing by 
 the sentried gate. " Come in, won't you ? Mind your car 
 over those ruts." 
 
 Peter edged her between the posts, over the ruts in the 
 hard chalk. A big marquee was just being erected close to 
 the road ; round it, a few bell-tents clustered. Beyond, 
 just above the crest of a bare Down, shewed other tent- 
 tops. 
 
 " Better come and have some lunch," said Peter's new and 
 nameless friend. " How about your man ? " 
 
 He signalled to a sergeant in khaki ; gave instructions 
 for feeding Murray ; led way to a little wooden club-house ; 
 inquired Peter's name ; signed it in the mess-book. 
 
 At the bar, five junior officers stood sipping cocktails. 
 One of them, a weak-lipped, handsome youngster, looked up 
 and said : 
 
 " Good God, Jackson, what are you doing down here ? ' 
 
 Peter fumbled in his memory, recognised the Honourable 
 
 Archie Travers, sometime his fag at Eton, whose career in the 
 
 Guards had terminated, as the result of a ragging scandal, 
 
 the year before. 
 
 " Have a drink, won't you ? " went on Travers. " I 
 suppose you're after a commission ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Peter. 
 
 The other four men turned round at this ; ejaculated simul- 
 taneously : " You'd better come to us." 
 
 " I saw him first," protested Peter's introducer. 
 
 They passed, wrangling amiably, into the exiguous 
 luncheon-room. Peter, eating his cold beef and sipping his 
 whisky-and-soda, weighed up the claimants ; decided on 
 Travers who explained that he was Adjutant of the 6th 
 Northshires, that his Colonel would take anybody he recom- 
 mended, and that the others, being only Company Com 
 manders, would have to ask their Adjutant, etc., etc. 
 
 " Rather a casual way of doing things, isn't it ? " com- 
 mented our Mr. Jackson as luncheon over they strolled 
 out of the little club-house, over the already derelict last 
 green towards the main camp. 
 
 " Well, what are we to do ? " explained Travers. " We 
 keep on sending applications to the War Office and nothing 
 happens." He flicked a speck of dust from his shining field- 
 boots. " We've got twenty thousand men in this camp. 
 All in civvies. Hardly any N.C.O's. And about two officers
 
 68 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 per battalion. No rifles, of course except those two you 
 saw at the gate. / borrowed them from the Lancing 
 O.T.C." 
 
 By now they had mounted the brow of the hill. All about 
 them, little squads of poorly dressed men were shuffling 
 through their first drills. Others lay about on the dry 
 bunkers. Here and there an officer in khaki harangued his 
 company. The old words of command, " About turn, by 
 numbers. One," "Stand at ease," "Stand easy," came 
 back to Corporal Jackson, sometime of the Eton Dog-potters, 
 as he and Travers made for the Colonel's marquee. 
 
 "You must stand to attention when an officer passes, 
 you know," said Travers to the obvious cockney who was 
 lounging at the entrance. 
 
 "I'm sorry, sir." 
 
 " Oh, that's all right. You'll learn in time." 
 
 They passed into the cool obscurity of the big tent. 
 Travers pulled himself up ; clicked spurred heels ; saluted 
 a stocky man with soda-water-bottle-blue eyes and the West 
 African medal, who sat writing at a little wooden table. 
 
 "This is Jackson, sir," began Travers. "He was at 
 school with me. Wants a commission. I think we ought 
 to have him, don't you, sir ? " 
 
 " Done any soldiering ? " asked Colonel Skeffington, 
 looking up from his work. 
 
 "Corporal, Eton Volunteers, sir," answered Peter. 
 
 " All right, Travers. Make out his Blue Paper and I'll 
 sign it." 
 
 The Adjutant sat down on a wooden box ; filled up 
 Peter assisting the necessary document. 
 
 " You'll have to get your doctor to sign here," explained 
 Travers, " and I suppose ' me tutor ' will certify your 
 education. ..." 
 
 Colonel Skeffington signed the four-sided form with a 
 little flourish ; shook hands ; said good-bye ; and went on 
 with his work. 
 
 " How about that General of yours ? " said Travers. 
 " Suppose we go and have a look for him ? " 
 
 The two strolled out again ; down the hill. 
 
 " You don't seem to have many tents," said Peter. 
 
 "Twenty-five for our battalion. And we're twelve 
 hundred strong. Most of the chaps are sleeping on the 
 ground. Lucky the weather's fine, what! The man who 
 selected this place for a camp ..." The Honourable Archie's 
 language became unfit for publication. " On the chalk
 
 The New Game 69 
 
 wait till it rains. In full view of the sea wait till a sub- 
 marine pops up. No rifles. No tents. No clothes. No 
 nothing. And they're going to build hutments . . . 
 perhaps." 
 
 At the big marquee now erected by the roadside, they 
 found a little knot of officers. 
 
 "That's Dunning," said one of them to Peter, "the old 
 chap in the blue uniform. Got a letter for him ? From the 
 Horse Guards ? Come along, then." 
 
 Peter, hat -in-hand, found himself talking to an imposing 
 old buffer, big-moustached, corpulence accentuated by his 
 iight -fitting dark-blue tunic and red-striped trousers. 
 
 " What do you want ? " asked the General. 
 
 " Major Anstruther asked me to give you this chit, sir." 
 
 " Chit ! Chit ! Been in India, have you ? What regi- 
 ment ? On business, eh ? A box-wallah." His tone changed. 
 "Who the hell's Major Anstruther? Never heard of the 
 blighter." 
 
 Peter, who knew his Anglo-Indian of old, explained 
 shortly ; suggested the General had better open the letter ; 
 stood quietly by while it was being read. 
 
 " Returns," growled the General. " Returns 1 What the 
 devil do I know about his returns ? I've only been in this 
 damn place half an hour. Here, you," to one of the officers. 
 " Why the devil haven't we sent in any returns ? " 
 
 " Returns have been sent to the War Office every night, 
 sir." 
 
 "Well, this bloke writes from the Horse Guards." He 
 addressed himself again to Peter. " Want a commission, 
 don't you ? / can't help you with a commission." 
 
 " It's already attended to, sir," explained our Mr. Jackson. 
 " Colonel Skeffington has just filled up my application form." 
 
 " Good," said the General, and turned on his heel. 
 
 ' If it won't inconvenience Mrs. Jackson and yourself too 
 much, sir," said Murray, stooping to adjust the oiling-cams 
 as they swept through the long street of Horsham in the dusk, 
 " I think I should like to join the Army next week. Mrs. 
 Jackson is quite capable of driving now; and the garage 
 people will keep the car clean." 
 
 " Very good, Murray." Peter looked at the clean-shaven, 
 earnest young man. "Isn't it a very sudden decision 
 though ?"
 
 70 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Couldn't stand what those fellows said to me at dinner," 
 admitted Murray ; and relapsed into silence. 
 
 4 
 
 Followed a fortnight which comprised : 
 
 (1) A perfunctory medical examination by Patricia's father. 
 
 (2) A letter (enclosing the Blue Form) to Mr. Impey, 
 who returned it duly signed with a note " Dulce et 
 decorum est pro p atria mori." 
 
 (3) Two days' delay. 
 
 (4) A telegram from Travers : " War Office instructions 
 cancelled. Advise you apply direct to them." 
 
 (5) A visit to Major Anstruther, who said, " Sorry I let 
 you down. Take this chit to Colonel Thompson, 
 Room 154, across the road." 
 
 (6) An interview with a mild-faced gentleman, very 
 determined that the Northshires had more subalterns 
 than they wanted, and proposing a commission in the 
 Chalkshires. "Same Division. You'd better take 
 it. See I get that Blue Paper at once." 
 
 (7) The ordering, trying on, and delivery at Lowndes 
 Square of a subaltern's uniform. 
 
 (8) Six days' delay. 
 
 England, officially, was not in a hurry for our Mr. 
 Jackson. 
 
 5 
 
 "The whole thing's a farce, Pat," said Peter, clipping 
 his after-breakfast cigar. " One understands, of course, 
 that they've got a biggish job to tackle but still . . ." 
 
 He had utilised the fortnight to polish up his drill ; buying 
 a red ' Infantry Training ' and getting himself admitted, 
 not without difficulty, to the Inns of Court O.T.C. where a 
 Boer War veteran, bowler hat slammed fiercely on his head, 
 buttoned boots stamping the gravel, had raved and ranted at 
 some two hundred City boys belted and rifled, but mostly 
 in black tail-coats and subsequently hustled them through 
 the new double-company movements, which a famous foot- 
 baller read out, in accents hardly audible, across the great 
 green of the Temple Gardens. 
 
 " The whole thing's a farce," repeated Peter. 
 
 Outwardly the situation between these two had not
 
 The New Game 71 
 
 altered. Reason told her that this new love she felt for him 
 could win its reward only by patience. And she needed all 
 her patience, those days. Disorganisation held no humour 
 for Peter Jackson. His patriotism, if it could have found 
 expression, would have vented itself in few words : " There's 
 a job to be done. A rotten job. Let's do it, and get back 
 to our businesses." He was still in the intervals running 
 those businesses ; hearing telephoned reports ; suggesting 
 this, vetoing that. But more than a fraction of the old-time 
 keenness had evaporated. 
 
 He walked over to the bureau between the windows ; 
 picked out a telegraph-form from the racked paper-holder ; 
 began to write. 
 
 She looked at Mm across the breakfast -debris calm, golden- 
 haired, very fresh in her white blouse, her blue walking- 
 skirt ; guessed, from the bent back, the concentration in his 
 taut brain. Looking, love leaped into her dark eyes, moisten- 
 ing them. 
 
 " I think this'll do," he said, turning so suddenly that she 
 scarcely had time to drop her lashes : " Colonel Thompson. 
 Room 154. War Office. Reference our recent interview am 
 now ready and shall be glad of instructions to report for duty. 
 Reply paid. Jackson, 220, Lowndes Square, W." 
 
 " You can't send that," said Patricia. 
 
 " Can't I ? " He rang for Smith ; gave instructions for 
 immediate dispatch of the wire. 
 
 6 
 
 Patricia, coming in from her afternoon walk with the 
 children, found a tawny envelope on the hall table. The 
 wire was addressed " Jackson " , and she opened casually ; 
 felt her heart stop as though two fingers had clutched it ; 
 heard Primula's voice : " What's the matter, mummy ? " 
 
 " Nothing's the matter, dear," she said calmly. " You 
 and Evelyn had better go upstairs to Nanny." 
 
 She watched them running up the broad stone staircase, 
 out of sight. Then she read the pencilled message again : 
 " Report for duty loth Chalkshires Shoreham Camp immediately 
 your application form not yet received please expedite. Thomp- 
 son. War Office." 
 
 " What a fool I am," she said to herself. " What a selfish, 
 unpatriotic fool ! "
 
 PART VII 
 PLAYING AT SOLDIERS 
 
 i 
 
 EXCEPT for the newness of his ' cavalry-cord ' tunic 
 and a slight lack of suppleness in the carefully- 
 browned belt, nothing about the quiet gray-eyed 
 young man in the otherwise-empty first-class 
 compartment on the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway 
 betrayed the civilian of a day ago. The battered valise and 
 an old-fashioned Army basin, leather-covered relics of a trip 
 to the East did not smack of the newly-joined. Close-oat 
 dark hair, clipped moustaches, correctly-wound puttees and 
 dubbined shooting-boots, completed the illusion. But Peter 
 Jackson's mind had not yet cast off its old allegiances. 
 
 Rather, as he whirled Sussexwards, did those discarded 
 problems assume acuter import. One by one he conned over 
 the arrangements made fortnightly reports from Lime Street, 
 weekly statements and a bi-weekly letter from Bramson, 
 accurate statistics from Reid ; wondered if they might have 
 been improved upon. And speculating on these things, 
 Peter began to feel for the first time the real pang of 
 parting from Nirvana. It was as though he had cut the main 
 interest out of life ; as if the entity of his creating had died. 
 Symbolically, he seemed to see his two flashing signs, as they 
 had been before the new lighting restrictions : " Nirvana or 
 Nothing," they had blazed. Now they blazed no more. 
 Nothing ! 
 
 He pulled his ' Infantry Training ' from his pocket ; began 
 to study Battalion Drill. "A battalion in mass . . ." 
 
 But the subconscious mind would not visualize battalions 
 either in mass or other formations. The mind returned to its 
 old love, refused to be comforted. The mind did not recall 
 the morning's partings with Patricia, careful to display no 
 emotion with the children, excited at their first vision of 
 ' daddy in khaki.' Instead, it called up figures from 
 balance-sheets, the factory working at full pressure, that
 
 Playing at Soldiers 73 
 
 dim-lit back-office in the city : till, gradually, came recollec- 
 tion of ' Mr. Raymond P. Sellers. . . .' 
 
 Peter had already posted two of the letters to Prout ; 
 visited the Bloomsbury flat as promised, found everything in 
 order. Only a photograph, a girl's photograph, was missing. 
 And that, Peter had not noticed. But from Francis Gordon 
 himself had come no word. The war seemed to have swallowed 
 him up, utterly, mysteriously. 
 
 So Peter sped on, through the bright countryside, thinking 
 of his cousin. . . . And at that very moment, thousands of 
 miles away, in a great hotel at Los Angeles, California, a girl 
 said to herself : " Even if he has gone to the war, it's mean 
 of him not to write and tell me so." She stood at the window 
 for a moment, looking out on to the sunlit lawn. Till sud- 
 denly, the lawn seemed to grow dark. " He can't have 
 been killed," she whispered. " He can't have been killed." 
 
 It is not easy for ' agents in enemy countries ' to keep up 
 a regular correspondence with the young women whose photo- 
 graphs they carry in their pocket-books 1 
 
 2 
 
 To get from London to Shoreham, you must change trains 
 at Brighton. Peter used the opportunity to lunch at the 
 Royal York Hotel. Seeing him alone at a table by the 
 window, Harry Preston, most vigilant of proprietors, came 
 over; proffered an old brandy in celebration of the new 
 uniform. 
 
 " That's the Chalkshire badge you're wearing, isn't it ? " 
 asked Harry Preston. 
 
 " Yes, I'm joining them at Shoreham this afternoon." 
 
 The little man whistled. 
 
 " What's the joke ? " queried Peter. 
 
 " Not for me to say, of course. But I've been doing 
 business with your firm for some years ; and if you'll take my 
 advice don't play cards with a gentleman named Locksley- 
 Jones." 
 
 " Who's he ? " 
 
 " You'll find out when you get there." 
 
 "Thanks for the hint," smiled Peter, "Have a cigar, 
 won't you ? " 
 
 3 
 
 Colonel Andrews, a diffident, not unkindly man of the 
 pre-Boer-War school, expressionless of face and stocky of
 
 74 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 figure, stood talking to his Adjutant in the recently-occupied 
 camp on the flat fields near Shoreham railway station. 
 Rattled a taxi down the road ; stopped at the gate. 
 
 " Another officer, I suppose," said the Colonel. " You'd 
 better go and look after him. I'm off home for tea. Send 
 up to the house if you want me for anything." He strode 
 back across the parade ground, through the lines of tents ; 
 disappeared. 
 
 Peter acknowledged the salute of a sentry, still in civilian 
 clothes except for a swagger-cane ; paid his taxi ; gave 
 instructions for his kit to be dumped at the guard-tent till 
 further orders. 
 
 "That's the Adjutant, sir," said the sentry, pointing to a 
 bow-legged figure in khaki making its way across the parade 
 ground towards them. Peter saluting although the newcomer 
 only wore the two stars of a full lieutenant saw a pair of 
 puffy eyes under a thatch of sandy hair, two ears rather full 
 in the lobe, a goodish nose, and a set of bad teeth between thin 
 lips. 
 
 " And what can I do for you ? " said the other, carelessly 
 acknowledging the compliment. 
 
 " Are you the Adjutant of the Tenth Chalkshires ? " 
 
 " I'm Lieutenant Locksley- Jones, at present acting in 
 that capacity." 
 
 ' The deuce you are/ thought Peter ; then aloud : " My 
 name's Jackson. I've been ordered by the War Office to 
 join this battalion." 
 
 " / don't know anything about you. The W.O. haven't 
 sent us any instructions." Locksley- Jones fingered scraggy 
 moustache doubtfully ; scrutinized the telegram Peter pro- 
 duced. 
 
 " All right," he said. " You'll have to share a tent with 
 the other fellows. Meanwhile you'd better come and have 
 some tea. Those are the officers' lines" he pointed to a row 
 of tents by the road "the men are over there" his stick 
 switched across the parade ground " and we mess in this big 
 marquee." 
 
 ' I don't wonder Harry Preston whistled,' thought Peter, 
 as they picked their way across the tent-ropes to Mess ; 
 passed through the deserted ' ante-room/ where a red stove 
 glowed welcome, into the main part of the marquee. 
 
 Scattered about in groups at the trestle-tables under the 
 swinging oil-lamps, little knots of officers sat eating and 
 drinking. Civilian waiters bustled about, serving them. 
 
 "Hello, Adjutant," exclaimed a tall, thin Major, twinkling
 
 Playing at Soldiers 75 
 
 face red-veined with port and the open air. " What's this ? 
 Another budding Napoleon ? " 
 
 Locksley- Jones introduced Peter deferentially ; the Major 
 shook hands ; asked the usual " Done any soldiering before ? " 
 apologised for talking shop in Mess ; and buried his nose in a 
 large cup of boiling tea. 
 
 " Peter Jackson ? " he said, emerging. " Let me think. 
 Name sounds familiar somehow. You're not Tessa Bradley's 
 son, by any chance, are you? She married a man named 
 Jackson." 
 
 " My father, sir," said Peter. 
 
 " Good Gad," said Major Fox-Goodwin ; " why, I was at 
 their wedding. Thirty-five years ago, or I'm a Dutchman. 
 Fancy little Tessa having a grown up son. I say, Jones 
 beg pardon, Locksley- Jones ..." 
 
 " Yes, Major." The Adjutant was visibly irritated ; 
 firstly by his superior's reception of the new-corner, secondly 
 at the mistake (which he knew intentional) in his own name. 
 
 " Young Jackson will be posted to my company. Do you 
 understand ? " 
 
 "Yes, Major." 
 
 " And if he knows his drills, you're not to put him ' on 
 the square.' See ? " 
 
 "Quite, Major." The acting Adjutant finished his tea 
 hurriedly ; went out. 
 
 " Between you and me and the gatepost," whispered Fox- 
 Goodwin, " Andrews will make the mistake of his life if he 
 keeps that young bounder in the Orderly Room much longer." 
 
 Peter nodded comprehension ; and the old man he was, 
 as he informed his new subaltern, "rising sixty-five " began 
 to reminisce. He had soldiered under ' Chips ' Bradley in 
 the late seventies, or was it the early eighties ? " Damned 
 if he knew, but Chips Bradley had the best eye for a pretty 
 gal . . . and as for his two daughters, Tessa and Dolores : 
 bit Jewish-looking, though . . . they got that from their 
 mother, of course." He rambled on for nearly ten minutes ; 
 then called across the room, " Here, Bromley, come and be 
 introduced to our latest." 
 
 Harold Bromley lounged over with the unmistakable 
 gait of the ex-cavalryman. A tall, unsmiling fellow, heavy- 
 moustached, light-blue of eye and auburn -haired, who wore 
 the two South African ribbons, yellow-red-black-green-white, 
 across his rather crumpled tunic. 
 
 " Leave you two youngsters alone," announced the Major, 
 introductions over ; and wiping his gray moustache with a
 
 76 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 brown bandanna handkerchief, withdrew to the ante- 
 room. 
 
 " Marvellous old chap," commented Bromley. He spoke 
 rather slowly but without any drawl. " Always reminds me 
 of a character in Thackeray. Do you read Thackeray ? " 
 
 " I'm not much of a bookworm," said Peter ; and waited 
 for more information. He had knocked about the world 
 enough to learn the advantage of listening much and talking 
 little on first acquaintance. But his liking for the grave 
 man whom, in spite of the single star on the shoulder of his 
 high-collared tunic, he judged to be nearly forty was 
 instinctive. 
 
 " I'm glad you're coming to ' B ' Company," went on 
 Bromley. "The Major's a great sport but he doesn't know 
 a word of his drill ; and now that he's acting second-in-com- 
 mand, most of the work falls on myself and the Sergeant- 
 Major. I suppose you know enough to come on parade right 
 away, without bothering about recruit -drill." 
 
 " Oh, I think so," said Peter ; and proffered his inevitable 
 cigar-case. 
 
 Bromley accepted a cigar ; and the two sat talking for 
 a few minutes. Characteristically, neither spoke of his life 
 before joining the army ; their conversation confined itself 
 to generalities. 
 
 " Let's go into the ante-room," suggested Bromley. 
 
 They found two comfortable basket-chairs near the stove. 
 Locksley- Jones, returned from the Orderly-Room, had estab- 
 lished himself at one of the baize-covered tables, was tearing 
 the wrapper from a fresh pack of cards. " Care for a game, 
 Jackson ? " he called across the room. 
 
 Bromley looked sideways at his new friend (the instinctive 
 liking had been mutual) ; saw his eyelashes just flicker ; 
 heard him say, "No, thanks, not to-night." The ante- 
 room began to fill up ; grew loud with talk, hazy with tobacco- 
 smoke. The Chalkshires were sharing their Mess with the 
 East Thanets ; and it mustered nearly thirty officers between 
 the two battalions. The Adjutant's rubber soon filled. 
 Bromley, in a discreet undertone, began pointing out various 
 worthies. 
 
 There was Captain Mosely, a great ox of a fellow, ex- 
 regular newly-rejoined, who sat by himself in a far corner, 
 writing letters the flimsy chair creaking each time he dived 
 f orink (" O.C. ' D ' Company," whispered Bromley) : and Sim- 
 cox, who commanded ' A ' a fat stockbroker of forty, looking 
 curiously out of his element among a group of very junior
 
 Playing at Soldiers 77 
 
 subalterns. There was Fanshawe (" son of Judge Fanshawe ") 
 beetle-browed, black-locked, long of leg and short of temper, 
 discussing Military Law with Bareton, a tall, clean-shaven 
 young solicitor, light-haired, stubborn in temperament, a 
 puritan fanatic with a tendency to dreaming (" they're running 
 ' C ' between 'em, rather efficient fellows," confided Bromley) ; 
 and Peabody, a brown-faced kid of eighteen, looking the child 
 in his converted O.T.C. tunic ; Arkwright, tall and lank with 
 the unmistakable stoop of the junior master in an English 
 public school ; Mackenzie, a round-faced Scotch boy who had 
 been studying for ' the Ministry ' when war broke out and 
 many others. 
 
 " Care to come round the lines ? " asked Bromley. " I 
 usually go about now." 
 
 They found their caps and canes ; sauntered out. 
 
 4 
 
 Already it was dusk a chill dry night, moonless. Under 
 the shadows of the trees in front of them, tents glowed warm 
 orange cones in the darkness. Figures passed them as they 
 walked across the dry grass ; touched caps awkwardly ; 
 muttered, " Good night, sir." 
 
 Bromley made way towards a light that shone out like an 
 eye from the open doorway of the first tent. Approaching, 
 Peter saw under it a head in a khaki cap, bowed over an 
 open book. The head lifted to the sound of their footsteps ; 
 the body underneath jerked itself to attention. 
 
 "Good evening, sir," said Company-Sergeant-Major 
 Gladeney a fierce little alert-eyed man with the waxed 
 moustaches of the old-time N.C.O. 
 
 " Evening, Colour-Sergeant." Bromley acknowledged the 
 salute. " May we come in ? " 
 
 " With pleasure, sir." 
 
 They stepped over the tent -fly ; and were made welcome 
 on two packing-cases. 
 
 "This is Mr. Jackson, one of our new officers, Colour- 
 Sergeant " it must be explained that Bromley had not yet 
 accustomed himself to the new title of ' Company-Sergeant- 
 Major ' " do you think you can find him a good servant ? " 
 
 " I think so, sir. There's a man here, name of Priestley, 
 who was with us in South Africa. He ought to take a stripe 
 but he won't. . . ." 
 
 " Knows the game too well, I suppose," suggested Bromley. 
 
 " That's about the size of things, sir. He's out now ;
 
 78 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 but if your batman could look after Mr. Jackson for to-night. 
 I'll send Mm over first thing in the morning." 
 
 " Very well, Colour- Sergeant. How are the boys ? " 
 
 "All right, sir. They're shaking down pretty well." 
 He relaxed a little, put a match to his pipe. " Wonderful 
 thing to me, sir, how they put up with things. Those boots 
 you bought in Brighton were a god-send, sir. They may be 
 able to march now. Before, half of them couldn't do more 
 than hobble. And to-morrow we'll be serving out the new 
 uniforms." 
 
 " What, khaki ? " interrupted Peter. 
 
 " No, sir. Workhouse stuff, sir at least that's what they 
 look like to me. Blue slops and forage-caps for the most part. 
 And a few of our old militia uniforms." 
 
 " Not the old scarlet -runners ? " This from Bromley. 
 
 "The identical, sir, with the old white facings. Don't 
 know what they'll look like when we get 'em dressed up, sir. 
 But it'll be better than their civvies, anyway." He patted 
 his own beribboned khaki tunic, pulled hard at his pipe. 
 
 " Any need for me to go round the lines, Colour-Sergeant ? " 
 
 "I don't think so, sir. Mr. Fanshawe is Orderly Officer 
 to-night." 
 
 Bromley got up ; said " Thank you, Colour-Sergeant. I 
 think that will be all then " ; acknowledged Gladeney's 
 salute, and stepped back into the darkness. Peter followed. 
 
 Walking back, Bromley linked arms ; said, " Look here, 
 old chap, you'd better come into my tent to-night. I'm a 
 quiet old stick but you'll find the kids a bit trying." 
 
 5 
 
 So began a real friendship. 
 
 Gradually, in half-confidences given as they marched 
 together, the company behind, down the hedged and curving 
 Sussex roads, or talked, Mess over, in the lanterned gloom of 
 their tent, these two learned to know and rely upon each 
 other. Bromley heard of Nirvana, of Jackson & Co., of 
 Lowndes Square and Patricia, of the children. Peter was 
 given glimpses of a life totally different from his own, of a 
 young man striving to establish himself in business, leaving 
 it to become a yeoman in the South African campaign, 
 coming home badly wounded to find the business usurped 
 by competitors, struggling along somehow as stockbroker's 
 clerk, as insurance agent, as secretary to a company-pro- 
 moter till this other grander war caught him up again into
 
 Playing at Soldiers 79 
 
 khaki : a Second Lieutenant instead of a Captain " because 
 the War Office had lost his record of services and he wasn't 
 going to wait about till they found it." 
 
 Began, too, for Peter Jackson, the new life : a life neither 
 of comfort nor as many wrote and made money by their 
 writing of good humour. A life of adults gone back to the 
 irritation of school : save that for school-houses they had 
 sodden camps ; for dining-hall, a draughty tent where fleecing 
 contractors served half -cold meals ; for games, the making 
 of soldiers without equipment. 
 
 But neither Peter nor Bromley concerned themselves 
 over much, in those first weeks, with generalities. They 
 realized, none better, that all was not well with Kitchener's 
 Army, with the Chalkshires ; that Locksley- Jones' influence 
 with their Colonel continued to grow, that his pernicious 
 example had already affected the junior officers. They 
 realized and went on with their work. For them, as for 
 Fanshawe and Bareton in ' C ' Company, nothing save their 
 Company existed. And for every minute they lavished on it, 
 ' B ' Company repaid them a hundredfold. 
 
 Bromley, no genius, but an officer of sympathy and some 
 experience, possessed a gift for handling troops : Peter, less 
 sympathetic, more the martinet, had been an organiser since 
 boyhood. They made a good pair ; and Major Fox-Goodwin, 
 who understood men rather than methods, left them undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 Soon, Peter's mind relaxed some of its grip on business ; 
 had to be brought back citywards with a jerk for each new 
 report that it must peruse. 
 
 His days held little leisure. He rose at half-past five ; 
 sluiced neck and shoulders in the warm water Priestley never 
 failed to bring ; dressed hurriedly ; doubled with the Com- 
 pany along the Portslade road ; shaved ; breakfasted in 
 twenty minutes ; drilled or busied himself with office details 
 pay, promotions, the tangle of separation allowances till 
 luncheon ; route-marched ; lectured ; inspected kits, lines, 
 latrines, cook-houses ; studied text-books, talked endless 
 ' shop ' with Bromley ; threw himself more and more into 
 this new life of soldiering which meant all said and done 
 nothing but the training and supervision, the care of his men. 
 Those men ! For of the officers one does not write. The 
 well-educated, the well-off, the comfortable classes, must needs 
 defend the country from which they draw their riches and their 
 education : and he who did not do so voluntarily, without 
 compulsion or fear of compulsion whatever his fancied
 
 So Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 responsibilities to his profession, to his businesses, to hishousen, 
 to his women or his children, is surely .anathema the moral 
 leper, the pariah among his kind. 
 
 But those men ! men of the People : uneducated, unwashed, 
 foul-mouthed ; our ' proletariat, ' product of shop and Board 
 School, of mill and mine, of farm and factory ; those men 
 who came voluntarily from all the earth, waving no flags, 
 moved only by that dumb, blind British spirit which has made 
 and unmade kings since the beginning of time, how shall 
 one write of these ? 
 
 They had, in those early days, few leaders and less equip- 
 ment. They trained, grotesquely, with blocks of rough wood, 
 hewn to the semblance of a rifle. They were herded, fourteen, 
 sixteen, and twenty together, in leaking tents, with never a 
 floor-board between their one blanket and the mud below. 
 They were flung out into our towns in suits of sloppy blue, in 
 overcoats cobbled together by sweated aliens a mockery on 
 the public streets. They had scarcely any leave. Their 
 wives and children starved because their separation allow- 
 ances were not paid. Their own food was cooked, weather 
 permitting, in shallow trenches on the bare ground with 
 civilian houses fifty yards away. 
 
 And when the sodden camps chosen for them stood two 
 feet deep in greasy slime, when neither their single blankets 
 nor their single suits could be dried, when the fires would not 
 burn and the sick parade marched double-company-strong 
 to the doctor's tent half a mile away then they were 
 vaccinated, willy-nilly, and left to cure their swollen arms as 
 best they might, jostling against each other in their crowded 
 sties ! 
 
 Till gradually that first fine enthusiasm, which made them 
 trainable even by the untrained, oozed from their souls even 
 as the mud oozed up through the ground on which they slept : 
 till all the keenness evaporated ; leaving nothing save the 
 dour, stark spirit of Britain to carry them on ... 
 
 And as, in mud and muddle and incompetence these early 
 volunteers began their soldiering ; so, in blood and incom- 
 petence and disaster most of them ended it. Yet though they 
 grumbled, they never weakened ; though the song died on 
 their lips and the jest from their eyes, neither their hearts 
 nor their limbs flinched from the tasks appointed. 
 
 Let library-historians give the palm to this Field-Marshal 
 or that Statesman if they will ; we who did our best for him 
 know that it was the ' common man,' ' poor bloody Tommy ' 
 on his lorry or his ration-cart, at his telephone-station or
 
 Playing at Soldiers 81 
 
 his observation-post, in his trench or his gun-pit ' poor 
 bloody Tommy,' hungry sometimes, tired mostly, frightened 
 to the depths of his unimaginative soul, but enduring always, 
 who staved off every British defeat and won every British 
 victory all the way back from Mons to Compiegne and all 
 the way forward from Compiegne back to Mons. 
 
 Pray God that he find honest leaders for without leaders 
 and discipline he is as a child in this future he has won 
 for us !
 
 PART VIII 
 ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS 
 
 i 
 
 TAKE it from me, P. J.," said Bromley, as he 
 dumped himself down on the untidy camp- 
 bedstead and began re-winding his puttees, 
 "this is a pretty good battalion to get out of." 
 
 It had rained during the night, making early parade 
 impossible, postponing the morning's route-march for an 
 hour so as to enable the men to get some breakfast. 
 
 " Oh, I don't think it's quite as bad as that, old man. 
 The Company's getting on all right," said Peter, picking up 
 the letters which Private Priestley had deposited according 
 to custom on his canvas pillow. 
 
 " I wasn't talking about the Company. Nothing wrong 
 there. Considering the circumstances, the way they've come 
 on is a miracle." By now, a quantity of old ' Drill Purpose ' 
 rifles had arrived, the nucleus of a Divisional Musketry 
 School been established. " I was talking about the battalion 
 in general, its Adjutant in particular. You see, this isn't a 
 new game to me, P. J. I've seen bad fellows ruin the finest 
 shows before now." 
 
 " Why can't you leave Locksley- Jones alone ? He's not 
 doing us any harm. Besides, the C.O. 's all right although he 
 did tell me at last night's lecture that ' the machine-gun is not 
 a weapon of precision.' " 
 
 " He wouldn't say that if he'd been shot in the stomach 
 by one, like I was," commented Bromley. " Not that he's a 
 bad chap, all the same. But he leaves too much to Locksley. 
 Locksley's playing for his own hand all the time. I don't 
 mind his rooking the youngsters at bridge, or running them 
 over to Brighton in his car every night. If they're fools 
 enough to go with him, that's their hunt. But when it comes 
 to his interfering with Company Commanders in their recom- 
 mendations for promotion ..." 
 
 " But he hasn't done that, surely ? "
 
 Alarums and Excursions 83 
 
 " Yes, he has. I didn't mean to tell you, but the Major 
 put both of us in for our second star " (the Major had 
 actually put Bromley's name down for a captaincy and 
 Bromley knew it), "and Locksley blocked it with the 
 Colonel." 
 
 " Well, I don't care about promotion, anyway, "said Peter, 
 starting to open his letters. 
 
 " Don't be a fool, P. J. Everybody who's any good wants 
 to go up. And can't you follow what Locksley's game is ? 
 / can. He's keeping the captaincies for his pals. Especially 
 these new blighters who keep on coming down to see him in 
 mufti. You mark my words, they'll all be turning up as 
 officers in a week or two. Honestly, if it weren't for 
 the men and the old Major, I'd apply for a transfer to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Such conversations were not unusual between them. 
 Locksley- Jones, confirmed in his Adjutancy, was all (and 
 more) that Bromley had hinted. But for the moment Peter 
 had forgotten the Chalkshires. 
 
 He was reading, very carefully, a long letter written by his 
 brother Arthur a letter from Java, which had been two 
 months under way. 
 
 Arthur put his case very clearly. The tobacco-farm, 
 newly established, carried a mortgage of two thousand 
 pounds. Arthur's capital had gone in farm-implements, 
 in seedlings, in the cheese-cloth with which he was ex- 
 perimenting. He couldn't realize, owing to the drop in land 
 values. The mortgage-money had been lent by a German 
 trading-house. Under the Dutch laws, they could prevent his 
 leaving the country. " I can't even get to Singapore, unless 
 you'll lend me the money, " wrote Arthur. " I've asked them to 
 foreclose, but they won't. The interest is eight per cent, and 
 they say I can make it for them as long as I stop here. 
 Damn them I " 
 
 Peter knew enough about the tobacco-farming industry to 
 realize that the ' mortgage ' Arthur spoke of must include a 
 lien on the growing crop ; enough about Hun methods of 
 peaceful penetration to understand the seriousness of. the 
 position ; decided, after railing inwardly at the untimeliness 
 of the demand, that he would have to find the cash some- 
 how. 
 
 "Fall in, 'C' Company," boomed Sergeant -Major Glad- 
 eney's voice. Peter shuffled the remainder of his corre- 
 spondence into his tunic-pocket ; pulled on his cap and 
 gloves ; switched stick under arm ; and stalked out.
 
 84 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 ' Something's upset P. J.,' thought Bromley, following at 
 leisure. 
 
 2 
 
 "Now then, lads, get a move on. Double on to your 
 markers there. Double ! " shouted Gladeney. 
 
 The men came tumbling out of their tents, buttoning their 
 tunics as they ran across the squelching parade-ground ; 
 shuffled themselves into platoons. 
 
 " Number five platoon Number. Six Form fours. As you 
 were. Form fours. Number eight 'Shun. Slope arms." 
 The platoon-sergeants called their rolls. "Stand easy." 
 
 Sergeant-Major Gladeney received his reports ; cast a 
 quick eye over the blue lines, the red faces. . . . 
 
 "Sergeant Atkinson, what's that man doing in his great- 
 coat. Sick, is he ? Send him back then. If he's not well 
 enough to come out without his coat on a day like this, 
 he's not well enough to march. Company 'Shurn. Slope 
 arrms I " 
 
 The men stiffened to attention ; the rifles they had only 
 fifty for two hundred and ten of them jumped irregularly to 
 their shoulders, as Peter came slipping across the field. 
 
 " Twenty-five men sick, sir ; two under arrest ; and ten 
 on fatigues," announced Gladeney, saluting. 
 
 " Very good, Sergeant-Major. " 
 
 He turned to the men, " Company order arms. As you 
 were! That won't do at all. Smartly now. Company order 
 arms. That's better. Stand at ease. Company 'shun." 
 
 Peter turned to salute Bromley who acknowledged the 
 compliment as though he had never seen Peter before. 
 
 " March them out, please, Mr. Jackson." 
 
 " Very good, sir. Company slope arms. Advance in 
 fours from the left. Form fours. Left. Now then, number 
 five get a move on. . . ." 
 
 " Number five right wheel by the right. Quick march," 
 called Corporal Pearson, always a little slow in the uptake ; 
 and stumbled off, rifle sloped, after his men. The remainder 
 of the column, swaying dubiously through the greasy mud, 
 made its way between the gates onto the highway. 
 
 " Not bad, P. J.," said Bromley under his breath, as they 
 followed. " Here, Colour-Sergeant, this won't do. They're 
 all over the shop." 
 
 " Left," called Gladeney, " left left left. One two- 
 three four. Steady in front there. Left left left." 
 
 Gradually they settled down into step and distance,
 
 Alarums and Excursions 85 
 
 passed out under the trees onto the Lancing Road. Bromley 
 doubled up to the head of the column, leaving Peter in rear. 
 
 " Number five march at ease no smoking. Number 
 six march at ease no smoking." The commands rippled 
 down to him. 
 
 Now, out in the open, fields and rare houses sliding past, 
 boots clopping in unison, the men began to sing. 
 
 " Ten men went to mow, went to mow a medder " (they were 
 mostly Cockneys). ..." Six men, seven men, eight men, nine 
 men, ten men and his dog, went to mow a medder." 
 
 The song changed to a roar : " Who were you with last 
 night ? Who were you with last night ? It wasn't the girl I 
 saw you with at Brighton who who who were you with last 
 night ? " 
 . Then, very mournful : 
 
 "It's a long wai to get ter Berlin, 
 
 It's a long wai ter go 
 It's a long wai to get ter Berlin 
 Ter pai back all we owe.' 
 
 But Peter, tramping stolidly in the rear, was in no mood 
 for mock heroics. . . . 
 
 3 
 
 In those early days of ' Kitchener's Army ' week-end leave 
 for officers was more of a habit than a privilege ; and though 
 Locksley- Jones demurred slightly at the irregularity, Friday 
 evening found Peter, haversack at side, waiting for the 4.30 
 ' up ' on the bleak.dirty platform of Shoreham-by-Sea. Waited, 
 also, the Honourable Archie Travers more immaculate even 
 than usual, already a Captain. The two had only met once 
 since Peter's joining. . . . 
 
 " Have you been gazetted yet ? " asked Travers. 
 
 " No. I expect that Blue Paper your C.O. signed must 
 have got lost. However, another one's gone in." Peter 
 leaned back in his seat, puffed at his cigar. The problem of 
 Arthur's money required thought, and he did not want 
 thought disturbed. But Travers felt curious about the 
 Chalkshires : Locksley- Jones' conduct and character were 
 already being discussed at other Messes than his own. 
 
 " How are things with you ? " he went on. 
 
 " Quite all right, thanks." 
 
 " They tell me that Adjutant -fellow of yours is a funny 
 fish. Two of our fellows met him the other night at Brighton 
 in a very mixed crowd,"
 
 86 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Well, what were they doing in it, anyway ? " said Peter. 
 Whatever he might say to Bromley, ' outsiders ' had no right 
 to criticise. 
 
 Travers subsided ; they changed at Brighton, and the 
 journey passed uneventfully. 
 
 4 
 
 The human animal is amazingly adaptable, amazingly 
 restricted. Peter had been scarcely four weeks a soldier ; but 
 all the way up to town the old life seemed almost a thing of the 
 past. Arrival at Victoria, bright under its arc-lamps against 
 the darkness outside, brought it back with a rush. 
 
 His mind, now concentrated on the question of whether to 
 borrow the two thousand from his own bank or overdraw it 
 from Jackson's, did not allow of careless merrymaking. So 
 that Patricia, although he fell in readily enough with her 
 suggestion of two stalls at the Palace, found him curiously 
 unaltered. He kissed her, but no more warmly than if he had 
 just returned from a business-trip. She had expected nothing 
 else : nevertheless she felt unreasonably disappointed. 
 Physically, fresh air and exercise had tanned his cheeks, 
 hardened his muscles : mentally, she could detect no change. 
 And as they sat in the theatre, she could not but envy the 
 obvious good spirits, the excited affection of the couples about 
 them. 
 
 He told her about Arthur ; talked of ' B ' Company ; 
 answered questions about his new life readily. Nirvana, she 
 heard, went as well as could be expected ; Jackson's sales 
 had been rather disappointing. It was nice of her to offer to 
 drive him back on Sunday in the car ; but he thought the 
 journey home, in the dark and without a chauffeur, might be 
 too much for her. 
 
 Simpson, too, asked by wire to be in the office on Saturday, 
 could not see much difference in our Mr. Jackson. His grip 
 of things did not seem to have suffered. He inquired about 
 customers by name ; about Hartopp (geborener Hagenburg) 
 in particular. He mentioned the partnership deed ; suggested 
 a tentative renewal say for two years or the ' duration ' on 
 the old terms. The older man, warning him vaguely about 
 taking two thousand pounds out of the business at such a 
 time, met with a curt, " I don't like it any more than you do, 
 but a fellow must stand by his own." Mention of Beckmann's 
 evoked another flash of temper. 
 
 Bramson, on the other hand, summoned peremptorily to
 
 Alarums and Excursions 87 
 
 give up the better part of his Saturday afternoon off, found 
 Peter rather overbearing ; confided the fact to his cousin 
 Marcus, with whom he dined that evening. 
 
 Said Marcus, " My boy, you forget that you're a civilian 
 to him now." 
 
 Whereafter, the two settled down to piquet with occa- 
 sional references to the stationary condition of Nirvana trade 
 as compared with the leaping canteen business of Pulman 
 Virginias. 
 
 Pretty Bramson was perfectly straight : but after all 
 ' a fellow must stand by his own.' 
 
 5 
 
 In the crowded Pullman car of the last Sunday-night train 
 back to Shoreham, Peter fell in with his Colonel. The 
 diffident, kindly man usually shy with his subalterns 
 offered a whisky-and-soda ; grew a little talkative. 
 
 " I wish I were out in France," he confided. " I'd rather 
 be a Major out there than a Colonel in England any day. But 
 the powers-that-be won't hear of it. It looks like a long war, 
 Jackson a really long war. But of course it might end 
 to-morrow and then one would never have had one's chance." 
 
 " Do you think we shall be going out soon, sir ? " Peter 
 asked the stock question from pure habit. 
 
 Colonel Andrews began to talk the other side of war, the 
 difficulties of finding seasoned wood for rifle-stocks, the lack 
 of dyes for khaki. His outlook, if limited, was except on 
 the question of machine-guns extraordinarily sound ; and 
 Peter, when their homeward way separated in the rain at the 
 cross-roads by the cycle-shop, found difficulty in realizing how 
 so decent a chap could have let himself be misled into taking 
 Locksley- Jones for Adjutant. . . . 
 
 Turning into the camp, Peter could see immediately that 
 something must be wrong. Although it was nearly one 
 o'clock in the morning, lights glowed in most of the officers' 
 tents. Across the blurr and rain-drizzle of the parade- 
 ground, under the acetylene flares by the latrine-buckets, 
 figures moved, lanterns swayed. He heard voices calling. 
 
 " What's up ? " he asked the sentry. 
 
 " Trouble over in the lines, I'm afraid, six. They do say 
 as 'ow ' D ' Company's flooded out altogether." 
 
 Peter stumbled across the darkness towards his own lines ; 
 nearly collided with a dripping figure in gum-boots. A torch 
 flashed in his face,
 
 88 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " That you, P. J. ? " said Bromley's voice. " Been out on 
 the tiles, and come to have a look round at the picnic ? " 
 
 " What's wrong ? " 
 
 " Oh, nothing much. Only most of the camp flooded ; 
 about twenty tents blown down ; and half the men soaked to 
 the skin. ' A ' and ' D ' have got it worst. Hark at Mosely's 
 voice." 
 
 They heard it, raised like a foghorn above the din : " Now 
 then, you chaps, form up, will you ! Never mind your blasted 
 blankets." 
 
 " Come and have a look-see. It's worth while. Reminds 
 me of a stampede in South Africa." Peter had never known 
 Bromley speak so crisply. 
 
 They pashed back to the lines ; found confusion in- 
 describable. Mosely had by now got his company into some 
 sort of order ; they stood there, dripping and shivering, faces 
 white under the big flare, unlaced boots flopping as they 
 stamped on the lime-washed slime : but Simcox's lines 
 looked as if a tornado had struck them. Tents lay in writhing 
 coils ; from under them, men crawled, mud-soaked and 
 cursing ; the stockbroker, in gum-boots and pyjamas, a 
 British Warm coat to complete the costume, alternately 
 damned their eyes and adjured them to " buck up " ; his 
 subalterns scuttered about, still half asleep, laughing and 
 quite useless. ' C ' were already away, making for the railway- 
 station : Peter heard Bareton's high voice shepherding them, 
 "Don't straggle there. Keep together," and a man in the 
 rear four grousing, " Bloomin' fine weather for ducks. . . ." 
 
 " But what's happened to us ? " he asked Bromley for 
 ' B ' Company's tents stood dark and deserted. 
 
 Bromley chuckled : " Oh, they don't catch me that way, 
 P. J. Our men are all tucked up comfy round a big stove in 
 the schoolhouse. 7 saw this coming at about half-past eight : 
 so I sent Gladeney to find a good billet ; routed the chaps 
 out ; posted a sentry to tell the leave-men where to make 
 for. . . And we slacked our tent-ropes when the rain started." 
 
 " Why didn't you warn the others ? " 
 
 " I did ; but they wouldn't listen. I'm a quiet old stick, 
 I am." He chuckled again, with all the 'old soldier's' 
 delight at having scored off his colleagues. 
 
 Far away, on the high road, they heard the roar of a car ; 
 saw the glare of a single headlight ; watched it nosing for the 
 camp gates. 
 
 "That's our friend the Adjutant," commented Bromley, 
 " back from one of his little jaunts to Brighton,"
 
 Alarums and Excursions 89 
 
 The engine stopped ; the headlight was cut off. A minute 
 or two later, Locksley- Jones' bow-legged figure came waddling 
 towards them. Bromley flashed the torch in his face ; and 
 they saw his puffy eyes flinch as the light struck them. 
 
 " Who are you ? " he called. 
 
 " Friend." Bromley, a little above his usual grave self, 
 had gone clean back to South African days. The amenities 
 of home service were, for the moment, completely in eclipse. 
 
 " Oh, it's you, Bromley, is it ? What's all this sky- 
 larking ? " blustered Locksley. 
 
 The situation was curtly explained to him ; and he turned 
 for advice as weak men will in a crisis to the stronger 
 character. 
 
 " What do you think I ought to do ? " 
 
 " Do ! " said Bromley contemptuously. " Do ? Well, 
 if I were you, I should go to bed. This is a man's Job." 
 
 " He'll never forgive you for that," said Peter, snuggling 
 gratefully between his Jaeger blankets. 
 
 " I should worry ! " chuckled Bromley across the darkness 
 of the tent.
 
 PART IX 
 DISSENSIONS 
 
 i 
 
 A MAN and his wife can occasionally (if they are very 
 circumspect) conceal matrimonial disturbances 
 from their servants : but in a regiment the 
 slightest tension between officers is known to the 
 lower ranks almost at the moment of its occurrence. Mess- 
 waiters gossip ; batmen gossip ; the Sergeants' Mess gossips : 
 between a parade and a parade, twelve hundred men are 
 taking sides in the quarrel of two. And the Chalkshires were 
 no ordinary peace-time regiment : volunteers to a man ; of 
 different social gradings but almost every one a Londoner ; 
 intensely curious about their new profession ; it did not take 
 them long to discover ' B ' Company especially how matters 
 stood between Second Lieutenant Harold Bromley and 
 Captain and Adjutant Locksley- Jones. 
 
 By the time that the late November rains (and various 
 hints in the Press about ' the scandalous state of some of our 
 Camps ') drove the Chalkshires out of the Shoreham slime 
 into billets at Worthing Green, a suburb of Worthing-on-Sea, 
 bets were being freely laid (in beer) on the result. 
 
 " Bet any of you," said Private Longstaffe, who had been 
 a bookmaker's clerk before he joined, " that old Bromley 
 downs the blighter before we're a month older." He looked 
 furtively round the snuggery of the Dog and Bun. 
 
 " Well, per'aps he will ; and per'aps he won't," said 
 Peter's batman Priestley an old soldier with curling mous- 
 taches and a roving eye. " Anyway, I 'ope P. J. won't go 
 if Bromley has to." 
 
 " P. J.'s orlright." The verdict came from a little man 
 in the corner. " 'E's orlright : though 'e does damn and 
 swear like 'ell. My sister, she works for 'im up in the Brixton 
 Road. ' 'Addick,' 'e says to me the other dai you know the 
 wai 'e 'as of cockin' 'is cigar up in the corner of his mouf, 
 ' ' Addick,' 'e says, ' 'aven't I told you a 'undred bloodstained 
 times not to crorss your bloodstained bootlices ? ' ' You
 
 Dissensions 91 
 
 certainly 'ave, sir,' I says. 'Then why the 'ell,' says 'e, 
 ' don't you do what you're told ? ' 'E don't know I know 
 'e's got a factory. . . ." This secret knowledge seemed to 
 give Private Haddock a peculiar satisfaction. 
 Conversation meandered on. 
 
 2 
 
 Meanwhile, Peter and Bromley ignoring though quite 
 conscious of Locksley's growing animosity went on with 
 their job. 
 
 The move into billets and the weather conditions had both 
 lightened their duties. After the first few days at Worthing 
 Green, field-work became almost impossible. They com- 
 mandeered two long empty greenhouses ; and in these the 
 men practised musketry learning how to sight their long 
 ' Lee-Metfords ' (which had almost replaced the useless 
 ' D.P.'s') at an aiming disc circled to represent a target, pin- 
 holed, and poised at the instructor's eye, how to assume the 
 firing positions, to squeeze their triggers. 
 
 A sergeant-instructor of the first battalion of the Chalk- 
 shires, sent home specially from India to assist in recruit 
 training, helped in this. Also, he had brought with him one 
 real ' service ' rifle the short double-pull Lee-Enfield of 
 history round which the blue-clad men would cluster, eager 
 for explanations. They had, too, Hill-Siffken landscape- 
 targets, at which sections gazed earnestly while Bromley gave 
 imaginary fire-orders : " Bridge twelve-o'clock a mill 
 top-windows five rounds rapid." Breech-locks clicked 
 merrily under the leafless grape-vines. As yet, however, none 
 of them had fired a shot : though the miniature range in the 
 garden of the old house over which Headquarters' flag floated 
 neared completion. . . . 
 
 The two friends billeted at a low white cottage in the 
 village street, about a hundred yards from the Mess now 
 established in two parlours and a long bare dining-room at 
 The Feathers. Bromley's prophecy about Locksley bringing 
 in his own pals was already coming true : they arrived almost 
 daily, and the War Office added aspirants of its own. By the 
 first week in December, officers numbered fifty. 
 
 Inevitably, cliques formed. The tiny differences of 
 English ' caste ' drew these together, separated those. But 
 with few exceptions, all were keen. Without Locksley, 
 Andrews might have driven them comfortably { made his 
 selection at leisure, jettisoning the less trained when the
 
 92 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 battalion proceeded overseas. But Locksley- Jones, an in- 
 triguer by instinct rather than design, shrewd, without 
 character, self-seeker and not patriot, made harmony im- 
 possible. One by one, he succeeded in securing the promotion 
 of his favourites, posting them over the heads of men like 
 Fanshawe and Bareton, who grumbled but carried on loyal 
 to their men at all personal costs. 
 
 So far, Major Fox-Goodwin had prevented any such 
 interference with ' B ' Company. He had a contempt for 
 Locksley ; shewed it openly. 
 
 " The fellow's a damned rotter," he would say to Bromley. 
 " One day young Andrews will find him out. Meanwhile, I'll 
 choose my own subalterns or know the reason why." 
 
 He took in Pcabody and Arkwright : sent all newcomers 
 back to the Rcgimcntal-Sergeant-Major for a month's recruit- 
 drill. But the average Englishman's distaste for trouble 
 prevented him from forcing-through Bromley's promotion to 
 captain. 
 
 3 
 
 Peter, who unlike Bromley had not quarrelled openly with 
 Locksley, and whose experience of bossing men did not include 
 being bossed himself, failed to realize the exact position. 
 During the day, work occupied him : through the long 
 evenings when they sat together in the -lamp-lit study, his 
 mind was busy with other problems. 
 
 He discovered himself, for the first time in his life, missing 
 Patricia not the woman Patricia, but the pal Patricia ; 
 looking forward eagerly to her letters. She was busy she 
 wrote had taken up volunteer war-work ; driving soldiers- 
 on-leave across London in the car. However, she accepted 
 his suggestion that they should spend Christmas together at 
 the Royal York. 
 
 But Patricia was not the main problem. Although Peter 
 had deliberately postponed decision on the Nirvana gamble till 
 the completion of the year's trading, instinct already warned 
 him of the worst. Reid's dissected statistics revealed, all too 
 clearly, a serious decline in the export business. Home trade 
 held stationary but could hardly remain so on their limited 
 advertising. Bramson's letters had lost ' snap ' ; he de- 
 plored, without suggesting remedies, the increase of competi- 
 tion especially from his cousin's travellers. " The Pulman 
 business is going ahead. They're not cutting down their 
 advertisements," was the burden of his cry : a cry which did 
 not deceive our Mr. Jackson.
 
 Dissensions 93 
 
 Peter realized perfectly, had done for some time, the 
 danger of employing a competitor's relative. On the other 
 hand, if it became vital to sell out, that very danger might be 
 turned to advantage. Marcus Bramson would not let his 
 cousin lose a good job (' and the best part of a thousand 
 pounds,' argued Peter), if there were a chance of acquiring 
 Nirvana as a going concern. 
 
 Nevertheless, the ease with which he could dispose of the 
 business was at best a poor consolation. 
 
 The thing had meant so much to him ; meant much still. 
 If only he could save it ! But Arthur's two thousand pre- 
 cluded drawing another penny of capital from Jackson's ; and 
 though it was not impossible to secure money in other ways 
 on his insurances, for instance the gamble would be too 
 dangerous. . . . 
 
 To Peter, considering these points over the wreckage of 
 tea, and Bromley, plunged as usual in a book, entered on an 
 afternoon early in December Jack Bareton of ' C ' Company ; 
 said, " Hallo, you chaps. Just thought I'd look you up," 
 and dropped onto the horse-hair sofa in the corner of the tiny 
 sitting-room. 
 
 " Don't see you round often," commented Bromley. He 
 pushed the cigarettes across the table, and added : " What's 
 the matter ? " 
 
 " Locksley." The newcomer's voice was curt ; but his 
 eyes, the eyes of a fanatic, blazed. " Locksley, blast his dirty 
 soul 1 " 
 
 " Oh, chuck it ! " said Peter ; " I'm sick of Locksley." 
 
 " So am I ; so's Fanshawe ; so's every decent chap in this 
 show. If you two came in to Mess a bit more often you'd 
 know. But he's gone too far this time." The tone became 
 shrill. " Too damn far altogether ; and I'm going to have 
 him out of this battalion or go myself. The man's a blasted 
 traitor. A traitor, I tell you." 
 
 " Easy on, Bareton." Bromley spoke very calmly. 
 " You can't make accusations like that about him." 
 
 " I can. And I do. He said just now, over tea, right in 
 front of everybody, that we should lose this war." 
 
 " We probably shall," put in Peter. 
 
 " It depends how these things are said. He meant it, 
 I tell you. He meant it. And damn it, oh, damn it " there 
 were tears in the man's eyes " my governor was killed 
 yesterday ! Killed, I tell you. At Ypres. And all these 
 bastards here can do is to talk about their bloody promo- 
 tions. ..."
 
 94 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Bromley got up; put his hand on Bareton's shoulder. 
 " I'm awfully sorry, old chap," he said gruffly, " but your 
 governor wouldn't want you to lose your head, you know." 
 
 The man pulled himself together with a huge effort ; took 
 a cigarette ; puffed at it in silence. There came a knock on 
 the door, and Fanshawe, tall, beetle-browed, obviously on the 
 trail of his friend. 
 
 " Hallo, Fan," said Peter. 
 
 " Hallo, P. J." Then to Bareton : " Oh, here you are, are 
 you ? I've been looking for you everywhere. Come down 
 town and have a drink." 
 
 " I'm going to see the Colonel first," said Bareton stub- 
 bornly. 
 
 " No, you're not. You're coming to the club with me." 
 Fanshawe walked over, pulled his friend to his feet. " Come 
 on, you old ass," he said kindly. . . . 
 
 They went out. 
 
 " Poor devil," said Peter, " he must have bolted straight 
 here from Mess. ..." 
 
 " And Fanshawe followed him." 
 
 Both men, though neither would have admitted the fact 
 to the other, were on edge. 
 
 " Fanshawe was right not to leave him alone," went on 
 Bromley. " You never know what a chap will do when he 
 gets into that sort of state. Thank goodness, I'm a quiet old 
 stick, I am." 
 
 He shook his big frame ; tugged at his moustache ; sat 
 down again. Peter lit a cigar. But neither Peter's smoke 
 nor Bromley's book could keep Bareton out of their minds. 
 He seemed to be still on the sofa, blazing tears in blazing eyes. 
 
 " Let's call up a taxi and go into Brighton," said Peter 
 suddenly. " I can't stick this room any more to-night." 
 
 Bromley looked up from ' The Newcomes.' " We'll 
 share it then." 
 
 " No, we won't. My taxi and my dinner. Go and get 
 your slacks on. I'll run out and telephone for the car." 
 
 The Hotel Metropple at Brighton, almost too well known 
 to need description, is a monstrous edifice of red-brick and 
 iron balconies, which leers stolidly across an asphalte ' Front ' 
 to the sea. The stone steps of its entrance, occupied of a 
 morning by fat couples in wicker chairs, lead under a glass- 
 roofed portico through a revolving door past the mahogany
 
 Dissensions 95 
 
 ' Reception Offices ' to a narrow hall fireplaced and crowded 
 with comfortable Maplesque upholstery. Beyond are marble 
 corridors, lifts, and a dark lounge which opens out into a vast 
 conservatory of glass-and-iron work, wherein the band plays 
 and love-birds (some caged, some in coats and skirts) twitter 
 behind dusty palm-trees. 
 
 In front of the fireplace in the hall, cocktail in hand, 
 looking down on his wife's blond head, stood ' Weasel ' Stark 
 of the Gunners. 
 
 His nickname fitted the dapper, fresh-complexioned little 
 soldier well. He had reddish hair, inclined to curl ; eyes of 
 clear, cold blue ; flat auburn moustache over firm lips. The 
 tight long-skirted tunic, beltless for dinner, fitted like a skin 
 over the muscled shoulders, the in-curved back : his slacks 
 fell straightly creased to shining brown shoes. His hands 
 clean, capable hands shewed a hint of freckling, the suspicion 
 of auburn fluff. The domed forehead betrayed intelligence. 
 A brand-new D.S.O. ribbon completes the picture. 
 
 Alice Stark (once, as Alice Sewell, the object of Jack 
 Baynet's none-too-stable affections) was a comfortable little 
 person, brown-eyed, a little rabbity about the mouth. Her 
 low dress, blue and girlish, revealed excellent shoulders, firm 
 arms and slim hands. 
 
 The pair had been married six months, three of which 
 the husband had spent on active service. A wound in the 
 foot, now almost healed, had re-united them. 
 
 " Almost time for dinner, I think," said the Colonel, 
 putting his empty glass on the mantelshelf behind him. 
 
 "Yes, dear." Alice looked up; saw, pushing squirrel- 
 wise through the revolving door, a familiar figure. 
 
 The figure came towards her, and she recognised after a 
 minute's hesitation at the disguise of khaki our Mr. Jackson. 
 
 Bromley, following leisurely, heard her say, " Is it really 
 you, Peter ? " and then, " This is Douglas." 
 
 " How do you do, sir." Peter shook hands, introduced his 
 friend. 
 
 " Cocktails, I think," remarked the Weasel. 
 
 " Who is he ? " he asked his wife, while the two were 
 depositing caps and coats in the cloak-room opposite. 
 
 " Peter Jackson. He married a great friend of mine." 
 
 " Better invite 'em both to dinner. " 
 
 Alice nodded : and the invitation was accepted over the 
 cocktail glasses. They passed through the glass door into the 
 dining-room Bromley, always shy with strangers, last and 
 were escorted through the crowd to an empty table.
 
 96 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Said the Colonel, handling the wine-list, " We can manage 
 a magnum, I think." 
 
 They settled down to hors d'ceuvres and gossip. 
 
 " Are you on leave, sir ? " Bromley ventured his first 
 remark. 
 
 " Leave ? No such luck. I'm commanding one of these 
 Kitchener brigades. Fourth Southdown, I believe they call it." 
 
 " Then we are going to have some artillery," put in Peter. 
 " I was told at the War Office, when I applied for my com- 
 mission, that there wasn't going to be any artillery with the 
 New Armies." 
 
 " Who told you that fairy-tale ? " said Stark. 
 
 " A Major Anstruther." 
 
 " Oh, Cocky Anstruther. Just like him. Pulling your 
 leg, of course. So you joined the infanteers, thinking the war 
 would be done before you could get your kit. And you " 
 he turned to Bromley " you're a cavalryman, if ever I saw 
 one ! " 
 
 Bromley explained himself ; the Colonel, who never put 
 questions without a reason, following sharply. 
 
 " Like it ? " he queried suddenly : and gathered, from 
 the tone of the answer, all he wanted to know. The Weasel, 
 in addition to having one of the best heads for strong liquor in 
 the Gunners, was no mean judge of a man. Also, the Fourth 
 Southdown Brigade of the R.F.A. needed officers badly. He 
 let his wife change the conversation. 
 
 " And how does Pat like your being a soldier ? " she said 
 to Peter. " Fancy her being only a subaltern's ' poor thing,' 
 and me a 'colonel's lady.' Does she come down here 
 often ? " 
 
 " She's coming down for Christmas." 
 
 Bromley and the Weasel began to talk horse : the 
 dinner went on. ... 
 
 " And Francis ? " asked Alice. " What is our Francis 
 Gordon doing for his country ? " 
 
 Bromley broke off from a discussion on ' Birdcatcher 
 blood,' said, " That isn't the Francis Gordon, is it ? The chap 
 who wrote ' The Nut Errant ' ? " 
 
 ' Extraordinary,' thought Peter, having explained the 
 relationship, ' how many people do know that weird cousin 
 of mine ! ' And he wondered, for the fiftieth time, what 
 could have happened to Francis. But of ' Mr. Raymond P. 
 Sellers ' and the Amsterdam trip, he said nothing. . . . 
 
 Dinner over, they settled themselves with coffee, liqueurs, 
 and cigars, before the fire in the hall.
 
 Dissensions 97 
 
 Stark, whom two cocktails, the best part of a bottle of fizz, 
 and three liqueur brandies, had left quite unmoved, began a 
 tactful catechism. He wanted to know the number of 
 subalterns in the Chalkshires ; what chance they had of 
 promotion ; who their Colonel was ; and how they got on 
 with him : if Peter knew anything about horses ; and why 
 he had given up hunting. Having assured himself on these 
 points, he threw his cigar into the grate, and asked suddenly : 
 " I suppose neither of you two would care for a change ? " 
 Bromley said, " I dont quite understand." Peter, who 
 had followed the drift of the conversation almost from the 
 first, did not speak. 
 
 " Well, quite entre nous" began Stark, " I'm eight officers 
 short of my twenty-four. I've written to Dawson at the 
 W.O. and he says "drawing a letter from his tunic-pocket 
 " ' Why not hunt about among the hand-gunners ? They're 
 hundreds over establishment in your Division.' ... So I 
 thought perhaps . . ." 
 
 There fell a short silence ; then Peter said : " It's the men 
 I'm thinking about " ; and Bromley : " I shouldn't care to 
 leave the old Major." 
 
 " Well, take your time about it. There's no hurry. We've 
 only got fifty horses out of our seven hundred so far." The 
 Weasel pulled down his tunic ; rang the bell ; ordered three 
 whiskies-and-sodas, a lemonade. 
 
 Shortly afterwards, with a " See you two again, I hope," 
 from the Colonel, and a " Yes. Do come in and dine with us, 
 won't you ? " from his wife, the couple stepped across to the 
 lift, shot upwards out of sight. 
 
 " Another drink ? " asked Peter, lighting a cigar. 
 " Not much." Bromley, a little flushed about the gills, 
 tapped a cigarette on the back of his case. " That colonel 
 friend of yours must have a head like a balk of teak." 
 
 They settled themselves comfortably in front of the fire. 
 Thought Bromley : ' P. J. doesn't realize how near we are to 
 a bust-up. If anything happened to the old Major, Locksley 
 would soon put his foot on us.' Thought Peter: 'If 'B' 
 Company weren't so jolly good, and if we hadn't made it 
 ourselves, there might be something in a transfer/ But 
 the evening had yet to provide its finale. 
 " Hallo, P. J.," interrupted a voice. 
 Peter looked up; saw the bow legs, the unpleasant 
 features of Locksley- Jones. The fellow came over to the fire ; 
 stood with his back to it ; said taking no notice of Bromley 
 " Care for a drink, P. J. ? " 
 
 G
 
 98 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Thanks. No." 
 
 " Devilish pretty woman you were talking to just now. 
 Wish you'd introduce me, some time. ..." Peter did not 
 answer ; he thought, suddenly, of the tears in Bareton's eyes. 
 
 " By the way," went on Locksley, taking no notice of the 
 snub, " have you chaps got a taxi ? My car's broken down. 
 The magneto's gone wrong, I believe. If you have, I'd like 
 a lift " 
 
 Bromley never moved. 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Peter, very politely, " but our taxi only 
 holds two. However " he glanced at his wrist-watch 
 " you're in nice time for the last train." 
 
 "That's put the lid on it," remarked Bromley in the 
 darkness of the jolting car : and, just before they went to 
 sleep, " Mark my words, there'll be some trouble in this 
 ruddy battalion." 
 
 There was ! 
 
 5 
 
 It started with Bareton. Bareton, disregarding both 
 Locksley and his new Company Commander (a full lieutenant 
 by right of being over thirty), went straight to Colonel 
 Andrews. He told the Colonel, very respectfully until he 
 began to lose his temper, that on no account would he, Jack 
 Bareton, continue to serve in the same regiment as Locksley- 
 Jones. The Colonel asked him, very mildly, why he objected 
 to Locksley. 
 
 Said Bareton they were alone in the Orderly Room 
 " With all due respect to you, sir, the man isn't fit to hold His 
 Majesty's Commission." 
 
 Said the Colonel, " If you have any accusation to make 
 against my Adjutant, you must make it in his presence. 
 Meanwhile, go back to your billet and consider yourself under 
 open arrest till I send for you." 
 
 The Mess seethed. 
 
 On the following day, Jack Bareton (without his belt) 
 confronted Locksley before the Colonel's table Major 
 Fox-Goodwin, as temporary second-in-command, lounging, 
 slightly contemptuous, by the fireplace. 
 
 Decided the Colonel, having listened to ten minutes of 
 tight-lipped vituperation all true, but entirely incapable of 
 proof, and some clever dialectics for the defence : " It doesn't 
 er seem to me, Bareton, that you've made out any case 
 at all. It seems to me that er having heard the Adjutant's
 
 Dissensions 99 
 
 explanation of what are er obvious misconceptions on 
 your part, it's your duty to apologise." 
 
 Jack Bareton stood very quietly for sixty seconds. Then 
 he said : " As I am not satisfied with your ruling, sir " he 
 was, it will be remembered, a solicitor by profession " I 
 believe I am entitled to call for a Court of Inquiry." 
 
 The Colonel sent both juniors out of the room. " What 
 had we better do ? " he asked Fox-Goodwin. The Major's 
 eyes twinkled. 
 
 " Get rid of 'em both, me dear fellow. Get rid of 'em 
 both." 
 
 " I can't do that. Locksley's a very capable fellow, very 
 capable indeed. Locksley's saved me a great deal of trouble. " 
 
 ' Has he ? ' thought the Major. 
 
 " A Court of Inquiry won't do the Regiment any good," 
 went on Andrews. " Besides, it might break Bareton. 
 Bareton's a good subaltern, and a patriotic chap. ... I hate 
 trouble," he added pathetically. . . . 
 
 Bareton, recalled, found himself alone with the Major, who 
 said : " Look here, me lad, take a tip from a fellow who's old 
 enough to be your grandfather. Don't you press this Court 
 of Inquiry. Ask for a transfer, see ? " 
 
 " But it's so jolly unfair, sir." 
 
 " I know that as well as you do, me lad. But we've got 
 to think of the men. ..." 
 
 A week later, Bareton and Fanshawe transferred to the 
 Reserve Battalion. (Fanshawe died at Festubert : Bareton 
 still lives all that the Hun prison-camps have left of him.) 
 
 But matters did not end there. Locksley- Jones, confirmed 
 in his position, sent for Peter privately. Peter, who was 
 shooting on the miniature range at the time, finished his score 
 with a ' highest possible ' ; looked about for Bromley ; 
 couldn't find him ; strolled very slowly to the Orderly Room. 
 Locksley, alone, went on writing for a clear minute. Then he 
 said, " Oh, is that you, Jackson ? I just wanted to have a 
 private talk with you. You know, you're a very clever fellow, 
 Jackson. But you're not clever enough to tackle me." 
 
 Peter deliberately took off his cap, and sat down at the 
 Colonel's table. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I suppose I must take your word for 
 that. Carry on." 
 
 " Can't we pull together, P. J. ? " went on Locksley. 
 " You know I can do you much more good than your pal 
 Bromley. There's your second star, for instance. . . ." 
 
 Peter couldn't help admiring the audacity of the fellow.
 
 zoo Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 He wanted to consolidate his position ; didn't care how, so 
 long as he achieved his purpose. 
 
 " And supposing I were to tell the C.O. what you've just 
 suggested ? " 
 
 " He wouldn't believe you any more than he believed 
 Bareton. The old man's as weak as water. You know that 
 as well as I do." 
 
 Peter controlled the impulse to hit Locksley in the face, 
 and asked : " Is that all ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course " Locksley fell into the trap " when we 
 come to allotting the captaincies. . . . Let's see " he referred 
 to a list " you haven't got any captains in ' B ' yet. If the 
 Major goes ..." 
 
 This was news indeed. Now Peter saw the plan whole. 
 With complacent Company Commanders and a weak Colonel, 
 Locksley's position would be unique. 
 
 " 7s the Major going ? " he asked, playing for time. 
 
 " Between you and me and the gatepost " Locksley 
 winked " the W.O. has just asked if he is ' considered fit to 
 command a battalion.' " 
 
 Thought Peter : ' What a swine ! Still if it weren't for 
 Bromley, I'd accept. I could run the show as well as most 
 people.' Said Second Lieutenant Peter Jackson : " There's 
 a good deal in what you say. But I must have a little time 
 to make up my mind. By the way, you don't object to my 
 taking a day or so extra at Christmas ? " 
 
 " Not a bit, my dear fellow, not a bit." 
 
 Meanwhile, men died in Flanders.
 
 PART X 
 TWO EXCUSES FOR FAILURE 
 
 i 
 
 PETER'S Patricia was essentially a simple woman. The 
 early training received from her father, her education, 
 her first nine years of married life, had all taught her 
 the necessity of ' balance,' the advantage of reasoning 
 things out for herself but they had only developed, not 
 altered, her original character : the matehood and the 
 motherhood in her. 
 
 This new love for Peter, suddenly conceived on the night 
 he informed her of his decision to apply for a commission, 
 had struck deep roots. But, as yet, it gave neither leaf nor 
 blossom. 
 
 Always she felt conscious of it. Nearly always the 
 consciousness irritated her. To begin with, married women 
 with completed families, she argued, ought to have got over 
 that sort of thing. Secondly, there was no likelihood ' very 
 little likelihood,' corrected instinct of the love developing 
 into a mutual passion : they had become too set in their 
 matrimonial comradeship for any such occurrence. And 
 thirdly this formed the main irritation her sudden change 
 of feeling towards the man was not reasonable. 
 
 One might, she decided, hate a husband because he 
 wouldn't fight for his country. One needn't, on the other 
 hand, fall madly in love with him (after eight tranquil years) 
 just because he decided to do the right thing. Besides, he 
 hadn't ' gone out ' yet perhaps he never would. For 
 Patricia's experiences in driving tired, mud-stained men from 
 the cold darkness of Victoria station to their outlying homes, 
 had taught her the sharp difference between training in 
 England, however uncomfortable, and the rigours of active 
 service : taught her that difference far better than her brother 
 Jack's careful letters from the front itself. 
 
 Resultantly, she arrived at the Royal York (tooling the
 
 102 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Crossley like a professional chauffeur) very much on her 
 guard. 
 
 2 
 
 Brighton-on-Sea's first war-Christmas betrayed no lack of 
 prosperity. Its hotels, booked up weeks in advance, its pubs, 
 its piers, its theatres and its picture-houses palpitated gaiety. 
 From their billets in Shoreham Town and Portslade, in 
 Worthing and beyond Worthing, the Southdown Division 
 poured in a constant stream of blue-clad men and khaki-clad 
 officers : London sent flappers and chorus-ladies, middle-aged 
 business men and elderly idlers, frisky matrons and demure 
 maidens. The whole town seemed one strolling, dancing, 
 theatre-going, drinking promenade. 
 
 " Preston must be making a lot of money," said Peter, as 
 he and his wife took their first meal together in the crowded 
 dining-room. 
 
 " I suppose so." She had never known him quite so 
 absorbed. " Is there anything the matter, Peter ? " 
 
 " Lots. I'll tell you after lunch. I wrote you about 
 Alice being here, didn't I ? " 
 
 " Yes, but you didn't say where she was staying." 
 " At the Metropole. We're to dine with them this 
 evening. There's a dance or something, I believe." 
 
 He was enormously glad to have her with him, but far 
 too occupied about regimental and other matters to shew it. 
 The handsome woman sitting opposite to him tight chin- 
 chilla motor-toque and plain Lovat-tweed tailor-made 
 accentuated both figure and fairness summoned many eyes 
 in that room ; but not her husband's. 
 
 Luncheon over, they settled themselves in the little 
 apartment leading off the lounge ; drew chairs to the fire : 
 and he sketched for her the position as between himself and 
 Locksley, Bromley and Locksley, the regiment and Locksley. 
 Her limited experience of men could not grasp it. 
 " But, Peter, it all seems so childish. Like a lot of boys 
 at school. And surely, with people being killed every day, 
 this is not the time for you others to quarrel." 
 
 " You're perfectly right, old thing. That's what I told 
 Harold only last night. What makes me mad is that one man 
 can do so much harm. Honestly, if it weren't for Locksley, I 
 believe we should never have had any of this trouble. As it 
 is," he paused a moment, " we two have decided to get 
 out."
 
 Two Excuses for Failure 103 
 
 " But isn't that "she said the words deliberately" an 
 admission of failure ? " 
 
 " I suppose it is," he reflected. " But what am I to do ? 
 It wouldn't be playing the game to accept promotion over a 
 friend's head. . . ." 
 
 "No. I suppose not." She began to realize that his 
 seriousness had its reasons. " But the men ? " she asked. 
 
 " I know." He grew very silent. In those three months 
 Peter had learned a great affection for ' B ' Company, which he 
 had watched grow from a mere mob to orderly body : a body 
 to be moved at will and by a word. Individuals, too, he would 
 be sorry to part from : Gladeney, Sergeant Atkinson, his 
 servant Priestley, ' long ' Longstaffe who started the choruses 
 from the leading ' four ' in Number Five platoon, a funny 
 little chap called Haddock, always untidy but always willing. 
 " It's best for them, though. Rows between officers don't do 
 the men any good. But you're right about it being a failure, 
 Pat. I suppose that's what's making me so mad." 
 
 Only then did she quite understand. It was failure ; but 
 failure excused by loyalty : loyalty to a friend, loyalty to his 
 sense of playing the game, loyalty to that intangible thing 
 the spirit of a regiment against which individuals do not 
 count. 
 
 "I'm sorry." She laid a hand on his arm. He took it, 
 rather shamefacedly ; said : " Come on, old thing. Let's go 
 out for a walk." 
 
 3 
 
 They walked straight out of the hotel into the arms of a 
 voluble stout little civilian, with eyebrows like the horns of a 
 stag-beetle, a blue silk muffler round his throat and a bowler 
 hat, not quite dean, crammed down over his big head. 
 
 " And how are you, Mr. Jackson ? Very glad to see you, 
 I'm sure. My cousin Sam told me I might run into you down 
 here." 
 
 Peter introduced Marcus Bramson, owner of Bramson's 
 Pulman Virginias (' the cigarette you must try ') to a slightly 
 stand-offish Patricia. 
 
 " A fine fellow, your husband, Mrs. Jackson. Everybody 
 in the trade is proud of the way he enlisted. Right at the 
 start, too. I was telling my cousin Sam, only the other 
 night, how grateful he ought to be to work for such a 
 man." 
 
 They couldn't get rid of Marcus ! He stood there, looking
 
 104 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 like a strapped mummy in his tight overcoat, pouring out 
 compliments and trade-gossip alternately. 
 
 " Poor young Schornstein. He's been killed, you know. 
 Sam Elkins gave his car to the Red Cross. I'm an old man, 
 worse luck. Still, I'm trying to do my bit. And Mrs. Bram- 
 son, she's running a canteen." 
 
 " Well, I mustn't be keeping you like this," he said at last. 
 " We're spending Christmas at this hotel. You, too ? Then 
 we're sure to meet again. I'd like to have a little private 
 talk with you, Mr. Jackson," he added, as he wrenched off 
 his hat, and passed in through the glass doors. 
 
 " Quaint old bird, Marcus," announced Peter, still smarting 
 under the compliments. " Did you see what he was driving 
 at? " 
 
 "No." Patricia swung down the crowded parade. "I 
 only thought of his clothes. How can he afford to stay at the 
 Royal York ? " 
 
 " Marcus must be worth at least a quarter of a million. 
 He's one of those chaps who simply can't help making money. 
 And he spends nothing. They live in an eighty-pound villa 
 at Maida Vale, keep two servants, and take a holiday like this 
 three times a year." 
 
 They threaded their way out of the crowd ; made towards 
 Hove. It was a mild, misty afternoon : the sun hanging low 
 and scarlet over a dun sea. 
 
 " And what was he driving at ? " she asked. 
 
 " Nirvana." 
 
 " But you're not going to sell it, Peter ? " She looked 
 round at him ; but his eyes avoided her. 
 
 " I'm afraid so, dear." 
 
 They walked on. 
 
 " Failure again ! " he commented bitterly. 
 
 Now, she was loving him madly, reasonlessly. And she 
 couldn't help him. He had gone back beyond her reach, 
 into the old world, the world of denied accomplishment. . . . 
 
 " Failure," he repeated. 
 
 " It isn't." Her eyes lit. " It isn't. It's splendid. To 
 give up something you really loved for the sake of your 
 country that can't be failure." 
 
 " Oh, the country. ..." The word was almost a sneer. 
 This man's patriotism lay deep down in Ms nature, a thing of 
 whispers and suggestions, a thing to die for but not to 
 discuss. 
 
 " The cottntry ! " he went on. " ' We don't want to 
 lose you, but we think you ought to go.' . . . And once you
 
 Two Excuses for Failure 105 
 
 have gone, well take devilish good care to snaffle anything 
 you've left behind you." 
 
 " You don't mean a word you're saying." The hostility 
 in her tone caught his ear. In eight years they had never 
 quarrelled. This Patricia was as new to her husband as to 
 herself. He walked on in silence. 
 
 " You could resign your commission, I suppose ? " She 
 said it purposely, meaning to provoke him. 
 
 " Resign I Damn it, woman, you don't know what you're 
 talking about." It was the first time he had ever sworn at 
 her. Inwardly she laughed. 
 
 " I'm sorry, old thing," he said a minute later. 
 
 She stalked on haughtily. She was flirting deliberately 
 flirting with her own husband. And she felt a fool. Rather 
 a delicious fool, though. Suddenly, he became aware of her ; 
 acutely, physically almost. . . . Then the custom of years 
 overwhelmed both. 
 
 " The trout," remarked Patricia, " took the May-fly with 
 a rush. ..." 
 
 He caught her meaning at once. " But you shouldn't rag 
 about that sort of thing, Pat." 
 
 " You deserved it. And besides, you lost your temper 
 with me. That means a forfeit fizz for dinner." 
 
 They had drifted back neither quite realizing to the 
 early days of their marriage. 
 
 " There'll be plenty of bubbly to-night, without my 
 standing any." 
 
 He began to talk about Alice's husband. She countered 
 with a relation of Violet's sudden prosperity. Peter had not 
 told about his quarrel with Hubert Rawlings : Pat objected 
 to criticism of her relations even when she knew the criticism 
 justified. His little mood of bitterness passed, leaving only 
 a caustic humour in its wake. 
 
 " Great man, that brother-in-law of yours," he laughed. 
 " I saw his picture in one of the illustrateds last week. They 
 called him ' a patriotic war-worker/ I think. Something of 
 the sort. . . ." 
 
 4 
 
 They returned for tea in the lounge, and were unavoidably 
 buttonholed by Marcus Bramson, looking shabbier than ever 
 in a greasy tail-coat and elastic-sided boots. 
 
 " Mrs. Bramson would be so glad to know you," he told 
 Patricia ; " but she's lying down at the moment. So you
 
 Io6 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 won't mind, Mrs. Jackson, if your husband and I have a little 
 talk?" 
 
 He drew a chair to their table, began to gossip. Tea over, 
 Pat accepted the cigarette he offered ; leaned back in her sofa. 
 They made a curious contrast : her husband, workmanlike in 
 his khaki, cigar in the corner of his mouth, very deliberate ; 
 and the voluble little old man, wheedling, gesticulating but 
 never missing a point. 
 
 "That cousin of mine," began Bramson, "he's always 
 been a bit of a waster, you know. Good fellow, excellent 
 salesman but no head for money." 
 
 " Oh, come," began Peter. 
 
 " Nice of you to stand up for him, Mr. Jackson. Very 
 nice of you, I must say. But I know him better than you do. 
 Now, between you and me " the voice dropped " he's not 
 doing you any good." 
 
 Much as Peter hated the idea of parting with Nirvana, he 
 could not but appreciate Marcus' opening. 
 
 The old man paused. " I always did wonder," he went on 
 reflectively, " why you wanted to bother yourself with that 
 factory. It isn't as if you hadn't got another business. A 
 rich young man like you don't want to trouble himself about 
 making cigarettes. Now Jackson's, that's a good business, 
 that is ..." 
 
 " Trying to buy me out." The attack came suddenly 
 and to Patricia, unexpectedly. 
 
 " I wouldn't mind." Bramson lit himself a cigarette. 
 " I'm always buying businesses, I am." 
 
 He waited for his opponent to speak ; waited vainly. 
 
 " Well ? What do you think about it, Mr. Jackson ? " 
 
 " To tell you the truth," prevaricated Peter, " I've never 
 contemplated such a thing." 
 
 To the woman mind of Patricia, the conversation grew 
 more and more fantastic ; seemed like the game of cross- 
 purposes and crooked answers she had played as a child. 
 ' Here/ she reasoned, 'were two men, one of whom obviously 
 wanted to buy, the other to sell. Why, then, all this 
 finessing ? ' 
 
 Gradually, she lost interest ; began to think of her kiddies. 
 What a shame they should be left alone for Christmas 1 She 
 blamed herself a little, her desire to be alone with Peter. . . . 
 Six o'clock ! And she hadn't unpacked yet. . . . 
 
 Both men got up to bid her au revoir ; sat down again. 
 She could hear their voices as she waited for the lift. 
 
 " You don't want to be bothered with it, Mr. Jackson.
 
 Two Excuses for Failure 107 
 
 Not now you're in the Army. And I'd pay you a good price. 
 I would redly." 
 
 5 
 
 Unpacking Peter's haversack in the warm, lighted bedroom 
 with the drawn blue curtains and the two brass bedsteads, 
 Patricia found a bundle of correspondence addressed, " Francis 
 Gordon, Esq., 10, Mecklinburgh Square." A postcard, an 
 American picture-postcard, dropped out of the bundle ; lay, 
 address downwards, on the carpet. The colouring and design 
 a large white hotel set among palm-trees caught her eyes ; 
 and she could not help reading the handwriting underneath : 
 " A happy Christmas. It's a long time since you've written. 
 Why?B. C.- 
 Patricia had asked herself the same question many times 
 in the last months. Nobody knew exactly what had happened 
 to Francis Gordon. Except Peter. She felt certain that 
 Peter knew. And Peter wouldn't say ; contented himself, in 
 reply to verbal inquiries, with : " All I can tell you, is that 
 he's all right." Her letters on the subject he had calmly 
 ignored. . . . 
 
 6 
 
 Colonel Stark's Christmas Eve dinner-party at the Metro- 
 pole did not belie his reputation for bibulous hospitality. A 
 tray of cocktails, poised unsteadily on a tiny table, opened 
 the proceedings ; sherry accompanied the soup ; Chambertin 
 followed Niersteiner ("patriotism," announced the Weasel, 
 quoting Bismarck, "stops at the palate"); Bellinger pre- 
 ceded port and brandy. 
 
 They sat down, a round dozen of them, to a round table, 
 red with holly and white with mistletoe, in a private sitting- 
 room on the first floor : three married couples the Starks, the 
 Jacksons, Mrs. and Colonel Mallory (a jolly old Artillery 
 ' dug-out,' well over seventy, with red cheeks, white mous- 
 taches, and a pink and white wife, five years his junior, to 
 match) : Harold Bromley, very shy with Mrs. Armitage, a 
 sprightly, middle-aged widow, alternately horsy and languor- 
 ous : Torrington, a fair, pale, dark-eyed boy, who wore the 
 three stars of a captain, and told Patricia, when she asked 
 what his brick-red medal-ribbon betokened, " That's the 
 Vic. C., Mrs. Jackson": Purves, fresh from Oxford, with a 
 budding moustache and a Balliol drawl, still self-conscious 
 about his subaltern's kit : Lodden, a fierce-looking, black- 
 moustached Major of Territorials, who appeared in a frightful
 
 io8 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 rage about the world in general : and Pettigrew, a silent 
 youngster, not in the least shy, who twinkled whenever one 
 spoke to him. 
 
 They ate ; and they drank ; and they talked ; slowly, and 
 except for Lodden, without any undue excitement. 
 
 Said Lodden to Mrs. Mallory, stabbing furiously at his 
 last morsel of fish : " But the thing's a scandal. A positive 
 scandal." 
 
 " What's a scandal ? " asked the Weasel from the opposite 
 end of the table. 
 
 " I was talking about the Foreign Office, Colonel. They 
 tell me that cotton's pouring into Germany, simply pouring 
 in, through Holland." 
 
 " Oh, I thought you meant a really amusing scandal, 
 Major," put in Mrs. Armitage. 
 
 " Plenty of that about in Brighton, if one looks for it," 
 scowled the Major. 
 
 Everybody laughed : and Lodden, distinctly pleased with 
 himself, attacked the next course. 
 
 The Burgundy arrived ; and with its outpouring, talk 
 quickened. The two Colonels fell into an argument about who 
 won the Grand Military in '93 ; Mrs. Armitage, abandoning 
 Bromley as hopeless, turned her attention to Pettigrew and 
 Purves repartees snapping back and forwards between the 
 three of them. Mrs. Mallory did her best to smooth another 
 grievance of Lodden 's ; Peter and Alice talked Devonshire, 
 her county. 
 
 SaidTorrington to Patricia : " I hear your husband may be 
 coming to us, Mrs. Jackson. If he does, you must come down 
 to Brighton and stay." sotto voce " I'll find you a horse to ride. 
 It's against regulations, of course. ..." 
 
 " How did you know about Peter ? " smiled Patricia, 
 looking her stateliest in black velvet. 
 
 " I'm helping the Colonel in the office. Light duty, you 
 know. He told me he meant to get your husband and that 
 other chap, Bromley. The Colonel usually gets what he goes 
 for." He looked meaningly across at Alice, and added 
 maliciously, " By the way, aren't you Jacky Baynet's sister ? " 
 
 "Jacky was devilish cut-up when the old man married 
 Alice. . . ." 
 
 Waiters brought in the champagne, three magnums. 
 
 " I am perfectly certain," drawled Purves in the middle 
 of a hush to the widow, " that any more wine will have a 
 most intoxicating effect on the party."
 
 Two Excuses for Failure 109 
 
 "Turn his glass down, Mrs. Armitage." This from the 
 Weasel. " We mustn't let the children get into bad habits." 
 
 Mrs. Armitage obeyed j and the two struggled amiably 
 together, Pettigrew twinkling over the fray. 
 
 " Peter," lisped Alice, bubbling glass at red lips, " Douglas 
 is so keen on you and your friend coming to MS." 
 
 Our Mr. Jackson, whose head was very nearly as good as 
 the Weasel's own, drained his bumper before replying, " Oh, 
 we're coming." 
 
 "Douglas will be pleased. Douglas dear," she called 
 across to her husband, " I've got you two new officers." 
 
 By now the whole table, not excepting Bromley, were in 
 that pleasant state when the better-class Englishman becomes 
 almost as talkative as the average foreigner. 
 
 " Don't talk shop in Mess, me dear," beamed Stark ; and 
 to Mallory: "How long did it take you to discipline your 
 wife, sir ? " 
 
 Mallory (' sir ' by right of age) looked across at his Hetty, 
 said : " Hopeless task, Stark. Hopeless task." 
 
 By general request, the ladies did not rise with the port. 
 They drank the King-Emperor's health, proposed by Purves 
 as the most junior officer present ; a Merry Christmas (Colonel 
 Mallory) ; and " Gott strafe Germany " (Major Lodden). 
 
 The Weasel looked at his watch. " If you youngsters " 
 he winked at Mallory " want to dance, it's about time we 
 went downstairs." 
 
 Alice rustled out with the ladies : her husband came over 
 to Peter and Bromley ; said : " Better come to my office, 
 both of you, the day after to-morrow." 
 
 " I don't know if I'll be able to manage it, sir," replied 
 Bromley. " I may be on duty." 
 
 " Then get someone else to do your duty," snapped the 
 Weasel. It was the only sign he gave, during the whole 
 evening, of an alcoholic consumption which would have put 
 any ordinary man under the table. 
 
 " Rummy devil," confided Torrington to Peter and 
 Bromley, as they strolled downstairs. " I was in his battery 
 at Le Cateau. Brave! My hat "this from a V.C. "if 
 his wife knew how he really got that D.S.O. she'd have a fit." 
 
 "Tell me," said Peter. But Torrington, who won his 
 own ' gong ' at the same time, grew suddenly shy ; broke off 
 the conversation. 
 
 They descended to the cellar-like dancing-room, found it 
 crowded. Ragtime thumped ; lights blazed ; couples slith- 
 ered. Purves, too gentlemanly for words, was already
 
 no Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 partnering Mrs. Armitage : Pettigrew had taken the Colonel's 
 wife : Mrs. Mallory, despite her husband's jocular entreaties, 
 refused to dance : Major Lodden was grousing to Patricia. 
 
 " How about another liqueur ?" suggested Torrington. 
 
 " I don't think we'd better join the Gunners after all," 
 laughed Bromley to Peter j but he went to the bar with them 
 just the same. There they found the Weasel, drinking 
 brandy-and-soda. 
 
 " You youngsters had better not drink any more to- 
 night," he commanded. " Why aren't you dancing ? " 
 
 "I'm not sure, sir," from Torrington, "that I quite 
 approve of officers dancing in their khaki." 
 
 " I'm quite sure I don't" the Colonel's blue eyes hardened 
 " but the ladies insist." 
 
 They stood chatting till the music stopped. None of the 
 four had drunk too much j but each of them, according to his 
 capacity, had had quite enough. Bromley detailed a South 
 African experience ; Torrington capped it with a story of the 
 Retreat ; the Colonel listened professionally. 
 
 Peter had arrived at that mellow stage when he could 
 regard the failures of ' our Mr. Jackson ' from a standpoint of 
 pleasant detachment : in which stage he decided that ' our 
 Mr. Jackson ' was inclined to take life a little too seriously. 
 During the remainder of the evening except for the last 
 ' John Peel,' which Torrington claimed he and Patricia 
 danced accurately with each other. . . . 
 
 7 
 
 They walked home together, arm-in-arm, down the 
 darkling sea-front. A moist breeze blew in their faces ; and 
 she clung to him. Their old-time friendship seemed to have 
 renewed itself. The man felt supremely contented ; the 
 woman a trifle off her guard. . . . 
 
 And then they found Marcus Bramson waiting up for 
 them! 
 
 He was prowling about the half -lit lounge, purpose in his 
 eye ; insisted they must come to his sitting-room ; be intro- 
 duced to Mrs. Bramson ; have " one little glass of something, 
 just to celebrate Christmas Day." 
 
 " Confound Marcus," yawned Peter as some hour later 
 he snuggled sleepily between cool sheets ; "it must be 
 about two g.m." 
 
 " Half-past," corrected Patricia, combing gold hair before 
 the slanting mirror. She came over ; kissed him according
 
 Two Excuses for Failure in 
 
 to custom ; climbed into her own bed ; switched off the 
 lights. 
 
 8 
 
 Peter's leave lasted four days ; and Marcus Bramson 
 haunted every hour of them. 
 
 They found him in the lounge when they came down to 
 breakfast, still there eager for a chat when they had 
 finished ; they ran into him, asking for letters at the porter's 
 lodge, as they went out for their morning walk : he and Mrs. 
 Bramson, an over-awed woman of the middle-fifties, met 
 them on the Front ; trailed them back to lunch ; followed 
 them to the Metropole for tea ; sat next to them at dinner ; 
 pursued them to the Hippodrome ; waited up for them late, 
 prevented them going to bed early. 
 
 On Boxing Day, when Peter and Bromley returned to the 
 hotel from their first official interview with Colonel Stark, 
 eager to discuss the arrangements made the letter Stark had 
 written to Andrews, the letters they must write to Andrews, 
 their interview with General Blacklock, Commanding South- 
 down Divisional Artillery it was to find Patricia wedged 
 between Marcus and his wife, virtually a prisoner. 
 
 Escape, except in the car and it rained two days out of 
 the four was impossible. 
 
 Once, even, the persistent old man waylaid Patricia alone; 
 and she had to listen, for a long half -hour, to his protestations : 
 "You see, Mrs. Jackson, it's like this. I know my cousin, 
 Sam. He's a waster. A good fellow, but no head for figures. 
 And your husband had much better sell that business now. 
 He'll lose a bit ; but he'll lose more if he waits. Honestly, 
 Mrs. Jackson, I'm not thinking only of myself nor Sam 
 neither. I like your husband. He's a patriotic chap, and I'll 
 pay him a good price. I will reelly. Only he's so obstinate. 
 Won't you use your influence with him, Mrs. Jackson ? . . ." 
 
 " The funny thing about Marcus, "laughed Peter.when she 
 told him of the interview, " is that he feels hell be doing 
 me a kindness. Marcus isn't a bad old boy at heart { but, 
 my word, he is a bore." 
 
 Patricia, driving Londonwards through the rain, could not 
 quite make up her mind whether the Bramsons had been a 
 bore or a godsend. Falling in love with one's own husband 
 has its disadvantages !
 
 PART XI 
 GUNS AND COUNTING-HOUSES 
 
 IF ever man needed power of concentration on the im- 
 mediate job, and, allied thereto, that particular quality 
 only described by the crude Anglo-Saxon word 'guts/ 
 it was Peter Jackson during the two months which 
 preceded his transfer from the loth Chalkshire Battalion of 
 the Line to Fourth Southdown Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. 
 The year's figures and a conference with Reid confirmed 
 the worst about Nirvana. Their export trade had 
 begun to feelthe shipping difficulties ; dropped weekly. Home 
 sales were stationary ; tending downward. The thing had 
 lost momentum. Without more capital it must continue to 
 slow down, eventually stop. Capital at the moment preferred 
 war-bonds to cigarette-partnerships. The Bank pressed for a 
 reduction of overdraft. And Pretty Bramson, as Peter 
 phrased it, had ' barely enough spunk to endorse his salary- 
 cheaue.' 
 
 So Marcus got his way. Peter fought him, pound by 
 pound and clause by clause, to the last farthing, the last 
 signature. The agreement, as finally drafted, was flawless; 
 the price, all things considered, a liberal one. But the gamble 
 had cost, not including interest which the money might have 
 been earning for years, ten thousand pounds a third of 
 Peter's original fortune. In addition, it cost part of a man's 
 soul. 
 
 They signed the ultimate document at Brixton ; Marcus 
 friendlier than ever ; Peter biting on an unlit cigar the good 
 gambler, taking loss with a smile. Afterwards, they walked 
 the factory together, old proprietor introducing new pro- 
 prietor explaining this labour-saving dodge, suggesting that 
 improvement. And nobody, not even Patricia, realized the 
 bitterness fought down, the courage that had to be nailed to 
 the mast.
 
 Guns and Counting-houses 113 
 
 Bitter work, bidding one's dreams good-bye ! 
 
 The Jackson position, too, required concentration. The 
 partnership deed between Peter and Simpson a deed by 
 which in case of one's death the survivor could retain all the 
 capital in the firm, paying out only interest had expired. 
 Under the peculiar circumstances, Peter wanted it to continue 
 as before, for the 'duration.' He was heavily insured, 
 heavily enough to make good the Nirvana loss : and the 
 balance of his fortune, should he be killed, would be safe under 
 Simpson's management. Simpson objected. ' In the un- 
 likely event of his dying, with Peter still on service, who 
 would manage the business ? ' 
 
 They compromised by renewing for two years, subject only 
 to the condition that, if Simpson died first, Peter must pay 
 out his widow in cash. ' Payment to be made within twelve 
 months of the valuation of the estate being completed.' 
 
 And then there was the irritation of Beckmann's. Try as 
 Simpson would to replace it, many customers still insisted on 
 the brand. Hartopp (geborener Hagenburg) in particular. 
 Hartopp's turnover had increased threefold. " How he 
 disposes of the stuff," said Simpson, " is a perfect mystery. 
 I believe myself that half of the cases we ship to Copenhagen 
 and Amsterdam for him eventually find their way to Ger- 
 many. But what can I do ? The man's got a government 
 export -licence and I can't stop his taking advantage of it." 
 
 " How much does he owe us ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " Five thousand at the moment : but I've got some big 
 orders pending." 
 
 " You're sure he's safe ? " 
 
 "Absolutely." Simpson wagged brown beard. "He's 
 pay ing at ninety days to the second. . . ." 
 
 For the past year, thanks to seven warless months of 
 excellent trading, Jackson's had made almost their usual 
 profits : but Peter's capital account with the closing of the 
 Nirvana gamble and the money lent to his brother Arthur 
 shewed a big drop ; stood at considerably less than twenty 
 thousand pounds. 
 
 It seemed only prudent to try and let furnished the house 
 in Lowndes Square. The Rawlings, hourly more prosperous, 
 would have taken it gladly ; but Peter refused to negotiate 
 with them. Eventually he secured as tenant from March 
 quarter-day a prominent Belgian embusquf, whose rent barely 
 covered expenses.
 
 114 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Add to these circumstances the arrival of Arthur Jackson, 
 demanding assistance of every kind, from the loan of a dress- 
 suit to the introductions necessary for a commission in the 
 Flying Corps and it will be seen that Peter's civilian occupa- 
 tions (though he was honestly pleased to see his brother again) 
 were neither pleasant nor unstrenuous. 
 
 2 
 
 Patricia felt she could help but little, console even less. 
 For it must be remembered that all such difficulties were 
 dealt with in days of leave, extorted from a sulkily-reluctant 
 Adjutant ; failing that extortion, by telegraph, letter, and 
 long-distance telephone. The bulk of those two months, 
 Peter had to live with his regiment. And the regiment 
 provided no antidote for annoyances. 
 
 Major Fox-Goodwin's promotion to the command of the 
 Chalkshires' newly-formed Twelfth Battalion, and the transfer- 
 applications of his two senior subalterns applications for- 
 warded only after considerable pressure gave Locksley, who 
 accepted this answer to his pourparlers in silence, his chance. 
 Bromley and Peter, Peabody and Arkwright, found them- 
 selves swamped out with full lieutenants, all eager for pro- 
 motion to captaincies. 
 
 It was already understood among the men that " Mr. 
 'Arold 'ad 'ad enough of that there Locksley ; and P. J. 
 'e'd thrown his 'and in, too." At the slightest opening, the 
 Cockneys would have shewn on which side their sympathies 
 lay. But no such opening was provided. 
 
 The two friends carried on loyally, helping their not too 
 competent seniors towards efficiency. 
 
 And always, the Company improved. By now, it had 
 khaki uniforms (though not its equipment) ; and a long rifle, 
 serviceable though not ' Service Pattern,' for every man. It 
 had, too, a band of its own three flutes and two drums to 
 which it marched merrily along the sea-front. 
 
 Bromley, less externally occupied than Peter, grew very 
 grave those days. It weighed on him to give up this weapon 
 he had forged, to feel that other hands would carry it into 
 action. To Bromley not realizing his friend's reticence in 
 troubles P. J. seemed positively heartless. He cursed 
 about Locksley every now and then ; avoided him at Mess or 
 on the streets ; drank rather more than usual ; but gave no 
 other sign of being harassed either about the loss of ' B ' 
 Company or the loss of Nirvana.
 
 Guns and Counting-houses 115 
 
 It was P. J. who suggested applying to Torrington for 
 some " books about this new gunnery game " ; P. J. who 
 insisted that they must study them together, " so as not to 
 look bally idiots when our transfers do come through." 
 
 3 
 
 And study the two did : ' F. A. T.' (as Torrington called 
 the red manuals of Field Artillery Training) ; ' Section 
 Gun-drill/ 'the Handbook of the i8-pr. Q.F. Gun,' 'Train- 
 ing Manual Signallers,' ' Animal Management.' 
 
 The many drills, after the comparatively easy march-work 
 of infantry, puzzled them both ; and they made them batteries 
 of match-boxes, twelve match-boxes (four guns and eight 
 waggons) to a battery, with six matches apiece to represent 
 the teams, and other matches to represent outriders, battery- 
 commander, and section-leaders. These batteries they 
 manoeuvred across the cleared tea-table to words of command 
 read out from the book ; first as single batteries, afterwards 
 in brigades of four batteries ; finally as a complete Division of 
 four brigades with four pens and a pipe to represent the five 
 phantom Ammunition Columns. 
 
 In this, as in all the details of horse and harness-instruc- 
 tions, Bromley's cavalry experience compensated him for 
 Peter's quicker brains. 
 
 But when it came to the actual science of Gunnery to 
 ' Angles of Elevation,' ' Angles of Deflection,' ' Drift,' and the 
 ' Setting of Fuzes, ' it was P. J. who puzzled out the problems ; 
 explained them with pen, pencil, and circles marked out on 
 cardboard, to his slower comrade. 
 
 " I shall never understand this," Harold would say ; and 
 read in a sing-song voice some devilish paragraph about the 
 ' Angle of Sight.' 
 
 And then Peter would rap out : " You old fool, the angle 
 of sight only means whether your gun is above your target or 
 your target above your gun." 
 
 " Oh, I see now," from Bromley. 
 
 Thereafter they found 'Instructions for Ranging,' and 
 having waded through that, returned to triangular diagrams 
 (one point of the triangle representing the target T, the other 
 the battery B, and the third the Observer 0) ; and spent 
 many hours with pencil and paper saying to each other : 
 " Look here, you're observing and I'm commanding the 
 battery. You signal to me, ' Battery Angle forty degrees 
 right ' that's ' right ' from you, isn't it ? I put that angle
 
 n6 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 on my guns and lay on you ; that brings them onto the 
 target." 
 
 " But suppose you can't see me," from Peter. 
 
 "Oh, then you'd have to send me down a map- 
 reference. ..." 
 
 And so it would go on till two o'clock in the morning. 
 
 But all this paled into insignificance when they received 
 a note from Torrington : ' ' Colonel says you must know Section 
 Gun-drill by heart." 
 
 " My aunt ! " said Bromley, picking up the pamphlet, 
 "look at all this." 
 
 However, at it they went, paragraph by paragraph, from, 
 ' The detachment consists of ten men, ' through ' To advance 
 without drag-ropes,' and 'Prepare for Action' page after 
 page of it right up to 'Halt. Action Front/ 'Cease 
 Firing,' and the last instructions about the dangers of miss- 
 fires when using blank-cartridge. 
 
 It will be observed that the Weasel proved himself no mean 
 judge of a man's keenness when he picked out these two over 
 a magnum of champagne ! 
 
 4 
 
 But still the War Office dallied over their transfers. Peter 
 traced the papers, by means of a friendly clerk in Locksley's 
 office, from Battalion to Infantry Brigade, from Infantry 
 Brigade to Division and there, daring a personal visit, was 
 badly choked off by Colonel Melrose, the D.A.Q.M.G., very 
 gorgeous in Staff tabs, who told him " to run away and mind 
 his own business," which Peter, in a great rage, effectively did 
 making acquaintance with the Warrant-Officer Clerk at 
 ' Q, ' who informed him " papers were sent on all right by me, 
 sir. Goodness knows where they are now. ' ' 
 
 Arrived shortly afterwards, at the Chalkshire Orderly 
 Room, Colonel Stark, riding a rampant chestnut seventeen- 
 hander and followed by a jolting groom : a Colonel Stark who 
 rasped out, in answer to Locksley's, " Can I do anything for 
 you, sir ? " a curt, " Where's your Colonel, young man ? and 
 why the hell haven't I got my two subalterns yet ? " 
 
 This the two, who were far away practising ' Outposts ' at 
 the time, heard not without amusement from Peabody. . . . 
 
 Followed, towards the middle of February, a joint sum- 
 mons to report themselves at ' A.G.6.' War Office outside 
 of which, in a cold and gloomy corridor, they waited till a 
 harassed but kindly Major, having inspected them carefully,
 
 Guns and Counting-houses 117 
 
 said, in reply to an unofficial inquiry, " Oh, your transfers ! 
 I don't know where they are now. Upstairs, I expect. I 
 should go and hunt for them if I were you." 
 
 And there, Bromley who had some sense of discipline- 
 would have let matters rest ; but, over-persuaded by an angry 
 P. J., allowed himself to be dragged up various flights of stone 
 steps till they came to an enormous loft, stacked with pile on 
 pile of red-taped bundles : whereamong an elderly civilian, 
 Rip van Winkle of Whitehall, actually unearthed the docu- 
 ments, and promised, " You leave it to me, gentlemen, they'll 
 be in the Gazette within the fortnight." 
 
 Meanwhile, men continued to die in Flanders. 
 
 5 
 
 About this time, there arrived at the Stazione Centrale of 
 Milan one cold and foggy North Italian morning an 
 emaciated, unshaven priest, dressed in dusty soutane and a 
 black shovel hat : a priest whose hands were dirty and 
 bleeding, whose eyes shone glassy with sleeplessness, whose 
 feet as he limped down from the crowded third-class carriage 
 were shod in cracked boots, soles worn to the welt, uppers 
 caked and terraced with layer on layer of drying mud. 
 
 Humbly, but in excellent Italian, the priest inquired of a 
 surly face hino his way to the Via Rasori ; and having been 
 told in guttural Milanese to make for the Galleria, to take the 
 " ViaDant "and then the " Via Boccacc, " limped out into 
 the fog. Had that fog been less dense, the facchino might 
 have noticed a hole in the priest's shovel hat, a hole possibly 
 made for ventilation purposes for it had been drilled clean 
 through the black furry felt, in at one side and out at the 
 other. 
 
 The hole was two days old ; and had not happened to the 
 hat in its passage across the south frontier of Switzerland but 
 considerably further north, on one of those dark and rainy 
 nights when sentries fire first and challenge afterwards. 
 
 Our priest limped out of the station, thanking God for the 
 fog, through the dank gardens (from instinct he avoided main 
 streets near railway stations), past the Hotel Cavour, and 
 Finzi's shuttered dress-making shop, past the dark bulk of the 
 Scala Theatre, through the huge empty Arcade, and across 
 the Piazza del Duomo into the Via Dante. . . . 
 
 He had no more money in his pockets, having calculated 
 to report at Berne ; but instructions as to compromising 
 consuls or legations in neutral countries were particularly
 
 n8 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 explicit : and in the Swiss capital a gentleman with a turned- 
 up moustache had evinced peculiar interest about his move- 
 ments. At the Franco-Swiss frontier, other moustached 
 gentlemen might be waiting. So the last of our priest's notes 
 he experienced some difficulty in getting change for the 
 five German ' marks ' had paid for the journey from Chiasso 
 to Milan. 
 
 It was ten years since his last visit to the city, but he 
 managed to find the Via Boccacio which runs past the Dal 
 VermeTheatre.and followed it rather painfully, for he wanted 
 to go to sleep on every bench till he saw, hung at the corner 
 of a high stone house, a shield, white-lettered on a red ground : 
 ' His Britannic Majesty's Consul General for Lombardy and 
 Venetia.' 
 
 " Gott sei Dank," said the priest and then, remembering 
 that it was no longer necessary to think in German, " Thank 
 God ! " 
 
 He slinked past the porter's lodge the consulate is on the 
 first floor dragged himself up the marble stairs ; and rang 
 the bell. 
 
 Mr. Towsey, brown-bearded, short of stature, determined 
 of eye, opened the door himself. He had just made his early 
 cup of tea ; his mother was still in bed ; their servant 
 gossiping downstairs. 
 
 " Ma cosa vuole a cuest' ora ? " he said. 
 
 " Console Inglese ? " asked the priest. 
 
 " Si. Ma cosa vuole?" 
 
 " Lasc' entrare. Non posso parlarvi qui." 
 
 The door closed behind them. 
 
 Mr. Towsey led into a square bare room, safe in one corner, 
 desk near the window. 
 
 " Ebbene ? " began the consul. 
 
 " For the Lord's sake give me a cigarette," said Francis 
 Gordon. 
 
 He had no papers to prove his identity. His eyes kept 
 closing all the time he talked. The hand which held the 
 cigarette shook like a jelly on a plate. He would neither say 
 whence he had come, nor why, nor how. But he knew 
 exactly what he wanted : he wanted Mr. Towsey he said 
 it over and over again to send a telegram, a telegram in 
 Embassy cypher addressed to the British Foreign Office for 
 transmission to I.D. War Office. Also, he wanted to go to 
 bed until the answer arrived.
 
 Guns and Counting-houses 119 
 
 " But hang it all," said the Consul, " I don't know any- 
 thing about you. You turn up at seven o'clock in the morn- 
 ing. You start by talking Italian. Then you ask for a cigar- 
 ette in English. Now you want me to let you use our secret 
 code-book, and to pay for the cable out of government funds." 
 
 " And after that," yawned Francis, " I want to sleep in 
 your spare bedroom till the answer arrives." 
 
 Mr. Towsey felt himself in an awkward position. Italy 
 was still neutral ; the diplomatic situation growing hourly 
 more complicated. Then he looked sharply at the bedraggled 
 weary man in the black soutane ; decided to take the risk. 
 
 " Here, write your telegram," he said, pushing paper and 
 pencil across the desk. " I suppose you don't want to code 
 it yourself." 
 
 " Oh, Lord, no." Francis, eyes dizzy with sleep, wrote 
 rapidly. " Please inform I.D.W.O. that No. 63 has arrived 
 consulate Milan with important information. Stop. Can arrange- 
 ments be made for him to be met at Modane by car and proceed 
 direct to G.H.Q. France. Stop. Please request consul here to 
 advance one thousand lire for clothes and travelling expenses. 
 End." 
 
 Said Mr. Towsey, reading it, "I think I'd better address 
 this to Mr. Montgomery . . ." 
 
 But Francis Gordon had fallen fast asleep. 
 
 He awoke, some fifteen hours later, frightened out of his 
 wits; remembered that the need for fear had passed ; crawled 
 off a sofa ; fumbled about for the electric switch ; clicked on 
 the light. 
 
 The noise of his getting-up disturbed his host from the 
 deciphering of a cable which read : " Please advance to person 
 for whom you sent cable No. 3426 any monies he requires. Stop. 
 Order him proceed Modane soonest possible and report to French 
 authorities who will have full instructions. Montgomery." 
 
 "I'm most awfully obliged to you, Mr. Towsey," said 
 Francis Gordon next morning : a Francis Gordon dressed in 
 a green ready-made Italian suit, bright yellow boots on his 
 feet, bright yellow bag in his hand. " Just as a last favour, 
 would you mind having these posted for me ? " 
 
 He handed over three letters, one which began " My dear 
 Beatrice, I have to apologize for leaving you so long without 
 news " addressed care of the Guaranty Trust Company, 
 New York ; the second to " P. Jackson, Esq.," and the third 
 to " H. T. Prout, 10, Mecklinburgh Square, London, W."
 
 I2O Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Then, having shaken hands with his host, he lit a cigarette, 
 and strolled creakily downstairs to the waiting taxi. . . . 
 
 6 
 
 Francis' letter reached his cousin on the morning Peter 
 and Bromley saw their transfers gazetted in the Morning Post. 
 The answer to it, a packet containing two letters and a post- 
 card addressed " Poste Restante, Saint Omer," was in Peter's 
 pocket as they stood in the Chalkshire Orderly Room, 
 bidding Colonel Andrews good-bye. 
 
 " I'm very sorry you 're both leaving me, "said the Colonel. 
 "Very sorry indeed . ' ' 
 
 " We're sorry to be going, sir," from Bromley. 
 
 "I'm sorry we're leaving, sir, " from Peter. 
 
 They shook hands with the dimdent.kindly man ; saluted ; 
 clanked out, booted and spurred the Gunner grenades 
 already on their lapels ; ran into Locksley- Jones. 
 
 " Hallo, you chaps, "he stuttered. " Just off ? What ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Bromley grimly. " We're going to a show 
 where they've got a soldier for their Adjutant. It will be 
 quite a change ..." 
 
 But when (having said good-bye to Mr. Smith, the 
 Regimental Sergeant-Major, to Gladeney and Sergeant Atkin- 
 son and Corporal Pearson, to Peabody and Arkwright and 
 Mackenzie, to Mosely and Simcox and half a hundred others 
 who came crowding round the bar at The Feathers) 
 the two friends at last settled themselves in the corner of a 
 first-class carriage, they both grew very silent, thinking how 
 others would lead into action those hard-drinking, hard- 
 swearing Cockneys who sang, as they marched : 
 
 " It's a long wai ter get ter Berlin, 
 Ter pai back all we owe."
 
 PART XII 
 MEN AND HORSES 
 
 i 
 
 THE Southdown Divisional Artillery, at the time Peter 
 and Bromley were transferred, owned its full com- 
 plement of men, its khaki, some officers, a handful 
 of horses, a few old French 90 -millimetre guns 
 dating from 1868 (" guns " by courtesy, as they had neither 
 breech-blocks, firing, nor sighting apparatus), a few ammuni- 
 tion caissons to match, and a scratch collection of harness, 
 begged, borrowed, or stolen according to possibilities. 
 
 Weasel Stark's command had been billeted in Brighton 
 since its formation : the horses at various livery-stables ; the 
 gunners and drivers Yorkshiremen for the most part in 
 squalid terraces at the back of the town ; the senior officers 
 at Prince's or the Metropole ; the junior during the inter- 
 vals between ' Cook's tours ' to the Front, gunnery-courses 
 and telephone-courses at a small private hotel which they 
 monopolized. 
 
 Stark's personality pervaded the Fourth Brigade. He 
 had his own theories on training, on gunnery, on discipline : 
 theories essentially simple, disregarding the means for the 
 end. A believer in decentralisation, he rarely interfered with 
 subordinates : when he did so, his strictures which he 
 couched in the most illuminating profanity were usually 
 heeded. His lectures invariably began, " Now if you young 
 subalterns will only burn those sanguinary books and use a 
 little common sense " : he rode as hard as he drank ; pro- 
 tected his subordinates from his superiors ; knew King's 
 Regulations backwards ; could repeat word-perfect from 
 memory any Artillery instructions from ' harness-fitting ' 
 to the ' contents of Headquarters Telephone Waggon ' ; 
 never forgot a face, and would forgive anything in the world 
 except lack of keenness. 
 
 At the moment, Stark was to use his own expression 
 letting 'em have their heads. Of the four batteries, three
 
 122 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 were being run by subalterns, the other, ' A,' by Major Lodden. 
 Work consisted of the inevitable 'stables,' driving and 
 marching drills, signalling classes, telephone classes, riding- 
 school, laying and firing instructions on the old guns for which 
 the ' wheeler ' had made rough dial-sights of brass and wood ; 
 and occasional parades to which each battery sent teams and 
 gunners : parades which jolted along the front, down First 
 Avenue and out through the town to the stubble-fields beyond, 
 whereon Stark, from his ramping chestnut, roaring blas- 
 phemies at gunners and battery-commander impartially 
 both men and horses took their first lessons in manoeuvre. 
 
 2 
 
 Four subalterns sat over the remnants of their dinner in 
 the dark narrow dining-room of the Lyndon Hotel. Out- 
 side, rain fell gently but audibly on the stone pavement. 
 
 Said Archie Hutchinson, a whippet of a fellow, buff in 
 colour, thin-shanked, brown-eyed, ' horse ' written all over 
 him : " There's a devilish good little bay come in with that last 
 draft ; but I don't fancy any of you lads could ride him." 
 
 "Bags I for Beer Battery" (Gunners usually adopt the 
 code terms ' Ack,' ' Beer ' and ' Don ' instead of A.B.D.) 
 " if it's a bay," said Pettigrew, blue eyes twinkling in brick- 
 red cheeks. " Do you think he'd carry P. J. ? " 
 
 " Just about." Hutchinson concentrated on the problem. 
 " P. J. might be able to manage him. P. J. isn't a bad horse- 
 man. Of course, he hasn't got very good hands . . ." 
 
 " Oh, we all know you're the only chap in the Brigade 
 with good hands," put in Archdale a fair-haired boy of 
 eighteen maliciously. 
 
 " You shut up, Brat. You can't ride anyway ..." 
 
 " Who is P. J. ? " asked Merrilees, a solemn young man of 
 twenty-six, with eyes like an owl and the shoulders of a 
 student, who had been transferred from Colonel Brasenose's 
 Brigade (the Third Southdown) that afternoon. 
 
 " Do you mean to say," chuckled Pettigrew, " that you've 
 never heard of our Mr. Jackson. Our Mr. Jackson," he cocked 
 his cigarette into the corner of his mouth a very tolerable 
 imitation of Peter's mannerism, "the Captain Kettle of the 
 Fourth Brigade. Our Mr. Jackson is some gunner, I can assure 
 you." 
 
 " Really." Merrilees had no sense of humour. 
 
 "Also," went on Pettigrew, "our Mr. Jackson has a car 
 some car ! And a wife some wife."
 
 Men and Horses 123 
 
 ' Brat ' Archdale, who had developed a violent attack of 
 calf-love for Patricia, blushed violently. 
 
 " I like P. J.," remarked Hutchinson, pouring himself a 
 second glass of port. 
 
 "So do I," said Pettigrew, "but he's a quaint bird." 
 
 " Who's a quaint bird ? " Purves poked a wonderfully 
 brushed brown head round the door ; drew his long body 
 after it ; sat down to the table. 
 
 " Our Mr. Jackson." 
 
 " Undoubtedly," pronounced the Oxford man in his best 
 Balliol drawl, "undoubtedly. As you say, Pettigrew, a 
 quaint bird. But efficient. Most efficient. His language, 
 on the other hand, reminds me very strongly of our friend 
 the Weasel's. He doesn't talk much, but when he does talk . . . 
 You should have heard him in riding-school this afternoon. 
 Sergeant Murgatroyd positively blushed. " 
 
 " Sergeant Murgatroyd, like all these old Army fellows, 
 pulls his horses about too much. No hands ! " The speaker, 
 of course, was Hutchinson. 
 
 There came a smart rap on the door ; and a crisp voice 
 asked, " May I come in ? " 
 
 Everybody rose. 
 
 "Rather, sir. Have a glass of port, won't you, sir? 
 Take a chair, sir. Won't you take off your things, 
 sir ? " 
 
 Colonel Stark, very slim and red-haired ; looking except 
 for the lines about his eyes almost a boy himself, accepted 
 the many invitations. Purves filled a glass for him, and they 
 all sat down again. 
 
 " Where 's that fellow, Straker ? " asked the Weasel. 
 "In his room ? I wonder if one of you chaps would mind 
 fetching him for me. Conway anywhere about ? Out, is 
 he ? " A chuckle. " At the Palladium, I suppose. . ." 
 
 The Palladium is Brighton's most palatial picture-house. 
 Its attraction for the petticoat-loving Conway was well- 
 known. Everyone laughed ; and the Colonel beamed round 
 the table. 
 
 " We shall have to get Conway married, sir," remarked 
 Purves ; and went off to find Charlie Straker. 
 
 " I suppose you youngsters know we're moving into camp 
 next week." 
 
 " Yes, sir," from Pettigrew. " Shoreham, Captain Tor- 
 ringtonsaid." 
 
 " Correct, Pettigrew. And then I shall start gingering 
 you all up a bit. Especially ' B ' Battery. " The O.C. turned to
 
 124 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Menilees. "You're going to ' C,' young man. Did Colonel 
 Brasenose teach you how to ride ? " 
 
 " I I think so, sir," said Merrilees shyly. 
 
 " We never ' think ' in the Fourth Brigade, do we, Hutchin- 
 son ? " This, a reminder of the horsy one's last attempt at 
 manoeuvring a battery, drew a twinkle from Pettigrew. 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 Charlie Straker arrived : tall, clean-shaven, curly- 
 headed, with big hands and a pronounced stutter. A pro- 
 moted ranker, once in Stark's own battery, he had recently 
 come home to take up his commission. 
 
 " G-good evening, sir ? " 
 
 " Evening, Straker " Stark had come to the Mess with 
 one of his usual definite purposes in mind " I'm going to 
 take you round to the Jacksons. There's an old friend of 
 yours with them, and very anxious to see you." 
 
 " Who, sir ? " 
 
 " Jacky Baynet," a less tactful man might have said 
 ' Captain Baynet ' " he's home on leave. You remember 
 him, of course." 
 
 " R-rather, sir. He recommended me for my first stripe. 
 I I'll go and get my things on at once, sir." 
 
 " Good chap, the C.O.," said Hutchinson, when the four 
 were alone again. " Pretty fair seat on a horse too." 
 
 The remainder agreed. 
 
 3 
 
 " Who's my best subaltern, Straker ? " asked the Colonel, 
 as they strode through the darkness. 
 
 The other hesitated. " C-Con way's very good, sir." 
 
 "And what about Bromley? He's seen service, you 
 know. ..." Stark stood still for a moment ... "I wish 
 to goodness you'd learn to read a map, Straker. Can't put 
 you in for promotion till you can." 
 
 " I I know. I'm rotten at it, sir." 
 
 They walked on. 
 
 "Jackson's c-coming along very well with his gun-drill, 
 sir," Charlie Straker, by virtue of knowledge, acted as 
 unofficial instructor to the Brigade " and he's r-rather good 
 with horses." 
 
 " I've got other plans for P. J. Between you and me, 
 Straker, Torrington's fed-up with being indoors. And I 
 can't very well have a V.C. for Adjutant. He wants to go 
 back to a battery. My opinion is that he's too ill to command
 
 Men and Horses 125 
 
 one: still, I'm going to try P. J. in the Orderly Room. He's 
 been running offices all his life, and he ought to be able to 
 pick up the work ..." 
 
 Arrived at No. 6, Brunswick Terrace, the flat which Peter 
 and Patricia had taken when they gave up the house in Lowndes 
 Square, the Weasel led way up the one flight of stairs, and 
 pushed open the front -door into a rather ornate hall. They 
 peeled off their mackintoshes ; hung caps and canes on the 
 crowded hat-stand ; and walked into the drawing-room. 
 
 Alice Stark and Patricia were sitting on the sofa under 
 the rose-curtained window. In front of a small fire, stood 
 Peter miraculously without a cigar. Jack Baynet, a little 
 aged by ten months of active service, lounged in a big arm- 
 chair, glass at his side, talking to Bromley. 
 
 " Filthy stuff that new Boche gas," he was saying . . . 
 " Hello, Straker. Congratulations on getting your com- 
 mission . . ." He got up and the two shook hands. " Lucky 
 devil not to have been in that last show up at Wipers. The 
 Zouaves sneaked most of our horses when they panicked ..." 
 
 The five men began talking ' gas ' which had just been 
 employed for the first time. Soon, Alice joined them ; leaving 
 Patricia alone. 
 
 Looking at the five in khaki, listening to the military 
 'shop,' she could not help contrasting that evening with 
 one, over a year ago, when she had entertained Jack and her 
 father in the big drawing-room at Lowndes Square. Peter, 
 she remembered, had been in Hamburg. And now, Peter 
 was a soldier. They lived in a different world : a world of 
 new values. Somehow, she felt years younger. 
 
 "If it hadn't have been for the Canadians, the Boche . . ." 
 she heard her brother's voice calmly detailing undreamed of 
 heroisms. 
 
 A world of new values, of wider horizons 1 And for sign 
 of it she, Patricia Jackson, the most reasonable of young 
 women, had fallen in love with her own husband. She 
 wanted to surrender herself to him, just once, body and soul, 
 utterly, absolutely to tell him that she was his his his 
 woman to do with as he would. . . . 
 
 Patricia reined in imagination as a rough-rider reins back 
 a pulling horse. 
 
 " They just stuffed their handkerchiefs over their mouths 
 and hung on. Discipline ? That's what I call discipline 
 just hanging on." 
 
 " You'll be fighting in respirators next." The Weasel's 
 voice interrupted her brother's story.
 
 126 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Imagination got away with her again. Happy? Yes, 
 in a way she was happy. Only . . . Why couldn't Peter 
 realize things ; work a little less strenuously. He took 
 soldiering as he had taken business. It absorbed him. When 
 he mounted his horse of a morning Driver Jelks holding 
 out the stirrup his face wore the old ' office look '. . . . 
 Of an evening, he studied his new profession. . . . And, of 
 course, he was smoking too much. . . . The children eaid 
 daddy was worried. How did they know ? . . . Perhaps he 
 still regretted Nirvana. . . Oh, why couldn't she console him 
 time, time flew and soon, a black hand must stretch out 
 across the sea, take him from her perhaps for ever. . . . 
 
 " You're looking very serious, Mrs. P. J.," Bromley 
 lounged across to her. 
 
 " Am I ? " she smiled at him. 
 
 " You won't desert us when we go into camp, Mrs. P. J. ?" 
 He pulled gravely at his moustaches. " I was just wonder- 
 ing if you'd help me with the Mess. Colonel says men 
 are no good at these things. You might help a fellow, 
 Mrs. P. J. ? " 
 
 " Why don't you get Mutton's to do the whole thing for 
 you, Mr. Bromley? " 
 
 " Colonel says we ought to do it ourselves. It trains the 
 cooks, you see. But / don't know much about it. In South 
 Africa, we ate when we could. ..." 
 
 They began a grave discussion on crockery, mess-furniture, 
 groceries, the wine-cellar : a discussion which lasted till the 
 party broke up. Jack Baynet had taken a room at the 
 Metropole ; walked home with Alice and her husband. 
 Bromley and Straker stayed for a last drink ; departed 
 together. 
 
 "Rather amusing, I thought," commented Peter to 
 his wife "that first meeting between your brother and 
 Mrs. Weasel. She looked as though she'd like to kiss 
 him." 
 
 " My dear Peter ..." 
 
 " Well, didn't she ? " 
 
 Patricia looked her husband straight in the face. Thep 
 she said very deliberately : " You don't know much about 
 women, old thing. Alice is madly in love with the Colonel. 
 She'd no more dream of letting another man kiss her than " 
 a pause " I should." 
 
 She marched out of the room, gold head high. 
 
 " Wonder what's worrying Pat ? " thought Peter, as he 
 picked a small cigar from the box on the mantelpiece ; took
 
 Men and Horses 127 
 
 up his ' Manual of Field Engineering/ and began to study 
 section 39, Cover for Artillery. 
 
 4 
 
 Nevertheless, Patricia enjoyed those weeks at Brighton, 
 the surreptitious rides on government horses provided by 
 Torrington, the occasional visits to 'morning stables,' the 
 talks with Alice, the convivial tea-parties at her own flat. 
 
 One by one, she grew acquainted with most of Peter's 
 brother-officers : with Lodden, always irascible, querulous, 
 good-natured but utterly lacking in self-control ; with the 
 semi-invalid but still bloodthirsty Torrington ; with ' Brat ' 
 Archdale and horsy Hutchinson ; with the ever-twinkling 
 Pettigrew and his particular pal Conway, a riotous black- 
 haired six-foot fellow from the Federated Malay States, who 
 used to say, " Believe me, Mrs. P. J., we'll make that husband 
 of yours see life before we've done with him." 
 
 Good days ! and even when the Brigade moved out to 
 Happy Valley, the good days continued. 
 
 Patricia used to motor over in the Crossley, sometimes with 
 Alice (who stayed on alone in Brighton) or the children, some- 
 times by herself. Gunner Home and his unclean brother-cooks 
 knew her ; would bow to her judgment on such abstruse points 
 as the using-up of soup-bones in the big copper of the Officers' 
 Mess hut . (For the hutments had been built at last : Shoreham 
 Camp was a by-word no longer). Mr. Black, the keen little wax- 
 moustached Regimental-Sergeant-Ma j or, knew her ; and Ser- 
 geant Murgatroyd, the enormous rough-rider with the worsted 
 spur on his arm ; and Bombardier Pink, a trusty grizzled old 
 Yorkshireman, who supervised the fodder as if it were pure 
 gold. 
 
 By now, nearly half the horses had been decanted, pro- 
 testing vigorously, at Shoreham siding ; were picketed out in 
 long lines on the flat ground below the hutments : and 
 Patricia grew to love those sounds no horse-soldier ever for- 
 gets the whickering and the whinnying which follows the 
 command ' Feed,' the tossing of head-collars and stamp of 
 hooves on turf as nose-bag slings are slid over laid-back ears, 
 the deep snuffle of nostrils as muzzles plunge to corn. 
 
 Good days indeed ! For already the formless mob which 
 Stark had led out from billets in Brighton took shape under 
 his hand. Harness began to arrive, and water-carts, and 
 dark-green limbered waggons that stood ranged on the still 
 gunless gun-park. The Ammunition Column, that sink
 
 128 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 whereto all batteries sent their least efficient, had been formed ; 
 and a sleepy regular Major named Billy Williams, with 
 moustaches like Harry Tate and an astounding capacity for 
 bottled Bass, put in charge of it. Lodden, alternately 
 bullying and apologizing to his subalterns ' Brat ' Archdale 
 and a wild young Irishman called O'Grady commanded ' A ' 
 Battery : Torrington, V.C., with Pettigrew and Straker 
 adoring at his heels, ' B ' : Reggie Conway and the silent 
 Merrilees, still lorded it over a captainless ' C ' : while ' Don ' 
 Battery, usually known from its three juniors, Hutchinson, 
 Hall and Halliday, as the 'three H affair,' still awaited a 
 master by general prophecy, Bromley, then away on his 
 gunnery-course at Larkhill. 
 
 Peter Jackson, master of men since boyhood, saw this 
 new entity growing; began, in his pride of it, to forget civilian 
 troubles. Stark, true to his words with Straker, had taken 
 P. J. into the Orderly Room not yet as Adjutant, but 
 only on probation. 
 
 To Conway or Pettigrew, outdoor fellows, the work would 
 have been dull, desk-tying : but for one brought up in the 
 City, the employment had its fascination. P. J., assisted 
 by the meticulous R.G.A. clerk, Sergeant Barber, ran his 
 Orderly Room as he would have run a business filing- 
 systems, card-indices, a diminutive stenographer (picked un- 
 willingly from the Ammunition Column), typewriters. . . . 
 And, the day's work over, there was always Driver Jelks 
 waiting with ' Little Willie ' (as Peter christened the frisky 
 wicked-looking bay which Hutchinson had selected for him), 
 and a long kicking scamper across the Downs, and Driver 
 Garton, his red-cheeked yellow-haired orderly, waiting with 
 hot water for the rubber bath in the bare wooden cubicle 
 which Peter, by right of his position on ' H. Q./ occupied 
 alone. 
 
 One by one, other officers joined them : Percy Rorke, a 
 pert lad, fresh from school, christened by common accord, 
 ' Monkey-face ' : a jovial Irish doctor, Ted Carson by name : 
 a few undistinguished subalterns whom Stark sent to plague 
 Billy Williams in the B.A.C. 
 
 Purves, as Orderly Officer to the Colonel, began to pick 
 his Headquarters Staff : Corporal Waller (' Lewis ' Waller of 
 course) who had been a telephonist in private life ; Gunners 
 Seabright and Pirbright (bosom friends, constantly scrapping, 
 known by their intimates as ' the Poluskis '), Driver Nicholson 
 (a wireless operator by profession) and the rest. 
 
 So May warmed towards June, and the remarkable days
 
 Men and Horses 129 
 
 slid by. The Brigade grew not even Stark realized exactly 
 how towards efficiency. If only they could get one just 
 one real i8-pounder gun ! But that was denied them ; so 
 volunteer parties of officers and men would take waggon on 
 Saturday afternoons to Preston Barracks at Brighton, and 
 there pay limber-gunners good half-crowns for the privilege 
 of half-an-hour's peering through real dial-sights, half-an- 
 hour's clicking at ' practice ' breech-blocks. 
 
 They took their work in deadly earnest, these stubborn 
 North Countrymen ; studied their gun-drill pamphlets by 
 themselves ; were ill folk to discipline by such officers as they 
 suspected deficient in knowledge. 
 
 But even Stark's most ruby language they accepted with 
 a smile. He knew his job ! 
 
 5 
 
 To Peter, sitting alone at his wooden table in the bare 
 Orderly Room hut one evening, monthly list of promotions 
 before him, cloud of cigar-smoke round his head, came 
 Bombardier Pitman clean-shaven, lantern-jawed, destined 
 to succeed Sergeant Barber, whose duties would take him 
 to the Base once the Brigade reached France, in his clerkdom. 
 
 " There's an Infantry officer asking for you, sir," said the 
 Bombardier in broadest Yorkshire. 
 
 " Ask him to come in." 
 
 There entered Peabody of the Chalkshires, grin on brown 
 face. 
 
 " My word, P. J. you are a swell ! " 
 
 " Think so ! " Peter looked up from his list. A few 
 subalterns from the Chalkshires, encamped just over the hill, 
 visited him from time to tune : Arkwright, even, had once 
 sungina Brigade concert, got up by Purves and Conway, who 
 had imported free talent from as far away as the Brighton 
 Hippodrome. 
 
 " Rather ! " Peabody threw cap and cane on the bare 
 floor ; drew himself up a chair ; lit a cigarette. " I thought 
 you'd like to hear about Locksley beg his pardon, Locksley- 
 Jones, Mister Locksley- Jones. No longer 'Captain and 
 Adjutant,' you will observe." 
 
 Bromley, just back from Larkhill, lounged through the 
 door in time to hear part of the last sentence. 
 
 " What's that about Locksley ? " 
 
 "Got the boot," said Peabody laconically. 
 
 " How ? " asked the two Gunners simultaneously. 
 
 l
 
 130 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Nobody quite knows. One day he was in the Orderly 
 Room and the next, he just wasn't. Of course, there have 
 been heaps of rumours. . . . The C.O. gave us one of his 
 pi-jaws yesterday you know the way the old man lisps 
 when he lectures all about ' the honour of the regiment.' 
 I think he knows pretty well what Locksley has been doing, 
 because he said rather decent of him I thought : ' Of course, 
 I understand some of you have had a good deal to put up with.' 
 ... I believe," Peabody shook his young head, "that there 
 must have been something wrong with the battalion accounts." 
 
 " Then he ought to have been court -martialled ! " 
 
 Bromley nodded confirmation of Peter's epitaph on 
 Locksley 's career. " Come up to the Mess and have a drink, 
 kid," he added to the infantryman. The three walked out ; 
 up the steep dry slope of turf to the Mess hut. 
 
 Various officers were disposed about the big deal-boarded 
 room : Lodden, in front of the cold stove, was cursing to 
 Billy Williams about the Lusitania " Oh, I dunno," purred 
 the big Major, " what do you expect of Germans ? " ' Brat ' 
 Archdale and ' Monkey-face ' lounged in two huge arm-chairs, 
 sipping manfully at their vermouths : Merrilees, in another 
 chair, studied Italy's declaration of war in the Daily Chronicle 
 with wrinkled brows. From the officers' huts across the 
 grass came the alternating buzz of two telephone transmitters 
 Conway and Purves talking to each other in Morse. 
 
 " I say," announced Peabody shyly, when the three had 
 settled down to their drinks, " what I came over for was this. 
 Slattery you remember him he's our new Adj. wants 
 you two to come over and dine at our Mess to-morrow. Now 
 that Locksley's gone. . . ." 
 
 He let the prepared speech trail off into silence. 
 
 " But what about the C.O. ? " asked Bromley. 
 
 "I think" Peabody very nearly blushed "it was the 
 C.O. who suggested it to Slattery." 
 
 Next evening when they rode over the Chalkshire Mess 
 was a bare six hundred yards away, but as Gunners it became 
 the pair to arrive mounted Private Haddock, in full khaki 
 and equipment, stood sentry in the roadway ; banged hand 
 against rifle-stock, and beamed ecstatically as they slid from 
 their horses. Arkwright, three stars on his arm, schoolmaster 
 stoop more pronounced than ever, met them outside the hut ; 
 led them in, as an ambassador conducting distinguished 
 foreigners.
 
 Men and Horses 131 
 
 And somewhat as foreigners they were received : shyly 
 by Colonel Andrews, unemotionally by Simcox, bluffly by 
 Major Mosely. There was a feeling of stiffness in the air. 
 Outwardly the mere entertainment of two junior subalterns ; 
 inwardly, the ceremony betokened reconciliation, an acknow- 
 ledgment that the loth Chalkshires had a debt to pay, were 
 paying it. 
 
 Nobody mentioned Locksley ; no one proposed a toast ; 
 but all the faces down the two long tables seemed conscious of 
 a special occasion ; and when, after the arrival of the port, 
 senior officers withdrew, there came one after the other 
 this old acquaintance and that, all insisting that the pair 
 must drink with them, all remembering, as men will, six- 
 month-old regimental trifles, details of early days : " Do you 
 remember Simcox in his pyjamas that night we were flooded 
 out of the old Camp ? " " And the old buffer at the Worthing 
 Club who always said, ' Now then, boys, just a little wet before 
 you go home.' ..." 
 
 A great white moon burned over the tin roofs of the 
 hutments as the two mounted their horses ; walked them 
 slowly across the sleeping camp towards Happy Valley. 
 
 " I always said " Bromley broke silence gravely " that, 
 except for Locksley, there was nothing wrong with the old 
 Chalkshires. They're a jolly fine crowd now. And when 
 we do go out . . ." 
 
 " If we ever get out," from Peter. 
 
 "They'll give a good account of themselves. Curious, 
 isn't it, that if it hadn't been for that fellow, we might still 
 be with ' B ' Company. Both captains, perhaps." 
 
 They dismounted ; led their horses groom following 
 down the hill. 
 
 "Did you realize when we transferred," asked Peter, 
 voicing a thought that had just arisen for the first time in his 
 mind, "that one would be more comfortable, safer perhaps 
 in the Gunners ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " More did I. But all those chaps seemed to think so. 
 I wonder if it's true." 
 }fl " I should doubt it." 
 
 Both were destined to remember that conversation, in 
 the very near future, at the Disaster of Loos !
 
 PART XIII 
 CONCENTRATIONS 
 
 A WOMAN may forget her love, a child its mother, 
 but no Gunner ever quite forgets his first long 
 route-march the clink of chain and the thop of 
 hooves on the roadway, crunch of wheels and rattle 
 of waggons, the men's faces on the limbers, the smoke of their 
 cigarettes curling into the air. 
 
 It was early June when the Fourth Southdown Brigade 
 left Shoreham for its final concentration at Aldershot ; and 
 for three sun-drenched days the mile-long column rolled on its 
 way, inland from the sea, across the swelling weald, by white 
 cottages where children waved and cheered, through sleepy 
 villages and woods damp with early dews, halting to water 
 at shallow pools on green commons, rolling on again in the 
 warm glow of afternoon, horse-heads nodding in unison, traces 
 taut, ' numbers one ' riding proudly behind their waggons. 
 
 True, they had no guns as yet : true that Lodden's water- 
 cart overturned on the steep upward slope out of Happy 
 Valley : true that Stark growled at them for clumsy tailors : 
 that fat Doctor Carson, red-cheeked and nearly white-haired, 
 fifty if a day, grew so stiff he could hardly climb to horse : 
 still, they were moving, moving slowly towards the job for 
 which each had joined, Active Service. 
 
 For these were volunteers, still eager for adventure : 
 and though, in after days, theie came the time when realiza- 
 tion turned that eagerness to misery unutterable, to horror 
 and the fear of maimings nevertheless the spirit lived on, 
 dour, untameable, ultimate arbiter of the world's destinies. 
 
 Those three days, even unemotional Peter felt the uplift 
 of the game. Little Willie danced and pranced, tossing 
 his white silk head-rope, shaking at bit-chain ; the Doctor, 
 riding stiffly on a broad roan mare, cracked time-worn jokes, 
 pulled steadily at his whisky-filled water-bottle ; Purves, 
 trotting up and down the column, knees still a little uncertain 
 against the saddle-wallets, made the passing of Stark 's simplest 
 order into a full-dress parade.
 
 Concentrations 133 
 
 Behind them, came the Headquarters Staff Mr. Black, 
 very gorgeous in high-collared tunic and Sam Browne belt, 
 vast revolver at his side ; Corporal Waller puffing at a pipe ; 
 Seabright and Pirbright back-chatting interminably ; and 
 the rest talking, smoking, not very certain in their laden 
 saddles, feed-bags bumping against horses' sides, rifle- 
 buckets creaking, spurs jangling with stirrup-irons, signal- 
 flags shaking in their long carriers, telephone-cases thumping 
 against brass buckles of newly-polished bandoliers. . . . 
 
 Something in the continuous movement of it all, in their 
 aloofness from everyday life, jolted Peter's mind for the 
 first time since he had set forth, subaltern of an hour, from 
 Lowndes Square clean out of the commercial groove in 
 which it had so long been running. He forgot the old things, 
 remembered only the new. His chagrin at the loss of Nirvana 
 found healing. Behind, rolled this new entity which he was 
 helping to create an entity of flesh and steel and the open 
 air. Ahead, lay adventure. . . . 
 
 Their last night, Stark and Peter slept at the Lion Hotel 
 in Guildf ord ; took dinner with Brigadier Blacklock, Gunner- 
 General of the old School, a little pompous before his port, 
 very geniaj. thereafter. Murchison, the eager toothbrush- 
 moustached Brigade-Major was there, and Coolsdon, their 
 affable Staff -Captain, clean-shaven, merry of eye neither 
 supremely efficient, but both gorgeous in red tabs ; and 
 Colonel Mallory who, despite his three-score years and ten, 
 refused to relinquish command of the Divisional Ammunition 
 Column. 
 
 Talk ran on ' the Regiment ' ; on Gunners dead and 
 buried while Mallory was but a captain and Blacklock his 
 unruly subaltern on Gunners in Malta or Mauritius, at 
 Omdurman and the Tugela and Kandahar on Gunners 
 stellenbosched and Gunners promoted : till it seemed to Peter, 
 warm with port and soothed with fragrant smoke, that he was 
 already member of a great family, jolly fellows all, who homed 
 in Woolwich and roamed the world. . . . 
 
 " Going to make that chap your Adjutant, Stark ? " asked 
 Blacklock, as the two smoked a final cigarette on the hotel steps. 
 
 j" I think so, General." 
 
 " Well, you might do worse. He knows how to hold his 
 tongue, anyway." 
 
 2 
 
 And the next day the Fourth Brigade wound slowly across 
 the bridge, past the lake and under the fir trees, till their
 
 134 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 wheels raised the soft dust along the path-road to Deepcut 
 Barracks. 
 
 Alice and Patricia and Peter's children watched them 
 as they came. To the children, it was all excitement ; they 
 waved to the horsemen, to the dusty limber-gunners trudging 
 the little slope. Better than lead soldiers, these real play- 
 things 1 But to the two women, the end seemed very near. 
 
 Each in her own way ; grave, the one with her white- 
 f rocked daughters beside her ; moist -eyed the other, thinking 
 of her child to be ; they resented this new world, that would 
 so soon tear their men-folk from them, leaving nothing to 
 hope for save the comfort of pencilled letters, the joy of 
 snatched 'leaves,' and always, defying comfort, lurking 
 behind joy, fear the fear of the telegram. 
 
 3 
 
 Very often, through that June and July of 1915, Patricia 
 regretted her decision to share house with Alice. Their red- 
 brick villa among the dusty pine-trees held no chance of 
 privacy : always, it seemed to Patricia, horses and grooms 
 waited by the laurels before its door ; always, came visitors 
 of a morning, of an afternoon, of an evening, to the com- 
 munal lunch-table, to tea, and drinks af ter'tea, to dinner, and 
 drinks after dinner. 
 
 No privacy ! It seemed to her as though they lived at a 
 boarding-house, of which she were proprietress, Peter only 
 an occasional guest. 
 
 For now, work crowded on the Brigade Office. Guns 
 were arriving, dial-sights, bill-hooks, axes, clinometers, mess- 
 floats, lumbering G.S. waggons, telephones and telephone- 
 wire, signalling-lamps, hand-saws, artificer's tools, drag-ropes 
 and fuze-keys. Night after night, Mr. Black bent over the 
 closing Equipment Ledgers, checked off newly arrived stores 
 on the fat blue Army Form G. 1098, which set out the whole 
 complicated scroll of the artilleryman's killing parapher- 
 nalia. 
 
 Day by day, the long line of dark-green vehicles, ranged 
 wheel to wheel on the gravel square between the tin-roofed 
 buildings, grew longer. And still equipment poured in on 
 them. 
 
 Purves, busy with the training of his telephonists, had no 
 time for office-work ; the Colonel, except for the hour when 
 he judged prisoners, was out all day, supervising section gun- 
 drills, standing-by while subalterns stripped breech-blocks,
 
 Concentrations 135 
 
 explained shining mechanisms to solemn North Country 
 gunners, ramping round mounted parades, asking test- 
 questions here, discussing the giving of stripes there. 
 
 Office work I 
 
 Papers ! Piles upon piles of them. And the typewriters 
 clicking and tinkling. And Sergeant Barber bringing in 
 documents for signature. And Bombardier Pitman copying 
 the day's ' Orders.' And battery commanders stamping up 
 to know why this Corporal hadn't been made Sergeant or that 
 acting Bombardier promoted full Bombardier. And Coolsdon 
 running over from the red-brick Divisional Headquarters with 
 requests for someone to go over and see the General. 
 
 Accounts! Bank-books and cheque-books. The Ser- 
 geants' Mess. Grocery allowances and sales of manure. Can- 
 teen rebates. Credits for bones from the cook-house and 
 debits for imprests. Games allowances and allowances for 
 ' jumps.' 
 
 Summaries of evidence 1 With the prisoner, cap off, 
 standing to attention, and the witnesses repeating their tales. 
 " No. 70239 paid acting Bombardier JENKINS, F., ' B ' 
 Battery, 4th Southdown Brigade, sworn, states : ' At Deepcut 
 on the night of 2gth June. . . .' " Court Martial Sentences ! 
 The Brigade drawn up in hollow square, the Adjutant 
 reading out the confirmation. . . . 
 
 Small wonder that Little Willie waxed fat among his 
 stable-companions ; that he kicked and pranced when Jelks 
 rode him to exercise of a morning, till ' Queen Bess,' the black 
 and sober second charger, reared at her leading-rein. 
 
 Small wonder if our Mr. Jackson forgot, in his concentration 
 on the immediate job, the job which he had left behind him. 
 
 4 
 
 Reminder, a blow straight between the eyes, took the form 
 of an ' Express ' letter, addressed in Simpson's crabby hand- 
 writing and brought over from the Orderly Room to the 
 crowded Mess where Peter was snatching tea. He slipped it, 
 unopened, into his tunic-pocket, went on talking to Torring- 
 ton and Bromley. 
 
 Torrington, far too ill to go out, but determined not to 
 stop at home, his pale face white with overwork, his eyes 
 pin-pointy, was expostulating about the non-promotion to 
 warrant -rank of his acting Battery-Sergeant-Ma j or : Bromley, 
 newly promoted Captain to command ' D ' Battery, wanted 
 to know how soon they would be doing their firing practice.
 
 136 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 All down the long table Billy Williams and Lodden 
 wrangling at its head men chattered, cups clinked, flies 
 hurled themselves at the covered jam-pots. From the near- 
 by road, came the jingle of teams returning, the hoot of 
 General Blacklock's car. 
 
 " Time I was getting back," said Peter. 
 
 He passed out through the low ante-room ; picked up 
 his cap ; clinked across the gravel, up the two wooden stairs 
 into the office. The day's Orders awaited signature on his 
 desk : he signed them ; shouted for Driver Norris, the 
 stenographer ; handed him the six copies ; sat down ; took 
 the letter from his pocket ; opened it. 
 
 Half way through, he put the crabbed sheets on the table ; 
 took out his case and lit a cigar. Then he finished the letter ; 
 read it through again. 
 
 "Hell," said our Mr. Jackson. "Hell! . . ." 
 
 The tale, as related by Simpson, resolved itself into a 
 very ordinary swindle. Hartopp, as the naturalized German 
 Hagenburg called himself, had placed a big order for Beck- 
 mann cigars ; shipped the goods to Amsterdam before pay- 
 ment became due . . . and followed them on the next 
 steamer. HeTiad, as he wrote with the effrontery of his race 
 to Simpson, not the slightest intention of returning to England 
 or paying for the goods till Germany had won the war. 
 
 For the first time in his business career, Peter knew the 
 inclination to panic. Thought stampeded. Why should 
 this happen ? And at such a time ? Blast all Huns ! 
 Simpson never ought to have trusted Hagenburg. He, Peter, 
 had always warned him that Hagenburg was a wrong 'un. 
 This was the result of serving one's country. Damn one's 
 country! Other people didn't worry about their ruddy 
 country. Look at Rawlings the patriot in the bowler hat. 
 To hell with Rawlings. . . . 
 
 He pulled himself together ; stuffed away his emotions 
 into that waste-paper basket of the brain which scientists 
 call the subconscious mind. Now, thought came consecu- 
 tively. 
 
 Simpson gave no figure of loss : but the last time Peter 
 was in Lime Street, Hagenburg's account stood at five thou- 
 sand. Simpson had spoken of larger orders pending. There- 
 fore the loss must be more than five thousand. Eight ? 
 Ten, perhaps? Jackson's could just stand ten. Only just. 
 Simpson appeared panicky. He had better go up to town and 
 see Simpson. 
 
 Peter pulled a telegraph pad towards him ; wrote a
 
 Concentrations 137 
 
 deliberate wire to Simpson's private address at Harrow ; 
 called " Driver Norris ! " 
 
 A bullet head poked itself in at the doorway, said " Yes, 
 sir." 
 
 " Go and find Driver Jelks. Tell him to take a bicycle 
 and get this wire off sharp. Then go over to the Mess ; find 
 Mr. Purves ; ask him if he'd mind coming over to see me for 
 a minute Do you understand ? " 
 
 '." Yes, sir. Very good, sir." 
 
 A few minutes later Purves, with a mock salute and a 
 
 drawled, " Did'st send for me, P. J. ? " came into the room. 
 
 ^" I say, old man, I've got to go up to town to-morrow " 
 
 it will be noticed that Peter took Stark's leave for granted 
 
 " so you'll have to cancel that telephone parade of yours." 
 
 "Oh, I say . . ." 
 
 "Sorry. I'll be back in the evening. It's rather im- 
 portant." 
 
 " Nothing serious, I hope." Purves noticed that P. J.'s 
 voice was a trifle grim. 
 
 " Oh, no. Just something in the City that needs my 
 personal attention." 
 
 Neither that night, as the four sat down to their usual 
 set rubber, nor next morning as she drove him in the Crossley 
 to Farnborough station, did Patricia put off with the same 
 explanation suspect the unpalatable truth. 
 
 5 
 
 ..The Lime Street offices had altered but little. They 
 seemed as Peter, booted and spurred, clinked through the 
 doorway a shade gloomier, a shade dustier. A tumble- 
 haired office-girl occupied Parkins' reception-box. No George 
 pensioned six months since pottered about the cigar- 
 racks. The piles of boxes had shrunk to mere remnants 
 of their cedar selves. But otherwise the place was unchanged ; 
 looked the same, smelt the same as the first day Peter 
 had joined his father in the city. 
 
 Only Simpson, sitting in the dark back-room, had become 
 an old man ! He seemed to have shrunk : lines streaked his 
 face, white hairs his beard. At sight of him, Peter's anger 
 evaporated. ' Poor old Tom,' he thought, ' poor old Tom ! ' 
 
 " It was good of you to come up at once." The old man 
 looked at the soldier, drew a little comfort from his obvious 
 strength. " This has been my fault, right from the start. 
 You were always against giving the fellow credit. I was
 
 138 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 talking to my missis about it last night, after your wire came 
 and she thinks I think as it's all my fault that I ought 
 to stand the whole loss . . ." 
 
 Peter turned away to hide his feelings ; made great play 
 of hanging up cap and cane. The offer touched him keenly. 
 It was fine the offer of a white man. But . . . 
 
 /"Don't be an ass, Tom. I'm just as responsible as 
 you are." The face above the khaki collar shewed no trace 
 of emotion. 
 
 Simpson protested ; was cut short with a curt, " Forget 
 it, Tom. I wouldn't let you stand more than your share if 
 you were worth a million. All I came up for, was to see if I 
 could be of any use." 
 
 " There's nothing much to be done, Peter. The man's 
 gone ; the cigars are gone ; the money's gone." 
 
 " Can't we bring an action in the Dutch courts ? " 
 
 " He'll be over the border by now ; selling the stuff in 
 Germany. It'll be worth a small fortune over there. Per- 
 haps it serves me right forgoing on dealing with Beckmann's. 
 Probably they put him up to it. There have been some ugly 
 rumours about the Beckmann firm lately. I didn't want 
 to worry you with them. But people say young Albert gave 
 a dinner-party to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania. I 
 wrote to them about it . Of course, they denied it . Here " 
 he pulled a document from the basket on his desk ; handed it 
 to Peter. 
 
 The document, a statement sworn before the British 
 Consul in Havana, contradicted the rumour, "that either 
 Senor Albert Beckmann and/or any member of the Cuban 
 firm of Beckmann y Campania had ever adopted a policy 
 hostile to Great Britain and/or her Allies, and specifically 
 that they had never celebrated in any way the sinking of the 
 Lusitania ..." 
 
 ' It reads like a lie," said Peter. 
 ' It is a lie," said Simpson. 
 ' And what are we going to do about it ? " 
 ' About Hagenburg ? " 
 
 ' No. About Beckmann's." Peter's voice grew steely. 
 " We must cut 'em out, Tom. Not another case. Do you 
 agree ? " 
 
 The older man hesitated a moment. "Supposing they 
 ship their goods to someone else." 
 
 " Let 'em, Tom. Let 'em. When I come back after this 
 show's over, it won't be to buy goods from any dirty Hun 
 Cuban or otherwise. You're with me ? Right. Then let's
 
 Concentrations 139 
 
 get down to business. How much has this bastard done us in 
 the eye for ? " 
 
 " About nine thousand five hundred." 
 
 "Phew." Peter whistled. "Let's get out the private 
 ledger and see exactly how we stand." 
 
 For half-an-hour, they pored over the cold figures. 
 
 "It means," said Peter, summing them up, "that we're 
 worth about fourteen thousand pounds a-piece. Lucky 
 you didn't have a Nirvana of your own, Tom. What ? 
 Question now is : Can we run this business on a capital of 
 twenty-eight thousand ? " 
 
 "I think so. We've got five thou. on deposit ; and the 
 Bank will lend us the rest. Goods are selling almost as soon 
 as they arrive, too. That'll help." 
 
 " We shall have to cut our drawings down, though. At 
 least I shall. You always were economical. . . ." 
 
 They settled, after some discussion, on 750 a year each, 
 the firm to pay and debit Peter's account with his insurance 
 policies ; and Peter, with a final : " Now for God's sake, 
 don't worry, Tom," went back to Aldershot. 
 
 " Did you get your business settled all right, dear?" asked 
 Patricia, meeting him in the dusk. 
 
 " Quite all right, old thing." He climbed aboard ; and 
 she swung the car round the big station square. " I wanted 
 to talk to Simpson about your allowance while I was away," 
 went on the man. 
 
 She recognised half truth from the tone of his voice. " Oh, 
 the kids and I won't want much," she said, switching gear- 
 lever into top. . . . 
 
 That night, for the only tune Patricia could remember, 
 she woke to hear her husband murmuring vaguely in his 
 sleep. . . . Her father could have told her that it was the 
 subconscious mind waste-paper basket of the brain striving 
 to eject its suppressed emotions. 
 
 6 
 
 And P. J. went back to his work a little dourer ; a shade 
 less patient ; rather more inclined to drop over to the Mess for 
 a cocktail at n o'clock ; to stay there for lunch, and sit 
 about in the ante-room, before going home to his dinner, 
 listening to Bromley's grave surmises and the laughter from 
 the billiard-room where the Brat and Monkey-face played 
 perpetual fives on the dilapidated table. 
 
 In his own way, as a pal, as a partner, Peter ' loved '
 
 140 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 his wife ; admired her ; felt towards her the protective in- 
 stinct of average male to average female. Had she been 
 altogether away fronThim in those days, he would probably 
 have missed her presence acutely. But knowing her waiting 
 for him just round the corner; feeling that he had 'let her 
 down ' (as he phrased the comparatively small allowance to 
 which she agreed so cheerfully) ; anxious above all things to 
 avoid the sentimentalities of departure ; the man withdrew 
 himself, confined their intercourse to the commonplaces of 
 matrimony. 
 
 All Patricia's real love for her husband, all the yearning 
 to take him in her arms, make him understand that in good 
 luck or evil she was his, his mate against the world, suffered 
 and suffered damnably. She grew to envy Alice, Alice with 
 the easily suffused eyes and the child in her womb. She even 
 grew to resent her own children, their perpetual, ' Daddy's 
 going to France to kill Germans.' 
 
 But neither the mate nor the mother in Patricia flinched : 
 as pal or as playmate, she did her duty, laughter on her lips, 
 gold head high. 
 
 7 
 
 July spun into August. 
 
 The Brigade went to Salisbury Plain for its final firing 
 practice : guns barked, buried their trails for the first time, 
 slid back on their cradles, barked again. 
 
 The Brigade came back rather pleased with itself to 
 Deepcut ; waited in the drizzle of morning for Lord Kitchener ; 
 rode past him eyes righted, whips over, useless swords 
 dropped edge to knee. 
 
 The Brigade took part in a comic field-day, guns firing 
 blank cartridges from a belt of fir-trees, red telephone-wires 
 festooning the heather, infantry sending back impossible 
 messages from impossible trenches. The Brigade watched, 
 wide-eyed, while a bearded man in khaki and two ladies stood 
 chatting to Torrington at 'B ' Battery's No. I gun-pit. The 
 Brigade heard one of the ladies say to him : " My poor boy, 
 my poor boy. And you're really going out a second time." 
 The Brigade nicknamed its V.C. ' Mary's poor boy.' 
 
 The Brigade swilled beer and smoked endless Woodbines 
 at battery concerts in the great tin recreation-hut above the 
 barrack-square. The Brigade sewed its field-dressings into 
 its tunics. The Brigade took its farewell leaves. The 
 Brigade was organised and re-organised ; promoted its
 
 Concentrations 141 
 
 efficient subalterns to full lieutenancies, replaced its in- 
 efficients. The Brigade was re-vaccinated with 'para- 
 typhoid ' by Doctor Carson who had somehow persuaded 
 the A.D.M.S. 1 to allow him overseas. The Brigade listened 
 to harangues from its Colonel ; watched its younger officers 
 taxi to Farnborough station for their last ' bust ' in town. 
 The Brigade stole its final trifles from Ordinance. The 
 Brigade suffered Major Lethbridge, a weary, dreary old man, 
 to assume command of ' C ' Battery. The Brigade fetched its 
 ammunition. The Brigade came to its last day in England. 
 
 8 
 
 Four fifteen p.m. ! A gray August afternoon. Peter, 
 confirmed in his Adjutancy, cigar in mouth, stood on the steps 
 of the office-hut. Behind him gutted to the last paper, 
 barrack-damages assessed, cash-books balanced, wrapped and 
 addressed to Cox's, stationery-box packed, safe open lay the 
 Orderly Room. In front, the gun-park shewed a serried. mass 
 of vehicles the spidery Headquarters telephone-waggon, 
 wires gleaming red on their drums, black and white poles 
 poking out behind ; fat mess-floats, loaded and overloaded ; 
 A.S.C. waggons, piled high with fodder and biscuit-boxes, 
 tarpaulin-topped ; low limbered ammunition-waggons, 
 mackintoshes strapped to their seats, heavy with fodder-bales, 
 new saws in their leather cases yellow against dark-green 
 paint ; guns, covers shrouding breech and muzzle, canvas 
 water-buckets and grease-boxes dangling from hooked-in 
 limbers. . . . 
 
 Peter heard the hoot of a horn from the roadway past the 
 Mess ; a car streaked up to the Orderly Room. Out of it 
 dashed an excited Staff officer from Divisional Headquarters. 
 
 " Good afternoon, sir." Peter saluted. 
 
 " Afternoon. Afternoon . Your Colonel in ? " said Colonel 
 Starcross, a heavy man, white with rage, shaking with excite- 
 ment, perspiration beading lined forehead under gold-rimmed 
 cap-peak. 
 
 " No, sir. He's at home." 
 
 "At home I At home, good God, on an afternoon like 
 this 1 Why hasn't your first half battery started ? Good 
 God, why hasn't it started yet ? . . ." 
 
 Peter looked calmly at his wrist-watch. " First half of 
 Don Battery hooks-in at 4.30, sir. Head of column passes 
 barrack-gates at 4.50 pip emma." 
 
 1 Assistant Director of Medical Services.
 
 142 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Christ in Heaven ! You'll never be in time. The Third 
 Brigade's not entrained yet. Half the traffic of the South of 
 England's disorganised. Colonel Brasenose ought to be 
 relieved of his command relieved of his command, I tell 
 you." 
 
 " This isn't Colonel Brasenose's brigade, sir," said Peter 
 stiffly. 
 
 Colonel Starcross stamped on the gravel : " Don't argue 
 with me, young man. Don't argue with me. Go and turn 
 your men out. Turn 'em out, damn it." 
 
 "It's exactly four-thirty, sir," announced Peter im- 
 perturbably. Even as he spoke, they heard Bromley's whistle, 
 saw him striding, fully equipped, across the gun-park. Came 
 now, from their tin stables, two by two, drivers between, the 
 harnessed teams. Came, at the double, the dismounted men, 
 filled haversacks flopping at their sides. . . . Five minutes of 
 crisp commands, backing horses, bobbing heads, bending 
 bodies. 
 
 " Ready, Sergeant-Major ? " Bromley's voice rang clear 
 across the turmoil. 
 
 " Ready, sir." 
 
 " Stand to your horses." The ex-cavalryman swung to his 
 saddle. 
 
 " Prepare to mount." Boots grope for stirrups, hands 
 clutch saddle-peaks and limber-rails. 
 
 " Mount ! " Bodies rise and turn ; saddles creak ; 
 hooves protest ; chains jingle. Bodies drop to their places ; 
 fidget for a second ; sit stiffly to attention. Bromley, seeing 
 a red-gold cap on the Orderly Room stairs, shouts, "Sit at 
 ease " ; trots over ; swings up hand and elbow in the Gun- 
 ner's salute. 
 
 "Right Section, Don Battery, Fourth Southdown 
 Brigade. May we march off, sir ? " 
 
 Colonel Starcross acknowledges the salute ; says : " Yes, 
 Yes. Do for God's sake." 
 
 " Right half Battery. Advance in column of route from the 
 right. Walk March!" 
 
 Pat of whip: zip of trace tightening: creak of wheel. 
 Slowly, the six-horse teams, the two guns and their loaded 
 waggons, file by. Last of all, swinging hand once more to the 
 salute, rides Bromley. . . . 
 
 Peter looked at his watch. " Four forty-eight pip emma, 
 sir." 
 
 Starcross looked at Peter : " What's your name, young 
 man ? "
 
 Concentrations 143 
 
 " Jackson, sir. Peter Jackson." 
 
 " Well, you may tell your Colonel, with my compliments, 
 that his Adjutant might be a damn sight worse. Sorry I 
 blinded at you. Been up four nights running." 
 
 He hopped back to the car ; streaked off down the road. 
 ' Lucky thing it wasn't Lodden's crowd,' thought Peter. 
 
 And day wore on to night. For it took eleven trains at 
 hour intervals to move the seven hundred and thirty-one 
 officers and men, the five hundred and thirty-nine horses, the 
 sixteen guns and hundred odd waggons of the old-time 
 Artillery Brigade with its Ammunition Column. 
 
 9 
 
 Eleven-thirty p.m. 1 Already, ' D ' and ' C ' Batteries, and 
 the three clumsy sections of Billy Williams' Ammunition 
 Column were away into the jingling darkness. 
 
 Peter had come home to dinner ; departed again. Up- 
 stairs at the villa, Patricia could hear Alice sobbing gently, and 
 Stark's deep voice, the parade-rasp clean gone out of it, 
 " Don't cry, sweetheart. For God's sake, don't cry. . . ." 
 
 ' I mustn't cry for Peter. Not until he's gone,' thought 
 Patricia. She tip-toed upstairs ; slipped into a cloak ; stole 
 out of the house. 
 
 The night had cleared ; stars twinkled through the fir- 
 trees as she made way down the sandy road. From the 
 General's house, and the big Mess hut, lights streaked thinly ; 
 she could hear men's voices. A soldier was singing, far off, 
 up the hillside towards Blackdown. She came to the sentry- 
 box at the gate ; passed unchallenged. 
 
 In the gun-park electric torches glowed, went out again. 
 She was aware of hooves stamping, chains jingling, men 
 moving everywhere. A hurricane-lamp, hanging at a stable- 
 doorway, shewed up the shadows of soldiers, standing to 
 shadowy horses. 
 
 She heard Torrington's voice, "'B' Battery. Prepare to 
 mount. Mount!" 
 
 Boots clapped on gravel ; shadows swung to saddles ; a 
 mare neighed. 
 
 "Column of route from the right. Walk March! Right 
 incline. Steady that leading team." 
 
 They came towards her, lumbering through the gloom ; 
 filed by. 
 
 " That you, Mrs. P. J. ? " called the first horseman. 
 
 " Yes, Captain Torrington."
 
 144 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Good luck." 
 
 " And good luck to you all." They were by now. She 
 heard a voice, " Mind that water-cart " ; heard the curse of a 
 driver as wheel shaved gate-post. Dust rolled back ; choked 
 her. . . . 
 
 ' Dear God,' she thought, ' can I stick it ? >! 
 
 Another voice hailed her. " That you, Mrs. P. J. ? I 
 suspected as much. Come to bid the hero Adjutant farewell ? " 
 It was Purves and she hated him. " He's in the Orderly 
 Room. By that light." 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Purves." 
 
 She walked very quietly to the gleaming doorway; 
 climbed the two steps ; looked in. 
 
 "Hello, old thing," said Peter. He had just opened a 
 little packet of revolver cartridges ; was slipping them into 
 the pouch of the laden Sam Browne spread out on the table 
 under the acetylene lamp. 
 
 " Bet you a fiver, I never fire any of these in anger." He 
 picked up one of the brass cylinders ; stretched it out to her. 
 " Did you see ' B 's ' first section go off ? Looked well, didn't 
 they ? " 
 
 " Yes, awfully well." She found voice somehow. 
 
 "Come and have a look at Little Willie. I've got 
 nothing to do for another hour. ..." 
 
 He took her arm as they crossed the parade-ground. Their 
 hands, touched ; clasped ; released each other. In the gloom 
 and odorous warmth of his stall, the rugged bay stamped 
 restlessly on the tiled floor, flirted with his stable head-collar. 
 Queen Bess eyed them imperturbably from the loose-box 
 railings. Peter gentled the bay ; caressing the soft muzzle 
 with his open hand. 
 
 " Some horse, my little William, isn't he ? " 
 
 /' Rather." Now she had herself well in hand. 
 
 They left the stables ; wandered arm-in-arm across the 
 gun-park ; past Divisional Office, shuttered and silent ; till 
 they stood in darkness under pine trees. 
 
 " Pat, old thing," he said suddenly, " you're not nervous 
 about my going out, are you ? " 
 
 " No," she lied, " not a bit. Only it will be rather dull 
 without you." She could feel the heart inside her thumping 
 thumping. . . . 
 
 "I'm sorry about the money, Pat. But we'll make 
 another fortune when the war's over." 
 
 "Of course, dear." Oh, but this was hell hell un- 
 utterable.
 
 Concentrations 145 
 
 " And Pat " he caught her hand, drew her towards him 
 " we've been jolly good pals, haven't we ? " 
 
 " Yes, dear," she whispered ; resting for a second in his 
 arms. 
 
 "You ought to be in bed, you know, Pat. It's very 
 late." 
 
 " Ought I ? " 
 
 " Yes." He bent down ; kissed her, quietly, tenderly, on 
 the forehead, then on the lips. She steeled herself to give no 
 cry. 
 
 "Good-bye," she whispered. "And, boy, boy, for 
 heaven's sake take care of yourself." 
 
 " Trust me ! " said our Mr. Jackson. . . . 
 
 And so they parted.
 
 PART XIV 
 PREPARE FOR ACTION ! 
 
 i 
 
 IN the middle of August 1915 exactly twelve months 
 after the majority of its members had first offered 
 themselves for service the Southdown Division pro- 
 ceeded overseas. 
 
 Uncheered, unseen save by the hyphenated agents of the 
 enemy, they sneaked away thirteen thousand infantrymen, 
 ignorant of bombing, six-weeks-equipped with the rifles they 
 should have known as a man his wife ; four thousand gunners 
 barely accustomed to their brand-new pieces ; sappers 
 uncertain of their communication duties ; A.S.C. officers 
 incapable of finding their way by map-reference ; Staffs 
 selected haphazard, with no experience of warfare's actu- 
 alities. Yet each and all confident ; imbued with the British 
 fighting spirit ; ready to make good with that spirit the 
 deficiencies of British foresight. . . . 
 
 Very quietly, as a mother shepherds the first steps of her 
 toddlers, that f orethoughted Navy one certain guardian of a 
 casual Empire shepherded her charges across the darkling 
 Channel; delivered horsemen to Le Havre, footmen to 
 Boulogne. Thence, in long trains that halted endlessly at 
 endless stations, horsemen and footmen and waggon-men 
 rolled across the flat plains of France; were decanted, 
 endlessly at endless sidings, in the valley of the Canche ; 
 billeted themselves, first Englishmen among curious French 
 peasantry, all adown the poplared valley from the walled sea- 
 crags of Montreuil-sur-Mer to the straw-thatched river-farms 
 of Beaurainville and Maresquier and Marenla-sur-Canche. 
 
 And thence after a fortnight's inactivity, varied only by 
 one amazing super-Aldershot field-day, galloped up and down 
 the stubble-slopes about the ancient mill of Sempy- the 
 Artillery, split into half brigades for war-training, marched 
 three days till they came by Aire and Lambres and Mazinghem, 
 and long-streeted Lilliers and the railway-tangles of Chocques,
 
 Prepare for Action ! 147 
 
 to their last rest-billets behind that section of the firing-line 
 which lay between the Double Grassier, the spider-tower 
 Pylons of Loos, and the tall pit -shaft buildings of Fosse 
 Eight. 
 
 2 
 
 " Well," said Torrington, " what do you think of it so far, 
 P. J. ? " 
 
 The three blond women of La Jaudrie Farm had spread 
 mattresses on the stone floor of the churn-room ; and on these, 
 curled up in their valises, candle guttering between them, the 
 two were lying. 
 
 " Can't quite make up my mind," reflected Peter. " It all 
 seems so extraordinarily casual. We've had no post, our 
 rations have been twenty-four hours late all the way up, our 
 own Staff threw most of the officers' valises off the G.Sj 
 waggons the day we started ; and as for that review we 
 did . . ." 
 
 " Oh that ! " Torrington laughed. " You'll get used to 
 the Staff when you've been out a bit longer, P. J. Mustn't 
 take 'em too seriously, you know. These Seventh Division 
 birds don't seem too bad." 
 
 "No," admitted our Mr. Jackson. "I must say that 
 Staff-Captain man knows his job. I've got quite a decent 
 shanty for H.Q." 
 
 " That little house behind the battery-positions ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Torrington fumbled under his canvas pillow ; found his 
 cigarette-case ; stretched arm and shoulder out of blankets to 
 light a Gold-flake. He looked very ill : black eyes bright with 
 fever ; pale hair damp on damp brow. The anaemic lips over 
 the prominent teeth quivered as he drew in the smoke. 
 
 " Feeling pretty rotten," he announced. 
 
 " You never ought to have come out." 
 
 " No. ... I don't suppose I'll last very long. But I 
 had to have another cut at the Boche. Besides, it doesn't 
 look well for a B.C. to hand his battery over to someone else 
 as soon as it's ordered abroad." 
 
 " Well, I think you're a damn fool," said Peter. Everyone 
 in the Divisional Artillery, from General Blacklock to his own 
 Battery-Sergeant -Major had tried and tried in vain to keep 
 Torrington at home. 
 
 " Possibly. It's this marching that does me in. I'm as 
 stiff as the devil to-night." He turned over uneasily in his 
 ' flea-bag.' " You don't want to go to sleep yet, do you ? "
 
 148 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 "No. Give me one of these filthy gaspers. All right, 
 don't you move, I'll get them." 
 
 They lay smoking for a few minutes. 
 
 " Does it hurt much being wounded ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " Like hell. At least, mine did." 
 
 " Where were you hit ? " 
 
 " Oh, about sixteen places. Like to hear about it ? " 
 
 " Rather." 
 
 This is how Torrington told his own story : " It was right 
 at the beginning, you know. Second day of the Retreat. Our 
 infantry Buffs were entrenched on the forward slope of a 
 hill. I was doing F.O.O. ; and like a fool I tried to observe 
 from the crest. Bodies 1 My hat, you should have seen 'em. 
 Millions of 'em. Like like gray ants. Stark was with the 
 guns. I got in some topping bursts ; must have knocked out 
 hundreds. The infanteers were simply mowing 'em down. 
 Pity we hadn't any Emma G.s. 1 Then their guns got to 
 work. First shell landed over the trench ; got me in the 
 head ; killed one of my signallers." 
 
 " What were you using " asked Peter " visual or the 
 telephone ? " 
 
 " Telephone. My other signaller kept on sending down 
 the orders all right. ... I managed to get the blood out of 
 my eyes, and we gave 'em gun-fire. That kept the devils back 
 a bit. Then they spotted me. Turned a machine-gun on me. 
 First bullet got me in the calf of the leg. Next one in the 
 shoulder." 
 
 " How long was that after the first shell hit you ? " 
 
 " Dunno. Must have been about an hour, I should think. 
 , . . Then they got my other signaller, and I had to do the 
 telephoning myself. ... I don't remember much else ; 
 except crawling round and round in a ring. You know 
 like a rabbit when you shoot too far behind. Then someone 
 started singing, ' God save the King.' God, how I cursed 
 that fellow. I remember saying to myself, ' What's the bally 
 fool singing for ? There's nothing to sing about.' " 
 
 He paused a minute, eyes curiously bright, cigarette 
 singeing stubby moustache. 
 
 " Just before I went off altogether, I found out who'd been 
 singing. It was myself 1 Funny, isn't it ? Fancy crawling 
 round and round on one's elbows, singing ' God save the 
 King,' in the middle of a battle." 
 
 " Very funny," said Peter, sorry for present sickness, but 
 
 1 Machine guns.
 
 Prepare for Action ! 149 
 
 imagination only vaguely stirred by bare recital of the past. 
 " How did you get away ? " 
 
 " Oh, that was where the Weasel got his D.S.O." Now 
 that he told another's story, Torrington grew a little more 
 explicit. " He came up, under direct rifle and machine-gun 
 fire, on his horse, mark you, as soon as I stopped telephoning. 
 They killed his horse for him, and he got a bullet through his 
 ankle : but he managed to get us both away somehow he's 
 as strong as a mule, you know. Damned if I understand how 
 he managed it : we only had one leg between the pair of 
 us. . . ." 
 
 He leaned forward, stretched a hand to the candle : as he 
 blew it out, his pyjama slipped from his neck, and Peter saw 
 the sullen weal of a bullet-wound on the shrunken shoulder. 
 
 " Wonder you've got the nerve to go into action again ? " 
 commented Peter across the darkness. 
 
 "As a matter of fact, the mere idea of marching up to 
 those gun-pits to-morrow night, scares me stiff," said Tor- 
 rington, V.C. 
 
 3 
 
 Next morning Stark preoccupied, Peter rather sleepy, 
 Purves and the Doctor swapping jokes with Horrocks, the 
 newly-joined veterinary officer (a horsy, over-toothed young 
 man in white breeches and enormous spurs) the Head- 
 quarters breakfasted in sunshine at a trestle-table under the 
 vine-leaves : and at half-past ten, rode out across the vast 
 cobbled yard, through the red gates, right-handed towards 
 Hinges, left-handed towards Bethune. 
 
 Behind them Mr. Black prancing proudly on a thin 
 chestnut mare, Lodden cursing as usual, Torrington drooping 
 in his saddle, the men smoking at ease came the horses and 
 carts of the Headquarters Staff, the guns and ammunition 
 waggons of Batteries 'A ' and 'B.' 
 
 " This is hardly the conventional idea of going into action 
 for the first time," drawled Purves, trotting up beside Peter 
 and the Colonel. 
 
 The Weasel jerked up red head from the map on his 
 saddle-peak : " What did you expect young man ? " he asked 
 crisply. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know, sir. Gun-fire on the skyline, I 
 suppose; and patrols riding forward to scout the way. ..." 
 
 " Well, suppose you trot on ; and see if the level-crossing's 
 blocked or not." 
 
 " Very good, sir,"
 
 150 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 "Can't ride for toffee," commented the Colonel, as his 
 Orderly Officer clattered forward. 
 
 They rode on, through clean sunshine, past clean white 
 houses, across the railway lines ; emerged on the main road ; 
 swung left. Soon they could see the roofs of Bdthune in front 
 of them. 
 
 A long train backed slowly across the road. The column 
 halted. The train went on ; likewise the column. Now 
 they were in the outskirts of the town. 
 
 Down the untidy street, trotting slowly towards them 
 over the greasy pave", came a young Staff officer, very gor- 
 geous of boot and tab : a Staff officer who saluted the Weasel 
 with a fine flourish, and said : 
 
 " Excuse me, sir, but this is the Fourth Southdown Brigade, 
 isn't it ? " 
 
 " It is. Half of it, anyway. What do you want with it ? " 
 
 " Can I speak to your Adjutant, sir ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Speak to the whole damn column if you like. 
 Here, Mr. Black, pass down the word for the Adjutant." 
 
 "Colonel wants the Adjutant. Colonel wants the Ad- 
 jutant." The words went dwindling down the line. 
 
 A minute or two later our Mr. Jackson clattered up on 
 Little Willie, looked at the face under the black-peaked hat, 
 and said, " Good God, it's Francis. Where on earth did you 
 spring from ? " 
 
 Peter introduced his cousin, a little gaunter, a little 
 browner, but immaculate as ever, to the Colonel. The three 
 rode on, talking together. Soldiers and rare civilians stared 
 incuriously at them from the narrow pavements ; lorries 
 rumbled by; an occasional despatch-rider, phutting past, 
 disturbed the horses. 
 
 " How did you find me so quickly ? " asked Peter, pre- 
 liminary greetings over. 
 
 " You wrote me when you sent on " imperceptible pause 
 "those letters, that you were transferring to the R.A. And 
 of course we knew the moment you landed in France." 
 
 " Who's we?" 
 
 " G.H.Q.," said Francis casually. 
 
 " My aunt, you are a swell. Why didn't you write and 
 tell me where you were? I haven't heard from you for 
 months." 
 
 Francis explained that he had only just officially joined 
 Intelligence, that his uniform had been bought a week since 
 in Paris, that he was attached to the First Corps. . . . 
 
 " What have you been doing since March ? " asked Peter.
 
 Prepare for Action ! 151 
 
 " Oh, various jobs I'm not supposed to talk about. . . ." 
 
 "Then don't talk about 'em, young man/' put in the 
 Weasel. 
 
 " And why are you attached to the First Corps ? " 
 
 " To interrogate prisoners after this new show." 
 
 Purves, very affaire, came trotting up to the Colonel. 
 " Don't we turn off to the right here, sir ? " 
 
 " We do, my Purves, we do." They rolled off the main 
 street into a quiet square ; threaded their way southwards 
 out of the town, through market gardens, into flat cultivated 
 country. 
 
 " Where are you bound f or ? " asked Francis. 
 
 Peter pulled out his map, pointed to a little green patch. 
 " Batteries are going to that wood. We're marching up by 
 daylight to Annequin. See that little house at the end of the 
 railway, just under Fosse Nine ? That's us." 
 
 " Square F 25 ? " 
 
 " That's right." 
 
 " Well, I must be getting back," said Francis. " 111 
 come and look you up one afternoon." 
 
 " Why not come to dinner the day after to-morrow ? " 
 invited the Colonel. 
 
 " I'd like to very much, sir. About half-past seven. 
 Very good, sir. Good-bye, sir. So long, Peter " ; and Cap- 
 tain Francis Gordon, wheeling his horse, trotted back into the 
 town. 
 
 Headquarters marched on, dropping the batteries outside 
 Verquigneul ; picking their zig-zag way by map, till they 
 came to the hundred-foot slag-cone of Fosse Six ; and on, 
 across yet another railway. Now they saw, for the first time, 
 their own sausage balloons, hanging directly above them, and 
 very far away and tiny the flash and slow puff of 
 anti-aircraft shell bursting round an invisible 'plane. The 
 men, newcomers all, pointed to the marvel, chattered about 
 it. " Wonder if they got him. Not they. There he goes." 
 The few old soldiers by the roadside took no notice. 
 
 And so they came ; saluted of the sentries in the gray 
 street of Sailly; by dusty plain-lands, criss-crossed with 
 telephone-wires here and there a lone farmhouse, here and 
 there a canvas-bivouack down a rutty road black with slag, 
 past a shattered wall of red brick, under the vast shadow of 
 Fosse Nine. The Weasel held up his whip, and the column 
 halted. 
 
 " It's quite all right, sir. The position's well under 
 cover," said Peter.
 
 152 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " I know that," snapped Stark, " but it's no use letting 
 these fellows get into careless habits. Tell 'em to dismount, 
 Purves. And then go along and explain the danger of halting 
 at cross-roads. Have 'em come up two at a time. You've 
 selected your forward waggon-line, I suppose." 
 
 " Yes, sir. Just behind the Fosse." 
 
 " Good lad. Don't keep more than six horses there, 
 though. Now you, Jackson, come along with me. Never 
 mind your precious Little Willie. Jelksll look after him." 
 
 They dismounted ; walked forward. On their left stood 
 the half of a red house, riven with shell-fire. (" Cross- 
 roads ! " commented the Colonel) : three hundred yards in 
 front, screened by a fold in the ground from enemy observa- 
 tion, rose a few tall trees ; thereunder, heaps of white clay, the 
 disused French gun-pits already echoed to the tools of battery 
 fatigue parties. 
 
 From a sunken hedge on their right came a double report, 
 the flash and smoke of a piece discharging. Involuntarily, 
 P. J. started. 
 
 " Four-point-seven," explained Stark. " Used to call 'em 
 Long Toms in South Africa. Let's go and see if your pal 
 Caroline's got that omelette she promised us." 
 
 They turned off to their left Stark casting a quick eye 
 across the field below the Fosse at the men already unnmbering 
 the telephone-waggon came to a low shuttered house, first 
 of three on the road ; knocked on a white door in the wall. 
 
 " Bon jour, mon Colonel. Vous arrivez tot." A thick-set 
 peasant-wench, neither uncomely nor over-cleanly, led them 
 through a draggled garden, under a rusty iron-work arbour, 
 towards the house. 
 
 " Et I'omelette, ma petite ? " The Weasel spoke French 
 perfectly, with only the slightest trace of accent. 
 
 " Sera prete dans dix minutes, mon Colonel. ' ' 
 
 They passed through the bare, narrow hall into a shuttered 
 room, empty of furniture save for a huge table. Through one 
 wall, heavily shored with great balks of timber, a narrow 
 doorway led to the cellars below. 
 
 " If we were Germans," remarked Stark, unbuckling his 
 belt, throwing it crashing on the table, " we should sleep down 
 there ; the family upstairs. As it is ..." He left the 
 sentence unfinished, implying the Englishman's usual con- 
 tempt for his own chivalry. 
 
 Monsieur le patron, a stubble-cheeked gaffer in shirt and 
 trousers, shambled in ; hoped they would be comfortable ; 
 shambled out again. Followed, hilariously, Doctor Carson.
 
 Prepare for Action ! 153 
 
 " Well," he said, in broadest Belfast, " I'm a proud man 
 this day. We're in action at last." 
 
 Purves arrived ; and the mess-box ; Gunner Home, the 
 cook, looking even less cleanly than usual ; Peter's batman, 
 Garton ; and the Colonel's Bombardier Michael, a nervous 
 little fellow, clean-shaven, who had been a footman in private 
 life ; finally Caroline with an enormous omelette, a bottle of 
 nameless wine. . 
 
 " Make 'emselves damn comfortable, I notice," growled 
 Lodden that evening, as he left Headquarters for the gun- 
 pits. 
 
 "Wish I were on the ruddy Headquarters," groused 
 Gunner Mucksweat, heaving against the reluctant wheel of 
 ' B 'Battery's No. 2 gun. " Me too," answered his mate, as the 
 axles jammed in the narrow doorway of the pit. 
 
 But Mr. Stanley Purves, as he watched from his upstairs 
 window the endless upsoaring of Very candles ; as he heard 
 the occasional crackle of a two-miles distant machine-gun, 
 wished by the Lord Apollo and many other classical deities 
 that he were back at Balliol. For it seemed to Mr. Stanley 
 Purves' imagination that every lurid flash on the far horizon 
 must be a gun directed unerringly at his personal self : and he 
 envied P. J., who slept soundly and unimaginatively on his 
 camp-bed in the corner of their bare and unprotected sleeping- 
 room. 
 
 Which paragraph may serve to explain Stanley Purves' 
 subsequent vogue among elderly civilians as a soldier- 
 poet of the let-me-like-a-hero-fall category. 
 
 4 
 
 Two evenings later, when Francis Gordon arrived in a 
 purloined Vauxhall car to dinner, he found the half-brigade 
 settled down to desultory action. 
 
 Already the little house at Annequin was linked by black 
 ' D.5 ' telephone-wire to yth Artillery Headquarters way 
 back in Sailly-la-Bourse, to the as-yet-unoccupied battle- 
 headquarters at the chateau of Noyelles a mile on their right. 
 Forward to the gun-pits, and backward to the top of the 
 great Fosse where Straker had established an observation- 
 post in one of the many tunnels burrowed through the slag, 
 ran other wires very red and new on their supporting poles. 
 Already, Lodden and Torrington had spied out the dun plain,
 
 154 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 the white chalk-furrows ; talked learnedly of Hun strong- 
 points the Pope's Nose, the Hohenzollern Redoubt. 
 
 The first ' post ' had arrived, been sorted eagerly on the 
 bare floor of the Mess-room ; Mr. Black had discovered whence 
 to draw rations ; guns had barked away enough ammunition 
 to necessitate fresh supplies from Billy Williams' subaltern 
 Murphy, in charge of the Ammunition Column section behind 
 Fosse Six ; men had seen their first shells crash to ground on 
 the Vermelles road. 
 
 But as yet though nominally attached to another brigade 
 for ' training in trench-warfare ' Stark and his two batteries 
 were nobody's children. No infantry asked them for re- 
 taliation ; no general panicked round their ammunition- 
 dumps. And they were too far behind the trenches to attract 
 hostile shell-fire. 
 
 " So far " as Peter explained to his cousin, in the draggled 
 garden " a picnic." 
 
 " You wait till September the twenty-fifth," said Francis. 
 
 " Oh, is that the date ? " 
 
 " Didn't you know ? Why, every housemaid in Bethune 
 can tell you that much." 
 
 It was then September the eleventh ! 
 
 The two cousins passed into the Mess-room. Monsieur 
 Morency, a tall French interpreter, black-moustachioed, the 
 bronze sphinx of his calling on the lapel of his khaki tunic, 
 had arrived the day before ; stood superintending the lighting 
 of the lamp, Bombardier Michael's arrangement of the dinner- 
 table. 
 
 Peter introduced his cousin, and the two began a voluble 
 conversation in slangy French. Stark stamped down from 
 his upstairs bedroom ; Purves and the Doctor arrived 
 together. 
 
 " Lodden and Torrington are late." The Weasel looked at 
 his watch. " 'Phone down for them, will you, Purves ? " 
 
 The Balliol man stepped to a tiny black telephone on a 
 shelf in the corner, began buzzing on the key. " Is that you, 
 Beer Battery ? . . . Oh, is Captain Torrington there ? Just 
 left for H.Q. with Major Lodden ? Thanks." 
 
 Shortly afterwards the two arrived ; and dinner began 
 with ' Gong ' soups served in enamel mugs. Followed tinned 
 salmon, mayonnaise sauce and lettuce salad prepared by 
 Caroline, a large ration joint of beef, baked potatoes, rice 
 pudding. They drank sparingly, from newly-bought glasses, 
 of white wine. Talk ran steadily on the forthcoming 
 operations.
 
 Prepare for Action ! 155 
 
 " I hear we shall use gas for the first time," announced the 
 interpreter. 
 
 " And a damned mess we shall probably make of it." 
 Lodden wiped black moustaches contemptuously with his 
 paper napkin. " Don't you think so, Gordon ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid I don't know much about actual warfare," 
 remarked Francis ; " you see, I'm on the Staff." 
 
 Everybody except Stark laughed. 
 
 Said Colonel Stark : " If you ex-civilians had been willing 
 to pay for a decent -sized army in peace-time, you might have 
 had officers capable of managing large bodies of troops in 
 war." 
 
 " Then you admit, Colonel " began Lodden. 
 
 " My dear Major, I admit nothing. Let's have some port. 
 Any coffee, Morency ? " 
 
 " Mais oui, mon Colonel." 
 
 Peter produced a newly-arrived box of cigars ; the bare 
 room soon grew hazy with smoke. The gaffer and Caroline, 
 dragging a scrofulous boy by the hand, dived down through 
 the timbered doorway to their bedroom in the cellars. Out- 
 side it was very still only, every now and then, a gun 
 boomed faintly. 
 
 Torrington had drawn his chair towards the two cousins ; 
 Purves joined them, and Morency. Stark, Lodden, and the 
 Doctor kept to the head of the table. 
 
 " Pretty good fighter, the Boche," remarked Torrington, 
 apropos nothing in particular. 
 
 " Damned swines ! " The remark seemed to burst from 
 Francis' lips. " If you knew what I do about them ..." 
 
 " What do you know about them, young man ? " put in 
 the Weasel from the head of the table. 
 
 " Well, sir " an undercurrent of emotion rippled the 
 controlled voice " I don't claim to know much ; but I've 
 spent six of the last twelve months in their country." 
 
 " You've what ? " A simultaneous gasp ran round the 
 room. Francis repeated his preposterous assertion : " I was 
 staying at the Bristol in Berlin just after they beat the 
 Russians at Tannenberg. I saw the crowds round the war- 
 maps in Unter den Linden. I've seen the Zeppelin sheds at 
 Tondern. And I've seen the camps where they keep our 
 prisoners." His voice dominated the room : nobody else 
 spoke, wanted to speak. " I don't pretend to be a fighting 
 soldier. It isn't my job. But when I hear people talk about 
 the Hun as a clean fighter ; when I think of the things I've 
 seen him do ..." He bit off the words, fell silent.
 
 156 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Then you were in Germany when war broke out ? " said 
 the Weasel, after a pause. 
 
 " No, sir. I got in afterwards. ..." 
 
 Peter looked at his cousin ; remembered old days, re- 
 membered the tango-dancing, night-club-haunting Francis of 
 Curzon Street : marvelled that this should be the same man. 
 For the tale Francis told that night in half-sentences, not 
 boastingly but as a soldier discloses his job carried convic- 
 tion. Of himself of how he had been hidden for three weeks 
 in Amsterdam, coached in his part, smuggled not once but 
 many times and in varied disguises across the frontier Francis 
 told nothing. He contented himself with bare statements. 
 At Essen, in January, he had worked for a month. . . . 
 
 " What on ? " interrupted Stark, still doubtful if this 
 young Staff officer were not joking. 
 
 " A new patent carriage for the 77 field-gun, sir." 
 
 " What part of it ? " 
 
 " Principally the cradle for the buffer. ' Rilck-rohr- 
 lafetten-auflauf,' they call it." 
 
 Stark, technical expert, asked no more doubting questions 
 that evening : and Francis went on talking for nearly half an 
 hour. 
 
 " But how the devil did you get into the prison-camps ? " 
 asked Lodden. 
 
 " As a priest," said Francis simply, " an Austrian priest. 
 That was my last trip. I'm not going back again if I can 
 help it." 
 
 " I should think not," from Torrington ; " you must have 
 been scared stiff." 
 
 " Scared ? Lord, I should think so. But the worst 
 moment I ever had was in the Winter Garden at Berlin. You 
 don't know it, of course. It's a kind of theatre with stalls in 
 front, and behind on a big raised dais tables for dinner- 
 parties. I was in the promenade, right at the back. And 
 they sang their old Hymn of Hate. Phew I It made me 
 sweat, absolutely sweat with funk. Five thousand of them 
 on their feet roaring like like hyenas. ..." 
 
 At half-past ten the party broke up, Lodden and 
 Torrington returning across the fields to their gun-pits ; 
 Purves, the Doctor, and Morency retiring to bed. 
 
 " Do you mind if Peter drives home with me, sir ? " asked 
 Francis. "Ill send him back in the car. " 
 
 " All right " the little red-headed soldier looked up from 
 his newspaper " I'll hold the fort till my Adjutant comes 
 back."
 
 Prepare for Action ! 157 
 
 The two cousins strolled out, found the car waiting. 
 " All quiet on the Beuvry road ? " asked Francis of the 
 chauffeur. 
 
 " There were a few shells while you were at dinner, sir." 
 
 " Well, don't switch on your headlights till we're through 
 Beuvry." 
 
 They climbed into the comfortable limousine; purred 
 off through Annequin village, shuttered and asleep ; swung 
 to the west. 
 
 " Heard from^Pat ? " asked Francis. 
 
 " Yesterday. She's with her father." 
 
 " Let me see, that's Harley Street, isn't it ? I'll^drop her 
 a line myself to-morrow. One can't write much on these 
 ' hush ' jobs. I've been in Spain the last three months. By 
 the way, Peter, you're grown very silent since I saw you 
 last. ..." 
 
 Peter lit a cigar ; and his cousin saw, in the light of the 
 match, new lines on the firm face, a trace of gray in the dark 
 hair. " Oh, I've been having a pretty thin time, one way 
 and the other." 
 
 " Money ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Where's Arthur?" 
 
 " Arthur came home. He's in the R.F.C. somewhere or 
 other. Rummy devil. Rather like you. Never writes 
 letters." 
 
 They came without mishap into the great Place of 
 Bethune ; and Peter saw, black by moonlight, round holes 
 in the shining roofs sole sign of long-range bombardment. 
 
 The car stopped. " This is my billet. Come in and have 
 a drink, old man." 
 
 They passed up a flight of stairs : Francis drew matches 
 from his pocket ; lit candles on the mantelpiece. Between 
 them like a saint's picture on a shrine stood a photograph, 
 a brand-new photograph of Beatrice Cochrane.
 
 PART XV 
 ATTACK ! 
 
 i 
 
 HALF-PAST nine at night, Friday, September the 
 24th, 1915. 
 In the quiet, roomy library of Doctor Baynet's 
 home in Harley Street, Patricia sat talking to 
 her father. 
 
 " He says in this letter that they aren't in action yet." 
 The gold head lifted from the pencilled scrawl she had been 
 studying ; the dark eyes looked anxiously towards the man at 
 the littered desk. 
 
 " I'm glad of that, my dear," said Heron Baynet ; and went 
 on with his work. 
 
 2 
 
 Nine-thirty, ' pip emma/ on the last day of the Loos 
 bombardment. 
 
 Outside the little house at Annequin, cigar between his 
 lips, Peter Jackson stood watching the show. All round the 
 eastward horizon gun-flashes winked and blazed, lighting up 
 the sky. Far to southward beat the continuous drum of 
 French seventy-fives, firing la rafale. Every half-minute, 
 from one or other of the pits below the shadowy trees in front 
 of him, spurted a flash of orange, followed by the bark of an 
 eighteen-pounder, the dwindled hiss of flighting shell, the faint 
 thud of its alighting. In the pits themselves laboured tired 
 and grimy men, sleepless for three days and four nights : 
 an orderly labour, unhurried : shell to open breech, breech- 
 block clanged home, eye to dial-sight, hand to range-dial : 
 " Set," " Ready," eye to watch, fingers to ear-drums, " Fire," 
 roar of piece discharging, rocking carriage, stink of cordite : 
 " Repeat ! " 
 
 So men laboured, unhurried but unsleeping, at Vermelles 
 and Noyelles-les- Vermelles, at Cuinchy and Noeux-les- 
 Mines, northwards and southwards. The intermittent thun- 
 der of their labours came to Peter, standing alone in the
 
 Attack ! 159 
 
 moonlight ; and with it came the jingle and clank of am- 
 munition waggons, the far crackle of an occasional machine- 
 gun, the sound of Scotch singing from shuttered houses in the 
 village on his left. 
 
 He turned ; went into the house. 
 
 In the gloomy Mess-room sat Stark pile of typewritten 
 sheets at his elbow, marked map spread out on the table among 
 the debris of dinner. Driver Nicholson crouched in the 
 corner by the telephone. 
 
 " What's it like outside ? " asked the Weasel. 
 
 " Oh, pretty quiet, sir. The Boches don't appear to be 
 firing at all." 
 
 " Any wind ? " 
 
 " Not a breath. It'll be bad for our gas." 
 
 " Pity." Stark bent to his map again. The telephone 
 buzzed. " Mr. Purves, speaking from the dug-out, sir." 
 Peter stepped over, took up the instrument. " ' A' Battery 
 report their No. 3 gun out of action." 
 
 " What's that ? " asked Stark. " How did it happen ? " 
 
 Peter got through to the battery, heard Lodden's voice 
 over the wire. " Yes. That infernal eighty-over-forty-four 
 fuze with the new gaine. Blown about six inches off the 
 muzzle. No. Nobody hurt. And my number 2 gun's 
 running-up very badly. Can you send Staff-Sergeant Barrie 
 down? . . . As soon as he comes in ? Thanks." 
 
 Peter reported. 
 
 Said Stark : " Very well. Report it to Division " ; and 
 went on with his work. 
 
 Peter ran out of the house ; slipped through a low fence ; 
 walked carefully down the newly-cut steps of the big telephone 
 dug-out. By the switchboard, talking to the operator, stood 
 Purves. A candle between them guttered smoke to the 
 shadows of the log-roof. Wrapped in their cloaks, the three 
 relief men snored on the earth floor. 
 
 " Sergeant Barrie come in yet ? " 
 
 " I think so," answered Purves. " Shall I go and find 
 him ? " 
 
 " Yes. Why isn't there an orderly here ? " 
 
 " I've just sent him out." 
 
 " Right." Peter drew a ration-box to the grease- 
 spattered switchboard table ; wrote his message ; handed 
 it to the operator. 
 
 " You wanted me, sir ? " Staff-Sergeant Barrie, the 
 armament artificer, stumbled down, saluted clumsily, blink- 
 ing in the candle-light.
 
 160 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Yes, Staff-Sergeant. They want you at Ack Battery. 
 Another buffer gone wrong. Sorry. You've been up at 
 Vermelles, haven't you ? " 
 
 " I have that, sir. And it's a very unhealthy spot, I may 
 tell ye." The big Scotchman had not slept since the bom- 
 bardment began : Bromley's battery and Major Lethbridge's, 
 under another Division in Vermelles, had needed constant 
 attention. The new buffer-springs hastily made of flawed 
 steel by careless contractors kept on giving way under the 
 strain of heavy firing at high elevations : and the Fourth 
 Southdown Brigade's second ' Tiffie,' fallen sick the day they 
 landed at Le Havre, had not been replaced fitter staff- 
 sergeants and armament artificers being rare. 
 
 " Any casualties in C and Don ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " Three more this evening, sir. Two drivers and a 
 bombardier. Not verra bad. I'll be getting my tools. . . ." 
 He stumbled out up the stairs. Peter went back into the 
 house ; joined his Colonel over the attack-plans. 
 
 " Follow 'em ? " asked Stark. 
 
 " Yes, sir. We've got five Divisions in the front line^and 
 supports. Forty-seventh ; fifteenth ; ninth ; first, and 
 seventh. They're to break the front ; open out ; and let the 
 cavalry through. Our batteries don't take part in anything 
 except the preliminary bombardment. After that, we stop 
 where we are. But what I can't understand, sir, is about the 
 reserves. We don't seem to have any." 
 
 Driver Nicholson, listening open-eared, was sent out of 
 the room by Stark. 
 
 " Look here, P. J." the soldier voice dropped a tone 
 " between you and me, this show's going to be another wash- 
 out. Like Neuve Chapelle and Festubert. Our Division and 
 the Northdown ought to have been up last night. That's 
 why we were hustled out of England. They're supposed to 
 be billeted on the line Beuvry Noeux-les-Mines. You'll 
 probably read that they were billeted there when we get the 
 official account of this picnic. As a matter of fact, I may as 
 well tell you that our infantry haven't got as far as Bethune 
 yet." 
 
 " But, good God 1 sir are these five Divisions going into 
 action without any infantry reserves at all ? " 
 
 ' ' They are, P. J. And you may well say, ' Good God. ' It 
 isn't Dunning's fault either. I met his G.S.O, One your pal 
 Starcross in his car this afternoon." 
 
 " And when will the rest of our Division get here, 
 sir?"
 
 Attack ! 161 
 
 "They're coming up by forced marches. Starcross 
 reckons they'll reach B6thune at daybreak. ..." 
 
 " Just when we push off." 
 
 " Exactly. And it's six miles as the crow flies from 
 Bethune to our present front line. ..." 
 
 The two men stared first at each other ; then at the map. 
 Even to the amateur, the fault was obvious : " What will 
 happen, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 " Chaos," said Stark succinctly. " And now you'd better 
 be going to bed. You've got to be on that Fosse early to- 
 morrow. Telephone down anything you see. Ill be at the 
 instrument myself. And mind you, P. J., what I've said 
 to-night is between the two of us. ..." 
 
 3 
 
 " Four o'clock, sir. Time to get up." Peter woke from 
 undisturbed slumber ; saw Driver Garton standing, candle in 
 one hand, steaming mug in the other, by his bedside. He 
 pulled himself up from his valise ; drank tea gratefully. In 
 the opposite corner of the room, tossing uneasily in his sleep, 
 lay Purves. Outside, all was still not a gun firing. Peter 
 dressed quickly, slipped sling of gas-helmet over his head ; 
 went downstairs. 
 
 The Mess-room, still shuttered, smelt dankly of stale 
 smoke and human sleep. In one corner, telephone-receiver 
 strapped round his ears, lay Driver Nicholson. " Don't wake 
 him," whispered Peter, as his servant deposited breakfast on 
 the table. " Go round to the dug-out, and tell them that 
 Seabright's to be ready in ten minutes. I shall want my 
 field-glasses, my map-case, my compass, and a message- 
 book." 
 
 " And your cigar-case, sir ? " smiled the young Yorkshire- 
 man. For answer, Peter tapped on his tunic-pocket ; smiled 
 back. By now, master and man knew each other fairly well. 
 
 The Adjutant disposed of two poached eggs, some greasy 
 bacon, three slices of buttered toast and a large mug of black 
 tea ; lit a cigar ; sauntered out of the house. A light appeared 
 at one of the upper windows ; someone called out : " That 
 you, Jackson ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir. I tried not to wake you. " 
 
 " You don't catch weasels asleep. Mind you let me have 
 plenty of information. And watch the signal station at G 
 nine ack two seven on the embankment." 
 
 " I've got a note of that, sir." 
 
 L
 
 1 62 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Right. I'm going back to bed for an hour." 
 
 Appeared from the shadows, Gunner Seabright (' Poluski 
 number one '), a fat-faced little man, clean-shaven, per- 
 petually at grin. He carried a telephone case in his hand, 
 another over his shoulder, a coil of wire. 
 
 " Got your earth-pin ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " Aye, aye, sir." Seabright had at one time in his 
 chequered career been in the Navy. " Two of them." 
 
 " Come on, then." 
 
 They climbed the fence at the back of the garden ; stumbled 
 across the colliery tram-lines ; followed a red wire up the 
 gritty front of the huge slag-cone. Light was just breaking, a 
 glimmer of dawn over cloudy skies. Not a breath of wind 
 stirred anywhere. 
 
 " Hot work, sir," commented the telephonist. 
 
 " Damned hot," said Peter. 
 
 They made a flat platform of slag running round the peak 
 of the cone ; followed it half-way round. " Going to observe 
 from outside, sir." " Yes. This 11 do. Connect up, will 
 you ? " " Aye, aye, sir." 
 
 Seabright opened bis telephone case ; drove the earth-pin 
 into the slag ; connected it to his instrument ; scraped the 
 insulation from the red wire they had been following ; screwed 
 it home ; began to buzz. 
 
 " ./ ... / (F.X.D.)," buzzed Gunner 
 Seabright. ".. ./../ .. (F.X.D.). Hallo 
 there ? Dug-out ? Is that you, Pir bright ? Then why the yell 
 don't you answer quicker ? " As he had only called twice, the 
 question was pure swank. 
 
 Peter tested the line ; wandered off round the Fosse. 
 
 Already it was ah' ve. Officers everywhere, some ensconced 
 at the end of deep burrows, peering out over the plain ; some 
 clambering up the pathways at the back ; some standing 
 about at the mouths of their caves ; and at the very top, 
 thirty feet above Peter's head, among a perfect jumble of 
 wires, two Frenchmen operators for the heavy battery just 
 visible on the plain below gesticulating and shouting at their 
 strange-looking telephone. 
 
 " Mais non," Peter heard, " mais non. On ne voit rien. 
 Riens, je vous dis. . . . Alors dans une demi-heure, mon Com- 
 mandant." 
 
 He was accosted by a serious-eyed captain of Sappers. 
 " Who are you observing for ? " 
 " First Corps." 
 " Well, you can't get inside. It's full."
 
 Attack ! 163 
 
 " I know. My telephonist is just round the corner." 
 
 " Good. We shan't see much from here." 
 
 " No." Peter went back to his telephonist. 
 
 Now the glimmer of dawn turned to a faint dark-blue 
 radiance. Nothing stirred on the plain below. Light grew, 
 revealing the silent village street, the churchyard, the ruined 
 chapel of ' Our Lady of Consolation ' battered among her 
 poplars, the long tree-girt stretch of the Hulluch Road. 
 Beyond, like a dun still sea streaked with unmoving foam, lay 
 the trenches : beyond them, mist. 
 
 Peter drew out his map ; unslung his glasses ; threw away 
 the stump of his cigar. 
 
 The mist cleared, revealing the dark pylons of Loos, twin 
 spidery towers, black against the gray, a tiny blur of high 
 houses that was City Saint Elie, the great wheeled pit-head 
 of Fosse Eight. It still lacked half an hour to zero : Peter 
 wandered round to the back of the Fosse. Men were stirring 
 round the gun-pits below. A motor skirled the dust on the 
 road where Beuvry towers stood out from the plain. . . . 
 
 " Colonel to speak to you, sir," announced Seabright, 
 appearing suddenly at his elbow. Peter ran back to the 
 telephone. 
 
 " How's the light ? " 
 
 " Middling, sir. And no wind yet." 
 Peter lit another cigar ; looked at his watch. A quarter 
 of an hour yet. He was not in the least excited. It all 
 seemed dull dull beyond belief. . . . Ten minutes. . . . 
 Still, it would be a show worth watching. . . . Seven. . . . 
 What was the colour of Seventh Division's flag? red and blue 
 diagonal. . . . Five minutes more. . . . His pulse quick- 
 ened a beat. . . . Two minutes. . . . Decidedly, a show not 
 to miss. . . . One minute. ... He knelt down to be near 
 the telephone. . . . 
 
 Cr-rack ! Looking down, Peter saw a blue flash, a smoke- 
 puff among the trees round ' Our Lady of Consolation.' 
 Simultaneously the whole plain erupted. Here, there, every- 
 where, yellow and blue, the hidden pits flamed and screamed. 
 Thin smoke rose from them ; drifted back in a faint breeze. 
 (' Hope to God they're not going to use gas,' thought Peter.) 
 Behind him he heard the sharp clang of French heavies ; the 
 deep note of Granny, the huge howitzer in Sailly-la- Bourse. 
 
 He looked towards the trenches ; saw single shrapnel 
 bursting orange to fleecy puffs. The puffs blended to a sea 
 of white, flooding out the trenches. It was as though some 
 invisible hand had poured an enormous wave of milk across
 
 1 64 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 the near horizon. And out of the wave, staining it, spouted 
 great whorls of rusty smoke. And beyond, he could see huge 
 shells striking at the foot of the spidery towers ; at the reeling 
 pit-head; at the high houses of City Saint filie. Smoke 
 pillars lifted to the sky, quartering the landscape. 
 
 And always the voice of the guns grew hoarser in the plain 
 below ; always the scream of their flighting shells grew louder 
 across the sky. 
 
 " Colonel to speak to you, sir." 
 
 Eyes on the plain, Peter took the receiver. 
 
 " Is the Boche replying ? " 
 
 " No, sir. Unless they're shelling our front line. I can't 
 see much except smoke." 
 
 " Naturally. They lift in ten minutes." 
 
 Still it went on below. Bark of eighteen-pounder. Sharp 
 double crack of four-point-seven. Screech and clang of 
 French heavies. Deep boom of Granny far away in rear. 
 Peter swept the sky with his glasses ; saw the pit-head totter- 
 ing above the smoke. Why didn't they knock it out ? Short ! 
 Short again 1 ... He looked down towards the trenches. 
 The white wave had turned gray. 
 
 Sombrely, the dawn increased. 
 
 He fixed his glasses on the gray wave ; saw it recede ; saw 
 line after line of tiny black figures, ant-like, swarm out of the 
 ground ; vanish into the grayness. 
 
 "Tell the Colonel: infantry gone over." 
 
 " Aye, aye, sir." 
 
 Below, noise lessened. He peered into the smoke-pall. 
 Further it rolled ; and further. In it nothing moved. Out 
 of it emerged house-tops. And suddenly he saw the black 
 specks again, little bunches of them. Peter studied his map ; 
 took out his protractor. 
 
 " Call up the Colonel. Is that you, sir ? Infantry 
 retiring from the direction of City Saint Elie." 
 
 " Are you quite certain ? We've had a rumour that City 
 Saint Elie's fallen." 
 
 " Quite certain, sir. True bearing from here is a hundred 
 degrees." 
 
 " Thanks. I'll report to Division." 
 
 And that was all our Mr. Jackson saw of the fifty thousand 
 very gallant gentlemen who stormed forward through our own 
 gas, dribbling footballs, tootling hunting-horns, skirling hag- 
 pipes and blowing mouth-organs on the morning of 
 September the 25th, 1915 1
 
 Attack ! 165 
 
 Gradually, gun-fire died away. Only the French 
 heavies behind the Fosse still clanged unceasing. Smoke 
 cleared from the plain. Bare and silent, the dun sea stretched 
 to the sky-line. From very far away came a faint chattering 
 of machine guns. A German balloon rose up ; peered at 
 things ; went down again. Down the Hulluch road a toy 
 battery trotted noiselessly. 
 
 But the great slag-cone itself seethed with excited men. 
 Out from their burrows they came ; down from their eyries ; 
 maps in their hands, telescopes under arm, binoculars dangling 
 from their shoulders. Rumour, hundred-wired, ran among 
 them. Loos had fallen said rumour Hulluch was ours, 
 City Saint Elie, Haisnes, Douvrin. 
 
 " By God, we've broken them," roared a fierce little major 
 of Garrison Artillery. " By God, we've broken them at last." 
 And he danced up there, on the gritty slag, none heeding. 
 
 " Look," shouted the captain of Sappers, " look. The 
 cavalry ! " And moisture brimmed his eyes, as he watched 
 the squadrons wheeling into line on the grass-fields just 
 below. 
 
 And always, high up, like monkeys among the telephone- 
 posts, the three Frenchmen jabbered to their clanging guns 
 " Bon. Bon. Bien tire. Magnifique. On les a, je vous dis. 
 Oui. Oui. Oui. On les a ! " 
 
 But Chips Bradley's grandson, peering out over the 
 empty plain, peering back towards Bethune waiting, wait- 
 ing, waiting for the dust-cloud on the road, the dust-cloud 
 that never came thought of the words his Colonel had spoken 
 the night before. And the heart in him was heavy, even in 
 those early hours, with forebodings of disaster. 
 
 4 
 
 Light grew and grew. Fitful gleams of sunshine danced 
 across the plain. More cavalry came, squadron after squad- 
 ron, wheeling into line on the fields just below. But they 
 made no movement forward, those wheeling squadrons. 
 Peter saw them through his glasses dismounting, loosening 
 girths, fume of their cigarettes bhie in the air. 
 
 Came one English aeroplane, drifting aimlessly across the 
 sky. 
 
 Walking wounded came, trudging painfully across the 
 fields, singly and two by two, arms dangling, heads bandaged. 
 (There were no steel helmets in those early days.) 
 
 Came a gray company of prisoners, capless, weaponless
 
 166 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 fell out ; squatted on their hunkers among the root-fields. 
 Came a dozen peasant-children, sprung somehow to life ; 
 wrenched up roots from the field ; pelted the captives as they 
 squatted. The company fell in again ; trudged off towards 
 B6thune, followed by the spitting, cursing children. (And 
 there were many ' gentlemen ' in England still abed that 
 morning !) 
 
 Came, towards noon, down the road from Sailly, long 
 brown columns of infantry, guns and horses, marching 
 towards Noyelles. The Northdown Division ! gun-range away 
 behind the grimy remnants who were even then bombing out 
 the cellars in Loos village beyond the skyline. . . . But from 
 Beuvry to Annequin the roads were bare. And on the left of 
 the attack, round the Hohenzollern Redoubt, in the Chalk 
 Quarries, at the foot of Fosse Eight, men fought unsupported, 
 died cursing the chance that was never taken, the help that 
 never came. 
 
 " The situation with regard to these two Divisions is still 
 obscure at the time of drawing up my report," reads official 
 history of a fortnight later. 
 
 5 
 
 Peter, relieved by Purves, stumbled down from his eyrie 
 at about two o'clock ; found Colonel Stark and Doctor Carson 
 sitting over the debris of lunch. 
 
 " Very sad," the Irishman was saying. 
 
 " What is ? " asked Peter, slipping off his gas-satchel, 
 sitting down to cold beef. 
 
 " Poor Halliday's been killed," answered the Weasel. 
 " Doc.'s just been up to Vermelles on a push-bike." 
 
 " They nearly got me too. Bromley's crowd have been 
 having an almighty rotten time. ..." 
 
 The casualty, first among their officers, cast a gloom over 
 the three men. Soon the doctor went back to his impromptu 
 surgery a tiny room off the hall, where his batman had set 
 out from their wicker cases, bandages, shining instruments, 
 bottles of disinfectants, boxes of tabloids. 
 
 " Sportsman, the Doctor," commented Stark. 
 
 The telephone on the shelf began buzzing ; Peter went to 
 it ; picked up the receiver. " Seventh Don Ack. . . . 
 Adjutant Fourth Southdown Brigade. . . . Brigade-Major 
 wishes to speak to you, sir. . . . Right. ..." A pause. . . . 
 " That you, Jackson ? Look here, we want your batteries to 
 open fire again. ..." Followed map-references which Peter
 
 Attack ! 167 
 
 repeated. ..." Yes. The loophole plates. But go slow 
 with your ammunition." 
 
 Stark glanced at the big marked map on the wall ; saw 
 that the targets were the same as those for the previous day. 
 " Infantry held up, I suppose," he said. " What was that 
 about ammunition ? . . . Very well, tell the batteries to fire 
 one round a minute. H.E., of course. You might go down 
 and see how they're getting on. Tell Mr. Black I want to see 
 him ; and send in a telephonist as you pass the dug-out." 
 
 ' Now I wonder,' thought the Weasel, as he sat alone over 
 his map, ' what is going to happen. Better be prepared for the 
 worst, I suppose.' 
 
 The little Regimental-Sergeant-Major came bounding in ; 
 saluted ; stood to attention. 
 
 " Got your note-book, Mr. Black ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Then take this down, please : ' O.C. Waggon-lines, ' A ' 
 and ' B ' Batteries. On receipt of this, you will harness up and 
 be prepared to move forward at a minute's notice. Acknow- 
 ledge by bearer.' Got that, Sergeant-Major ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Repeat it to Mr. Murphy at the Ammunition Column." 
 Mr. Black stretched out the scribbled messages. Stark signed 
 them. " Have them both sent by cyclist orderly at once, 
 please. Tell the orderlies they'll be put under arrest if they're 
 not back in an hour and a half. Make them report to you 
 personally, please." 
 
 " And Headquarters, sir ? " 
 
 " Same instructions, Mr. Black. The Adjutant's horses 
 and mine to be waiting saddled up at the back of the Fosse ; 
 the rest ready to move off with the batteries. Have the 
 servants pack up everything except the mess-box at once. 
 Do you quite understand ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 " Rations all right ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Two days' supply." 
 
 " Good. Send Bombardier Michael to me, please. ..." 
 
 6 
 
 " Curse I " said Torrington, " I thought we were going to 
 get a little rest. The men are pretty well all in. Straker's 
 up at the O.Pip, but he won't see much. One round a minute, 
 you say." 
 
 They were standing under the trees, just outside the
 
 i68 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 command post a vast hollow mound of chalk, shored with 
 timber, top covered with new-cut branches. 
 
 " Come in, won't you ? We're just going to have some 
 tea." Peter crouched through the timbered doorway; sat 
 down on a ration-box. " I'll just get on to Straker." Tor- 
 rington buzzed on the 'phone above his untidy bunk. " Give 
 me the O.Pip, please. What's that ? You wanted H.Q. ? 
 Well, the Adjutant 's here. ' ' He handed the receiver to Peter. 
 
 Straker's voice came stuttering down the wire : " I thought 
 you'd like to know that one of our infantry brigades is coming 
 up the road. The Second, I think. They're just marching 
 round the Fosse now." 
 
 "Thanks," said Peter calmly. "Don't go away. Tor- 
 rington wants to speak to you." . . . And to Torrington, " I 
 don't think I'll stay for tea, thanks. You might pass the 
 order on to Lodden. ..." 
 
 Peter picked his way diagonally across the field towards 
 the ruined house at the cross-roads. In it a fire burned. His 
 own men stood about, smoking, gossiping, drinking tea from 
 enamelled mugs. A wounded man limped by, eyes on the 
 ground. 
 
 And suddenly, riding round the battered wall at the foot of 
 the Fosse, he saw Colonel Andrews. On either side of him 
 rode Slattery and Simcox. Peter saluted ; the Colonel 
 acknowledged ; said, " Hallo, Jackson " ; rode on. Behind 
 him, came the Chalkshires. 
 
 ' My God,' thought Peter, ' my God ! ' 
 
 Were these the lusty singing-men he had known at Worth- 
 ing, the cheery officers he had dined with at Shoreham these 
 dust-stained, weary fellows, plodding two by two either side 
 of the road ? Hardly a sound came from their parched 
 throats. Packs dragged at their shoulders ; rifles dragged at 
 their hands. Their faces were lined as the faces of old men. 
 Sweat dripped from them. . . . ' A ' Company straggled by. 
 Came his old company, Arkwright at their head. 
 
 " Hallo, Arkwright ! " 
 
 " Hallo, P. J. ! " And Arkwright rode on. Long Long- 
 staffe and Private Haddock, trudging at his horse's tail, 
 looked up at the known name. 
 
 " Gawd," said the little man, " if it ain't our old P. J. 
 'Aven't got anyfink to eat about yer, I suppose, sir ? " 
 
 Others took up the cry : " P. J. ! Gawblimey, it's our old 
 P. J. Ask P. J. 'E'll give^us somefink to eat. Somefink to 
 eat, sir. For the love of Gawd! Somefink to eat. We 
 can't fight|with nuffink in our stomachs, sir. ..."
 
 Attack ! 169 
 
 Peter ran forward ; clutched Arkwright's bridle. " What 
 the hell's happened, Arkwright ? " 
 
 The schoolmaster looked down from his horse. " I don't 
 know," he said wearily, " I don't know. We've been march- 
 ing like this for three days. And the rations haven't come. 
 That's all." 
 
 Behind them rose the heart-breaking voices : " P. J. 1 
 Yes, P. J., I tell yer. 'E'll get us somefmk to eat. Gawd ! 
 look at them ruddy gunners. They've got their rations, they 
 have. 'Ere, mate, for the love of Christ, just a bit of that 
 bread." 
 
 Some of the gunners ran out of the ruined house ; proffered 
 a crust or two. The men snatched at them ; tore them with 
 their teeth as they marched. 
 
 " I can't do anything for them," whispered Peter. " When 
 did they eat last ? " 
 
 " Yesterday evening. We were hustled out of Bethune 
 just as they were starting breakfast. . . . Where are we 
 going ? . . . God knows, I don't. The maps haven't been 
 served out. You'd better get out of this, P. J. It's only 
 giving the boys false hopes." 
 
 Peter stepped back ; and the Company plodded by. As 
 they passed him, sweating heads turned, dusty lips mur- 
 mured : " Can't you do nuffink for us, sir ? Just a bite, sir. 
 Anyfink'll do, sir." They looked like faithful dogs whose 
 masters had betrayed them. 
 
 " Cheer up, lads," said Peter. " Cheer up ! " 
 
 " Well do our best, sir. Bit 'ard, though, our first time 
 in action, ain't it, sir ? . . ." 
 
 The files trudged past him in the dust. Behind them 
 came other files, thousands of them. All dust-stained. All 
 sleepless. All hungry. " Food," they cried as they 
 marched. " Food." 
 
 But not a man of them fell out I 
 
 7 
 
 They sat at tea in the bare Mess-room the Colonel, 
 Purves, Doctor Carson, Morency, Peter. Outside it darkled. 
 Rain had begun to fall. 
 
 " What's happened to your appetite, P. J. ? " chaffed the 
 Irishman. 
 
 " Somehow I don't feel hungry, Doc.," said our Mr. 
 Jackson.
 
 PART XVI, 
 FORWARD ! 
 
 i 
 
 DAY waned ; died. Bombardier Michael came in ; 
 cleared away the tea-mugs. The telephone on the 
 shelf buzzed impatiently. Purves went to it. 
 
 " It's Torrington," he announced, " and he 
 wants to know if they're to go on firing at the Pope's Nose." 
 
 " Tell him yes," said Stark, " till further orders." 
 
 " Are we going to move out, sir ? " asked Purves, coming 
 back to the table. " My servant says he's had orders to pack 
 up my kit." 
 
 " He has. My orders." The tone of the Weasel's voice 
 stifled discussion. Again the telephone buzzed. 
 
 " You answer it, Jackson." 
 
 Peter picked up the receiver ; heard the usual : " Brigade- 
 Major Seventh Don Ack wishes to speak to the Adjutant." 
 " You're through, sir." Then the usual quiet voice, " Oh, 
 is that you, Jackson ? About to-night : we want you to fire 
 shrapnel on those cross-roads. Same as ... Here, half a 
 minute . . . Hang on, will you? ..." A long pause. "Is 
 your Colonel there ? Do you mind asking him to speak ? " 
 
 " They want you, sir," said Peter across the room. 
 
 " I guessed as much." Stark came over ; took the in- 
 strument. 
 
 The four men heard him say : "It can't be done under 
 four hours. ..." Pause. " Yes, just like them, isn't it ? 
 Le Rutoire Farm ... All right . . . You might send those 
 orders along, will you ? . . . And I'm one gun short." Then 
 he put the receiver back on the shelf ; turned round ; and 
 remarked with a peculiar smile : " Well, gentlemen, we're 
 for it this time." 
 
 2 
 
 Peter Jackson was not a man who gave either friendship 
 or admiration lightly. His feelings for Colonel Stark had 
 hitherto been tolerant rather than friendly, critical rather
 
 Forward ! 171 
 
 than admiring. The little red man had stood to his Adjutant 
 for a type : the ' regular soldier ' a person of limited out- 
 look, good at his job (and why not, after twenty years of it ?), 
 irascible, rather inclined to bother himself over-much with 
 detail, taking the simple business of commanding an artillery 
 brigade as seriously as if it had been the management of a 
 complicated commercial concern. 
 
 But on the night of September the 25th, even that stickler 
 for organisation and efficiency, P. J., had to acknowledge 
 himself the Weasel's inferior. 
 
 The problem confronting the commander of Fourth South 
 down Brigade comprised, briefly, the assembling of six hundred 
 men, five hundred horses, and innumerable vehicles, scattered 
 over at least seven miles of ground, the moving of them for- 
 ward provisioned, munitioned, and if possible without 
 casualties over unexplored country to the support of an 
 infantry whose whereabouts had not been ascertained. And 
 all this had to be accomplished through officers mostly ignorant 
 of active service, by weary men, under incessant shell-fire 
 and in pitch darkness. 
 
 Moreover, as the only definite information transmitted 
 from Murchison through Seventh Divisional Artillery 
 consisted of " You will report yourself at once for orders to 
 G.O.C. 2nd Southdown Infantry Brigade " at a farm three 
 miles away arrangements to meet all contingencies had to 
 be made instanter. 
 
 But Weasel Stark forgot nothing, left nothing to chance. 
 Within three minutes of receiving the first telephone-call, a 
 cyclist was on his way back to the five-mile-distant waggon- 
 lines, another to the Ammunition Column; Lodden and 
 Torrington had left their batteries for Headquarters ; Purves 
 was getting communication (through three different field- 
 exchanges) with the forward batteries in Vermelles ; the Doctor 
 was packing up his instruments; Mr. Black serving out a 
 second ' tea ' to H.Q. Staff; Gunner Horne preparing dinner 
 for its officers. . . . Since tired men may fight, but hungry 
 men, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, won't. 
 
 By the time D.R.L.S. 1 arrived with confirmation of the 
 instructions, Bombardier Pitman and his typewriter were 
 installed in the Mess-room ; and Peter, map in front of him, 
 was dictating exact orders " ' A ' and ' B ' would move by 
 such and such a road, ' C ' and ' D ' would fall-in in rear of 
 them at such and such a point ; ammunition sections must 
 keep touch by this means ; ration orderlies by that ; the 
 1 Despatch Rider, Letter Service.
 
 172 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Brigade would halt here ; a mounted officer from each battery 
 await the Colonel there. . . " 
 
 And all the time Stark was making certain, from Lodden, 
 from Torrington, from Mr. Black, from Purves and the 
 Doctor, by telephone messages and cyclists and mounted 
 orderlies, about fodder, and maps, and a new gun for ' A ' 
 Battery, and telephone-wire, and sand-bags and spare springs, 
 and the million details which the commander of a seasoned unit 
 may leave to his subordinates, but the Colonel of a new 
 brigade dare not abandon to chance. 
 
 Three-quarters of an hour after the Weasel had said, 
 " Gentlemen, we're for it this time," he and Peter warmed 
 by a square meal and a glass of port, their preliminary work 
 accomplished, heavy belts bulging their aproned hunting- 
 mackintoshes climbed to horse in the rain, and set off, followed 
 by their grooms, towards the shell-bursts over Vermelles. 
 
 Passing the gun-pits, Peter could see hurricane-lamps 
 moving, figures unpiling sand-bags from the blocked 
 entrances. . . . 
 
 3 
 
 Single file through the streaming darkness, they jog- 
 trotted the uneven road. 
 
 The rain beat in Peter's eyes: Little Willie stumbled, 
 
 Ewet reins through wet gauntlets ; recovered himself ; 
 on. Peter leaned over ; gentled the arched neck, 
 j forward, he could just see the huge chestnut's lifting 
 croup, the Weasel's bobbing torso. . . . Something flew 
 screaming out of the murk ; flashed crimson ; whistled ; 
 pattered to ground. Instinctively, Peter's knees tightened 
 on the saddle-flaps. Little Willie hunched himself for a 
 gallop ; felt steady hand at his mouth ; desisted. " Any- 
 body hurt ? " called the Colonel. Peter turned in his saddle ; 
 saw Jelks wrenching Queen Bess back to the road, a second 
 figure coming up steadily behind. " No, sir. Ten yards 
 to our left ..." They rode on. 
 
 Now they were into Vermelles a broad street of battered 
 houses. The Colonel slowed to a walk. Came another whistle 
 followed by the smash of tiles, the clink of falling brick on 
 cobble. ' This is damned unpleasant/ thought our Mr. 
 Jackson. He saw Stark bend down, speak to a shadow on the 
 road. They veered left ; right again over a railway-line into 
 a soft road, trees on either side. The rain had almost stopped. 
 Behind them, shells still whistled over the town. Immedi- 
 ately about them, all was quiet. Stark bent from his saddle ;
 
 Forward ! 173 
 
 flashed a torch at the roadway, inclined right. They jogged 
 on three hundred yards over turf, past a big hayrick. Stark 
 flashed his torch again ; signalled ' dismount. ' 
 
 " Sorry," he said when Peter came up. " Couldn't risk 
 being blocked on the main-road. That's the farm. We'll 
 have to walk the rest. " He pointed to a yellow light ; handed 
 reins to his groom an old man, clean-shaven and bow- 
 legged. 
 
 " Doherty, you and Jelks will take the horses back to that 
 hayrick. Let 'em feed. Whatever happens, don't move 
 from it. You understand ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Ruddy muck-up all round," commented the Weasel to 
 his Adjutant, as they stumbled down into a greasy trench ; 
 lost the light ; hauled themselves out ; found it again ; 
 picked their way through five yards of wire ; felt mud and 
 cobbles under their feet ; saw the light close in front of 
 them . . . 
 
 Suddenly, Peter grew aware of noise. A noise inhuman. 
 The whimper of damned souls. A wail as of enormous wet 
 fingers on an enormous glass : a wail that rose and fell, inter- 
 minable, unbearable. Suddenly, he was aware whence that 
 wail came. 
 
 All along the muddy roadway they lay the wounded 
 hundreds of them : thousands : brown blanket shapes 
 some muttering : some moaning : some singing in delirium 
 some quite still. The agony of it gripped Peter by the 
 stomach. Vomit rushed to his throat ; was choked down 
 again. 
 
 The Colonel stepped over a moaning form, pulled back a 
 sack curtain ; revealing bare walls, an oil-lamp, three Gunner 
 officers eating round a trestle table. 
 
 " Is this Le Rutoire ? " rasped the Weasel. 
 
 The three officers rose to their feet : " Part of it, sir," 
 said one, " the rest's about fifty yards down the road." 
 
 " Is General Ballardyce here ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Who are you ? " 
 
 " Siege," said the officer, and gave his number. " We've 
 got two six-inch hows, in the farm." 
 
 " Haven't seen an infantry general anywhere about ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " All right. I'll try down the road. " 
 
 " Have a drink before you go, sir ? " 
 
 " No, thanks."
 
 174 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 They clambered back into the darkness ; set off, between 
 the moaning forms, down the road ; 4 found a great gloomy 
 gateway. Here, the wounded lay in hundreds. Shapes 
 stood over them ; lifted them ; loaded them into the shelves 
 of hooded cars. The cars chugged away. Other cars chugged 
 up. 
 
 They passed through the gateway. " Do you know if 
 General Ballardyce is here ? " asked Stark of a big man, 
 chaplain's cross on his cap. 
 
 " No, I don't," answered the parson. " Who the hell 
 is General Ballardyce ? " 
 
 They searched the farm, gloomy outhouse after gloomy 
 outhouse. Everywhere lay the wounded, brown shapes, 
 moaning and wailing. Finally, they found steps ; stumbled 
 down them into an underground cellar. The place looked, 
 smelt, was, a charnel house. The reek of it struck Peter like 
 a blow. Reek of blood. Blood everywhere. Bloody forms 
 lying on bloody sacks. Bloody bandages in bloody buckets. 
 A man with bloody hands stooping over bloody flesh. 
 
 " Let's get out of this," rasped Stark. 
 
 Once more they stood outside the farm, among the chug- 
 ging cars, the moaning wounded. A form approached them. 
 A voice asked : " Are you General Ballardyce ? " 
 
 " I am not," said Colonel Stark. 
 
 The form materialized into a pale-faced subaltern, whom 
 Peter remembered. 
 
 " Aren't you Rutton of the Chalkshires ? " 
 
 " Yes. Jackson, isn't it ? I say, I wish you could help 
 me. I've got all the travelling cookers of the Second Infantry 
 Brigade just up the road. And I've been ordered to rendez- 
 vous with them at Haisnes church by dawn. ..." 
 
 " Haisnes is three miles away from here ; and it's inside 
 the Boche lines, young man," interrupted Stark. 
 
 " I know, sir. But I've got written orders. " He fumbled 
 inside his coat, produced a message-form. Stark flashed a 
 torch on it. " You see, sir. It's quite clear. What am I 
 to do, sir ? " 
 
 " Use your common sense, young man. You can't charge 
 the Boche with your sanguinary kitchens. ..." 
 
 An orderly stumbled up ; saluted Rutton ; said, " The 
 General's been gone three hours, sir. One of the doctors just 
 remembered him riding up and riding off again." 
 
 " What am I to do, sir ? " wailed Rutton. 
 
 But Stark was indulging himself in one real outburst : a 
 frothing torrent of scarlet blasphemy that submerged every
 
 Forward ! 175 
 
 gilded head between Saint Omer and the Pylons of 
 Loos. 
 
 4 
 
 Men under fire for the first ,time are not usually 
 frightened. 
 
 Peter, re-walking the muddy road between those wailing 
 wounded, was conscious of no fear. His orders to find the 
 horses ; take them back through Vermelles, and rejoin his 
 Colonel at the cross-roads which the map called Corons de 
 Rutoire seemed simple enough. But he was in a black 
 rage at the incompetence of those behind ; and he cursed them 
 as he pashed into the greasy trench, hauled himself out of it, 
 tried to locate that haystack. 
 
 ^ Damn that haystack 1 Where the devil could it have 
 moved to ? He saw the thing suddenly, outlined black 
 against the saffron of a shell-burst ; saw the silhouettes of 
 horses rearing at their bridles ; dashed forward. As he 
 reached the two men, he heard the whistle of another shell ; 
 heard it stop, plop into the ground. No detonation followed. 
 
 " By the Lord, an' I'm glad to see you, sir," ejaculated the 
 shadow of Driver Doherty. "I've been thinking we'd be 
 killed every minute." 
 
 " You will be if you don't hurry up," snapped Peter, 
 swinging himself straight from the ground to his saddle. 
 " Up you get, both of you." 
 
 Unthinking, he put spurs to Little Willie ; set off at a 
 hand-canter ; turned in his saddle ; saw the Colonel's groom 
 struggling with the big chestnut. The old ostler had caught 
 his right leg against the unaccustomed rifle-bucket ; couldn't 
 get it across the saddle of his own horse. Jelks was in the 
 act of mounting. Peter wrenched his horse's head round ; 
 galloped back; threw the man somehow into his seat. 
 Another shell whistled over, plopped harmless to ground. 
 The Colonel's chestnut reared. 
 
 " For God's sake get a move on," roared P. J. ; and slashed 
 the groom's mount over the croup with his heavy riding- 
 stick. The old man and his two horses shot forward down the 
 track ; Peter and Jelks followed at a gallop. 
 
 They came unscathed to the road ; slowed to a trot, 
 Peter taking the lead. No more shells followed : the road 
 was deserted. They crossed the railway, swung left, arrived 
 suddenly in an empty square. Above them rose the skeleton 
 of a church tower. Peter pulled up; took out his map ; flashed 
 torch at it. The grooms joined him.
 
 176 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " You can't stop here, sir." A sentry popped up amaz- 
 ingly from nowhere. 
 
 "Why not? " 
 
 " Road's being shelled every two minutes. One's just 
 about ..." The whizz-bang gave no warning. Even as 
 Peter flung up his arm to cover his face, he saw it hit the 
 ground ten yards in front, detonate blue in the dust. Little 
 Willie reared straight up ; Peter flung himself forward on the 
 horse's neck ; gave him his head. He came down again ; 
 stood shivering. 
 
 " Anybody hurt ? " asked P. J. 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 "Then come on." 
 
 Behind them they heard shells bursting : in front the 
 road lay deserted between shattered houses. They trotted 
 past a level crossing ; came on confusion beyond belief. 
 
 In the inky darkness, men, horses, guns, infantry cookers, 
 cars, motor-cyclists, lorries were fighting their way forward. 
 There was no traffic control, no attempt at order. On the 
 road, at the side of the road, anywhere man or beast could 
 find foothold, feet pashed, wheels rumbled. An enormous 
 pontoon-boat on its low carriage had broken down. Round 
 it, and about it, stood cursing men. There were cries in the 
 darkness : " Who the 'ell's that ? Where are you, mate ? 
 Are you the Sufiolks ? " 
 
 Damning and blasting, Peter barged his way through ; 
 made the cross-roads. There, just lighting a cigarette, he 
 found Stark. 
 
 " Didn't expect you quite so soon. Fine picnic, isn't it ? " 
 said the Weasel, as the three horsemen dismounted. " Didn't 
 see anything of the Brigade, did you ? " 
 
 " No, sir. They'll have a job getting through." 
 
 " They're not due yet." 
 
 Peter drew off his gauntlets ; looked at his watch ; saw 
 the hands pointed to ten o'clock ; groped instinctively for 
 his cigar-case ; pulled out a weed ; bit off the end of it ; found 
 his matches ; lit up. 
 
 " What about General Ballardyce, sir ? " 
 
 " God knows where he's got to. You might ask some of 
 these infanteers. The whole place is swarming with them. 
 Don't be away long." 
 
 Peter plodded off haphazard into the murk ; barked his 
 shin against a vehicle. " Who's that ? " 
 
 " Cookers. Second Southdown Infantry Brigade," answered 
 Rutton's voice. " I say, that Colonel of yours is a brick."
 
 Forward ! 177 
 
 " Oh, to hell with you and your cookers," said Peter, and 
 plodded on again. He had been sweating : now the perspira- 
 tion began to dry. Also, the black rage was on him again. 
 He heard the jingle of bits in the darkness ; somebody 
 shouted " Halt ! " A shell, out of sight, crashed to ground. 
 The somebody called out from his horse, " I say, you with the 
 cigar ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Peter. 
 
 " Can you tell me where I am ? " 
 
 " Who are you ? " 
 
 " Southdown Yeomanry." 
 
 Peter gave the information ; and added, " I should get 
 out of this if I were you." 
 
 Asked the somebody, " Have I your permission to retire, 
 sir ? " 
 
 And Peter Jackson, Adjutant of the Fourth Southdown 
 Brigade, who had as much right to order yeomanry out of 
 action as Driver Jelks, said without a quiver in his voice 
 " You have " ; listened, cigar in mouth, to the somebody's 
 " Walk March " ; to the jingle of bits and the creak of 
 accoutrements ; saw the last file of that squadron disappear 
 into the darkness. 
 
 ' Discipline be damned/ thought P. J. 'A child could see 
 that this isn't the place for Divisional Cavalry.' 
 
 He plodded on, inquiring of all he met : " Have you seen 
 General Ballardyce ? " But nobody he met had either seen, 
 heard of, smelt, or felt the missing General of the Second 
 Southdown Infantry Brigade. 
 
 5 
 
 Meanwhile, Lieutenant-Colonel Douglas Stark, D.S.O., 
 R. A., ruminated at the roadside. In front of him the amazing 
 traffic disentangled itself somehow ; moved forward, a 
 grotesque shadow-show, through the darkness. Behind him 
 he heard the jingle of harness, a battery moving forward over 
 turf. He called out, " Who are you ? " " 'Beer' Battery, 
 Third Southdown F. Ack. Beer," came the answer. The battery 
 disappeared. . . . 
 
 Stark began to reason out his position. He knew Ballar- 
 dyce of old : a sound fellow, the last person to disregard detail. 
 Therefore, Ballardyce had not been told to keep touch with 
 bis guns at Le Rutoire. Point one settled. Point two 
 Murchison's cryptic orders about the forward move. Mur- 
 chison was over-conscientious in the transmission of orders.
 
 178 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Followed that Murchison had practically no information. 
 Point two settled. And with that added to his own private 
 telephone-talk to the Brigade-Major of Seventh Division 
 Artillery Stark arrived at a definite conclusion : that the 
 blunder lay further back than either Southdown or Seventh 
 Division Headquarters. 
 
 Obviously. Because Rutton's order to rendezvous with 
 first -line transport at a village still in possession of the enemy, 
 proved an entire misconception of the battle-front. . . . 
 
 The Weasel had not wasted the hour it took his Adjutant 
 to find the horses and return with them to the cross-roads. He 
 had spent it in reconnoitring, as far as possible, the immediate 
 ground ; in acquiring miscellaneous scraps of information. 
 
 Remained three problems the exact position of our own 
 front line, which section of it he would be asked to protect, 
 and where to plant his batteries. 
 
 And the Weasel thought : ' This road runs straight into 
 Loos village. There are no shells coming from that direction. 
 We are supposed to have taken Loos. I think we have. 
 Beyond Loos ' he consulted his map ' is this Hill 70. 
 The chances are we have not taken Hill 70. There is a lot 
 of hostile artillery fire coming from my left front. . . .' 
 
 He timed with his watch the period between the discharges 
 of the guns and the shell-bursts over Vermelles. ' Those 
 guns are not much over two thousand yards from me. I 
 know for certain, because of the targets we were firing at this 
 evening, that the centre of our original attack was held up : 
 and if P. J. 's information about City Saint lie was correct. . . ' 
 
 "And by Jove, it was correct." The Weasel suddenly 
 broke into speech. " That gun-fire proves it. As sure as 
 God made little apples, I'm sitting on the base-line of a semi- 
 circle, plumb in the middle of a five-mile salient." 
 
 Then he took out his compass ; laid it on the ground till 
 the needle steadied ; and turned due west. " Damn it," 
 said the Weasel, "what's happened to the Very Lights? . . ." 
 And even as he spoke, directly to the south of him, he caught 
 a faint white shimmer in the sky ; and even as that faded, due 
 north of him, he caught the barest glimpse of another. 
 
 " Oh, hell ! " ejaculated the Weasel. " Oh, ruddy hell 1 " 
 
 Down the road behind him, headlamp flaring recklessly, 
 dodging in and out among the traffic, a motor-cycle phutted 
 its jolting way. The Weasel jumped into the middle of the 
 road ; stood there, coat open, arms outstretched. The 
 cyclist halted, dropping one leg to the ground. 
 
 " D.R.L.S. ? " asked the Weasel.
 
 Forward ! 179 
 
 " Yes, sir. I'm in a hurry." 
 
 " To hell with your hurry. Put that blasted lamp out. 
 Now wait." The Weasel shaded the Orilux torch at his belt ; 
 drew a message-pad from his pocket ; inserted the carbon ; 
 began to write. And while he wrote, very meticulously, he 
 thought of the Brigade he had trained so carefully, of his 
 wife and the life she carried, and of a certain individual at 
 St. Omer who would not be displeased if Weasel Stark hap- 
 pened to make a mistake . . . For in the bigger affairs of 
 earth, as in the smaller, it is easier to break a subordinate than 
 admit one's own failure ! 
 
 " Sign on the message-form," rasped the Weasel, holding 
 his hand over the meticulous words. Then he tore off the 
 top copy, and stuffed it into an envelope which he addressed, 
 marking the time of despatch on the space provided, to : 
 " B.M. Southdown Div. Arty." 
 
 " And now," rasped the Weasel, " why the devil didn't 
 you shout out who your message was for ? Don't you know 
 your job ? " 
 
 " O. C. Fourth Southdown Brigade, R.F.A., sir," said the 
 cyclist. " He's at Le Rutoire farm, sir. . . . " 
 
 " Is he ? " The Weasel opened the envelope and began 
 to read : " Further to my B.M. 764, through 7 D.A., please 
 report by bearer map-references of your batteries and what 
 time G.O.C. 2nd I.E. proposes to attack. . ." 
 
 " Why didn't Davson or Hathway bring this ? " asked 
 the Colonel. 
 
 " I don't know, sir. I only joined Divisional H.Q. this 
 morning." 
 
 The Weasel turned the torch on his own face : " You'll 
 know me next time, young man. Now buzz off." 
 
 " I was told to wait for an answer, sir," said the cyclist, 
 slipping full and empty envelope the latter signed for 
 evidence of receipt into the case slung at his side. 
 
 " You've got your answer," rasped the Weasel. " Buzz 
 off ; and be quick about it." 
 
 " Don't switch on that headlamp till you reach Vermelles." 
 The great voice boomed likeja megaphone through the phutting 
 darkness. 
 
 6 
 
 One o'clock on the morning of the 26th. A ^drizzle 
 of rain. Stretching a mile down the road from Corons de 
 Rutoire, its last water-cart just clear of the shell-fire on the 
 Vermelles railway-crossing, waits a long column of dripping
 
 i8o Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 horses, loaded vehicles and weary men. The men are dis- 
 mounted. They stand, gunners by gun-wheels, drivers at 
 horses' heads. " What 's happening, Joe ? I dunno. Wish 
 we could smoke. Where's the old man ? Up in front. 
 Anyone hit in your lot ? Only our Number one's horse. 
 Just a splinter. ". . ."Where?" Laughter. "Bet he danced 
 a bit. Who bound it up ? " " The doc." " Good for the 
 doc. He ought to be at Number Nine hospital. What-ho ! " 
 
 At the head of the column stands a little red-headed man, 
 Adjutant by his side ; round him, his four battery commanders : 
 Torrington, dropping with fatigue ; Lodden, very calm, all 
 his irascibility vanished in the presence of crisis ; Bromley, 
 twirling brown moustaches ; Major Lethbridge, the new- 
 comer, a tiny fat man with a weak mouth and unsteady eyes, 
 fidgeting his riding-switch. 
 
 " Well, that's the position," says the Weasel. " We can't 
 move forward because we haven't got guides, and God knows 
 where the trench-bridges are. We can't go back, because 
 Ballardyce has obviously been ordered to attack. Therefore, 
 though we may get it pretty hot if the Boche is still in Fosse 
 Eight to-morrow morning, I intend to stop where I am. 
 There's an old trench just in front of us ; the parados will 
 give us a bit of cover." 
 
 " But what about the horses, Colonel ? "from Torrington. 
 
 " They'll have to stop with the guns. If the front line 
 gives, we shall be liable to want our teams in a hurry. Well, 
 gentlemen, if nobody has anything better to suggest." . . . 
 A silence. ... "All right. Jackson, you'd better go with 
 Bromley and mark for the right of the Brigade. Batteries 
 to come up one at a time in column of route. Action left. 
 Get your guns as close to the trench as you can. Usual 
 intervals if possible. Purves ..." 
 
 Yes, sir." The Balliol man appears out of the darkness. 
 Tell H.Q. to walk their horses forward to that haystack. 
 See it ? " 
 
 Yes, sir." 
 
 Unhook the telephone-waggon and the M.O.'s 1 cart. 
 Send your horses a hundred yards to the rear, and report to 
 me when it's done. Do you understand ? " 
 
 '^Yes, sir." 
 
 7 
 
 If ever man in a tight corner drew comfort from good 
 work done in the past, it was Weasel Stark as he stood alone 
 i Medical officer's
 
 Forward ! 181 
 
 that night, and watched this entity of his creating file past 
 him in the darkness. 
 
 Very steadily they came, team after toiling team, gun 
 after creaking gun, subaltern after subaltern leading his 
 section to its marked position O'Grady, Archdale, Petti- 
 grew, Straker, Conway, Merrilees, Hall, and Hutchinson. 
 One by one the teams were unhooked, led away ; one by one 
 the guns swung round, muzzles across the gaping trench. 
 And about each gun, as it dropped into position, men laboured, 
 men very weary of labour, with pick and shovel and sand-bag, 
 making what cover they might against the dawn. 
 
 And till dawn began, up and down among the labouring 
 men the orders he had anticipated received at last strode the 
 Weasel, rasping across the darkness : " Dig ! you blight- 
 hawks. For the Lord's sake, dig ! "
 
 PART XVII 
 ACTION LEFT! 
 
 DAYLIGHT revealed an irregular line of fifteen field- 
 guns and limbers, weary men piling sandbags 
 round their wheels. Already the sandbags had 
 risen to the gun-axles. 
 
 The line of guns lay in the centre of a great shallow saucer 
 of ground, scarred with zig-zag trenches : and as the first 
 blue of dawn cleared to white, the men who laboured could 
 see, straight to their front and on the lip of the saucer, the 
 shattered top of a solitary tree. And looking to the left 
 of the tree, they saw first of all a road, and then a big 
 battered farm-house, beyond which miles away as it seemed 
 to the weary men rose, over the ultimate edge of the huge 
 saucer, a something which Gunner Mucks weat, miner by 
 trade, pronounced to be the wheel of a pit -head. Had Gunner 
 Mucksweat been able to read a map, he would have known 
 that pit -head wheel for the top of Fosse Eight. 
 
 Prolonging the line of guns on the left ran the road they 
 had traversed during the night at its end, the torn roofs of 
 Vermelles ; and behind the guns, bunched together over a 
 square mile of ground, stood horses hundreds and hundreds 
 and hundreds of horses. For the Fourth Southdown Brigade 
 was not alone in that huge saucer of chalk. Behind the 
 horses, parallel to the guns, lay another road, lined with red 
 brick houses, above which towered the huge slag-cone of 
 Fosse Seven. 
 
 2 
 
 The toe of a boot woke Second Lieutenant Stanley Purves to 
 consciousness of the fact that he was sleeping inthe lee of a 
 particularly noisome haystack. 
 
 " Get up," said P. J., " the Colonel wants you." 
 
 " What's the tune ? " asked the thing under the hay. 
 
 " Half -past four." 
 
 " My grief ! what a time to get up." 
 
 He struggled to his feet, pulling wet wisps from his hair ;
 
 Action Left ! 183 
 
 realized that he could hardly walk for cramp ; limped forward ; 
 stumbled over a low stretcher on two cycle-wheels, into the 
 shafts of a hooded cart painted with a large red cross. 
 
 " Anybody want me ? " Doctor Carson, a light sleeper, 
 pushed his white head out from the tilt ; saw Purves making 
 for the guns. " Suppose I'd better get up," said the Doctor ; 
 and in doing so, woke Horrocks the Vet. They cursed each 
 other, and stepped out on to the wet ground. 
 
 Said Purves, returning : " The Weasel wants his brekker, 
 and he wants it damn quick." He limped off to find Gunner 
 Home, found him asleep under the spidery telephone-waggon. 
 Him, by right of seniority, Purves kicked also. Moreover, 
 after a careful reconnaissance, the Balliol man discovered two 
 foreign-looking boots projecting from the aforesaid haystack, 
 which being sternly pulled produced Morency. 
 
 Meanwhile the four battery commanders Torrington 
 hobbling along somehow in the rear followed by two men 
 carrying a red drum of wire, were toiling up the slope towards 
 ' Lone Tree.' 
 
 3 
 
 " Have you been smoking those cab-rankers of yours all 
 night, P. J. ? " asked the Weasel. 
 
 They were standing in the middle of the gun-line, watching 
 Charlie Straker as he bent over the pointer of his No. i 
 director. 
 
 " I should lay on that tree till you hear from Torrington," 
 said Stark ; and repeated his question to Peter. 
 
 " Pretty well, sir." 
 
 " I wonder they don't make you sick. Had any sleep ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 The two unshaven men looked at each other ; and both 
 laughed for the first time in twenty-four hours. Whatever 
 else happened, the Fourth Brigade though too far back for 
 wire-cutting was at least in position. Merrilees, solemn 
 as an owl, came up with " Mr. Conway's compliments," 
 and " should he lay his guns on that tree ? " ; departed with 
 his instructions. 
 
 By now, sticks were crackling in the deserted trench, 
 tea boiling and bacon sizzling. Weary men struggled into 
 their tunics ; ate and drank gratefully. " Keep 'em at it," 
 said the Weasel, as they passed the last gun on their way to 
 breakfast. " Very good, sir," answered horsy Hutchinson ; 
 and added sotto voce, " What the devil does the old man think 
 we're all made of pigskin ? " . . .
 
 184 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Rotten job, driving tired men, isn't it, P. J. ? " said the 
 Weasel, balancing himself mug in hand on the shafts 
 of the doctor's cart. " But I don't like the look of that " he 
 pointed to the far pit -wheel " and I don't like the look of 
 this " he indicated the cross-roads. " In fact, entre nous, the 
 more I see of things all round, the less I like any of 'em." 
 
 Half-way through breakfast, Peter called to the telephone 
 heard Lodden's voice. They had made out, roughly, our 
 infantry's position ; were coming back. Would Peter send 
 up O'Grady and one other subaltern to observe ? At half- 
 past six the four battery commanders returned. It was still 
 too misty for shooting. 
 
 Appeared, on a frisky charger, red hat glowing, eagerness 
 personified, Murchison the Brigade-Major. He waved a large 
 white map at the Weasel ; pointed with his finger to a wriggly 
 red line on it. " We want you to open fire on that strong- 
 point, Colonel. Fire as much as you like : but don't fire a 
 round after 10.30, because the infantry are going to charge 
 then." 
 
 " Who's going to cut the enemy wire ? " To Peter, over- 
 hearing, the tired voice sounded very serious. 
 
 " Oh, that'll be all right." Murchison galloped off. 
 
 The right-hand gun of the Brigade shot out a tongue of 
 flame ; a sand-bag dropped from its parapet. O'Grady, 
 beyond the crest, had begun his ranging. 
 
 Appeared, on a quiet brown mare, Coolsdon the Staff- 
 Captain. He, too, had a white map in his hand ; indicated 
 a target. 
 
 " Oh, if Murchison's been here " said Coolsdon ; and 
 
 galloped off. . . . 
 
 Now, all round the great saucer of chalk, men bent to 
 telephone receivers. " Drop one hundred. Five minutes 
 more right," shouted the men, and voices down the gun- 
 lines repeated, " Drop one hundred. Five minutes more 
 right." The thing that ballooned slowly into the air behind 
 Fosse Eight could not hear the shouting men ; but it could 
 see, vaguely through the low mist, tiny sparks of fire in the 
 great saucer. 
 
 4 
 
 " Three rounds battery-fire. One o seconds." " Stop" 
 " Add twenty-five" " Two rounds battery-fire. One o seconds." 
 " Go on." " At battery-fire, sweep one five minutes." 
 
 Up and down the long line men stood shouting, men jerked 
 triggers, muzzles roared and recoiled, shells leapt to open
 
 Action Left ! 185 
 
 breech, breech-blocks twirled home, gunners knees astride 
 clung to rocking seats. And round the rocking, roaring 
 guns, deafened men still toiled with pick and shovel at the 
 sandbag epaulments. 
 
 Batteries were firing independently : and Stark, mackin- 
 tosh spread on the parados of a crumbling trench, watched 
 them without a word. He felt a hand on his arm ; saw two 
 fingers and a cigar pointing over his shoulder, forward and 
 upward through the gun-flashes. " See that sausage, sir ? " 
 shouted P. J. in his ear. 
 
 The Weasel looked round at his Adjutant : the Adjutant 
 flickered an eye towards the crowded horse-lines. 
 
 " Behind those houses," rasped the Weasel. " Get 'em 
 away quietly, or they'll panic. And tell 'em to post a look- 
 out man to watch for signals." 
 
 ' Not bad for a civilian,' thought the Weasel as he watched 
 Peter stroll calmly to the haystack, tap Horrocks on the 
 shoulder. 
 
 The balloon had gone down again ; guns were still firing ; 
 and across the fields veterinary officer's white breeches at 
 their head filed at a walk the horses of the Headquarter 
 Staff. Now, in and out among the tethered teams at the 
 battery horse-lines, strode a stocky figure, cigar in mouth, 
 whispering, " Hook in and get away quietly. Behind those 
 houses. At a walk, please, Quartermaster-Sergeant." Like 
 figures in a quadrille, the bays and browns and blacks of the 
 teams, the dark green of the ammunition waggons, curved 
 to slow life, emerged into four long lines that unrolled steadily, 
 across the dun fields to safety. But as the lines drew clear 
 they revealed, behind them, low dark bunches in the middle 
 distance : other horses hundreds and hundreds of horses. . . . 
 
 " Ich kann nicht genau sehen," mumbled a guttural voice 
 three and a half miles away, " aber am Dreiweg finder wir 
 sicker etwas. Also, los damit, lieber Oberleutnant. ..." 
 
 Peter heard, above the roar of his own guns, a high shrill 
 scream ; saw a black fountain spurt from the ground three 
 hundred yards in front. Instantaneously, the Weasel was on 
 his feet, hands to mouth. " Take cover," roared the Weasel. 
 " Take cover. All except gun-numbers into the trench." For 
 the diggers had stopped work, stood staring at the dropping 
 fountain. 
 
 Rose another scream up the sky. ... " Get down, you 
 bloody fools, get down." Now the Weasel was half away 
 along the flashing line. . . . The scream came shrieking 
 to earth, stopped. A hundred yards in front, a few clods leapt
 
 i86 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 from the ground. " Under cover. Under cover." Like 
 rabbits to burrow, men popped to earth. But still the guns 
 went on. 
 
 Peter, kneeling behind quivering sandbags, was conscious 
 of a mule-like bray high in air, of a second's deadly silence, 
 of a thudding crash ; felt a rush of air at his ears ; saw some- 
 thing slice the sandbag at his side as knife slices cheese ; plunge 
 into the turf. . . . Then he heard fragments pattering on 
 the hard earth behind him ; looked up ; and saw & hundred 
 yards away, standing upright, hands in his pockets, the 
 Weasel : and the Weasel was still shouting : " Under cover, 
 you bloody fools, get under cover." The gun behind which 
 Peter knelt went off. with a crash. . . . 
 
 ' My aunt 1 ' he thought. 
 
 Except for the Colonel's figure, nothing moved behind 
 the guns. Purves and the Doctor, noses to ground, were 
 lying flat against the haystack. Very high in air, another 
 shell went howling on its way. Peter, following the noise 
 with his eyes, found dark clumps of horses ; was conscious 
 noise ceased ; saw a great black earth-spout shoot up among 
 the horses ; heard the double crash of shell's alighting ; saw 
 terrified teams rear and plunge ; saw little figures hurling 
 themselves at bridles. . . . 
 
 Another shell swished over ; and another ; plunged 
 to ground in rear of him. The whole middle distance seemed 
 a mass of stampeding beasts that hurled themselves through 
 black fountains across the plains. 
 
 " Didn't you hear me say get under cover, you sanguinary 
 cigar-merchant ? " rasped a voice at his ear. 
 
 5 
 
 " Another five minutes," ordered the Weasel. " Tell 
 'em they can go to gun-fire if they like." 
 
 Hostile shelling had ceased. Only, far away over the roofs 
 of Vermelles, an occasional gray puff-ball betokened shrapnel. 
 Sun shone on bare plain behind, on bare crest in front . Round 
 the farm little figures moved. 
 
 Torrington, V.C., pale and shaky, lay in the bottom of 
 the recess between his sections. " What's that, Sergeant- 
 Major ? " he asked the man standing behind him. " Colonel 
 says we can go to gun-fire, sir." " All right. Tell 'em five 
 rounds." " Five rounds gun-fire," megaphoned the Sergeant- 
 Major. Straker and Pettigrew, kneeling between their pieces, 
 flung out hands in acknowledgment ; repeated the order.
 
 Action Left ! 187 
 
 Flames roared above Torrington's head ; chalk pattered 
 down on him from the trench-walls. " How much longer, 
 Sergeant-Major ? " " Four minutes yet, sir." " Battery 
 fire, till the last minute." " Right, sir. . . . At battery fire, 
 go on." 
 
 " God's teeth ! " muttered Torrington, V.C. " I can't 
 stand this racket much longer. ..." 
 
 " Stop I " 
 
 All round the hollow saucer of ground, noise ceased 
 miraculously. Only, every now and then, the howitzers 
 bayed separately at their far targets. And from beyond 
 the lip of the saucer came a distant stutter, as of men swinging 
 gigantic rattles the chattering of machine-guns. 
 
 Behind the tattered haystack stood a signaller, flags 
 outstretched. "W N," wagged the signaller. "W N," 
 replied far flags at the corner of the houses under the Fosse 
 Seven. Ammunition waggons came trotting across the 
 field. 
 
 Down in the trench, black instrument in front of 
 him, another signaller buzzed frantically. " F.O.O.," buzzed 
 the signaller, " F.O.O." But no answering buzz sounded in 
 his ears. For the red wire lay frayed beyond the crest -line 
 and the guns were blind ! 
 
 " This is a nice muck-up," said the Weasel to Lethbridge. 
 " Strict orders not to fire after 10.30. The line dished ; 
 and the Lord knows what may be happening. Send out a 
 linesman, will you ? " 
 
 A man, telephone-case on his shoulder, climbed out of 
 the trench ; began making his way up the wire. 
 
 At the end of the gun-line, by an emptying ammunition- 
 waggon, Peter stood talking to Bromley. They looked towards 
 Vermelles. Suddenly, under a gray smoke-puff, they saw a 
 horseman at full gallop ; behind him drivers bending low 
 in their saddles, whips plying a six-horse team came hell for 
 leather, and, behind the team, a leaping, bumping thing on 
 wheels. " Charge of the horse-artillery ? " laughed Bromley. 
 " No," said Peter, " Lodden's missing gun." The team 
 arrived with a clatter and jingle at the cross-roads. Lodden 
 leapt by. They heard his furious voice. " Who told you to 
 gallop, Bombardier ? Who the hell told you to gallop ? " 
 Drivers grinning from their sweating mounts, the gun creaked 
 past. 
 
 " Hurry up with those shells, you chaps," said Bromley 
 to his gunners. 
 
 There jog-trotted slowly to the cross-roads a young
 
 i88 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Staff officer. He put hand to eyes, shading them from the 
 sun ; said, " Good Lord, it's Peter " ; trotted over to the 
 guns.^The be-tabbed horseman in the creaseless tunic looked 
 very out of place, as he leaned from his saddle talking to the 
 unshaven, tired-eyed Gunners 
 
 " What are you doing up here, Francis ? " askedj[Peter. 
 
 " Trying to find Le Rutoire, and a prisoner or two. That's 
 it, I presume ? " He switched riding-stick towards the red 
 buildings in front. " What's supposed to be happening here 
 a battle ? " 
 
 The three stood gossiping. The ammunition waggon, 
 empty of its contents, wheeled past them ; trotted across 
 the field. 
 
 "Well, so long," said Francis, " I must be off." He put 
 his horse to a trot . . . 
 
 Peter heard the shell scream ; flung himself on his face ; 
 heard the burst of it, the clods falling about him. " Christ ! " 
 he thought, " Francis . . ." 
 
 Bromley, unhurt, was first to reach the bloody kicking heap 
 at the roadside. Even as he came to it, the kicking legs 
 jerked convulsively ; the beast rolled over, lay still. Peter, 
 rushing up, saw a gaping, steaming belly, a scarlet boot 
 protruding from it. ... Together they dragged out the 
 tortured thing that had been Francis Gordon. He lay there, 
 face dead white, just muttering. Only the upper part of 
 his body seemed human the rest was blood, blood and 
 dirt. 
 
 Across the turf towards them, white hair ruffling in the 
 breeze, darted the doctor, looked for a second at the thing 
 on the ground. 
 
 " Shell -dressings. In my cart. Quick as you can. Case 
 of instruments. My orderly." Peter rushed off . 
 
 He came back carrying a great armful of lint, to find 
 the doctor and Bromley on their knees. A boot, blood- 
 soaked, was lying on the ground. " Cut the seam," he 
 heard ; and, " All right, Doc," from Bromley. Something 
 ripped : they were turning over the thing which had been his 
 cousin. 
 
 " Dressings," said the doctor, " thanks." He took them, 
 began bandaging the ripped flesh. 
 
 Francis opened his eyes ; saw Peter standing over him. 
 " Make him give me morphia," gasped Francis. Then 
 pain stunned him ; he lay there, as a shot rabbit lies, eyes 
 still open. 
 
 The doctor's orderly came running, case under his arm.
 
 Action Left ! 189 
 
 " Morphia," said the doctor calmly, not looking up from his 
 work. " Rip that sleeve, please. . . ." 
 
 Blessed needle slid under white flesh : eyes closed. " More 
 dressings, please," said Doctor Carson, " and you can be getting 
 up that wheeled stretcher, Masterson." 
 
 6 
 
 " Will he live, Doc ? " Peter, rather white about the gills, 
 watched the stretcher down the road, out of sight. 
 
 " I'm afraid not. Though, mind you, there's a chance. 
 The left femur's broken ; that right foot . . . but there, 
 you saw for yourself." 
 
 " You'd better look after these, P. J." Bromley handed 
 over a bundle of papers, a wrist -watch, a morocco leather 
 photograph-case. Peter stuffed them into his pocket ; walked 
 back to the Colonel. He had been awake so long, the thing 
 had happened so suddenly, that the fact of the casualty being 
 his cousin hardly touched him. He felt horror but horror 
 numbed, impersonal. 
 
 At the Colonel's side, leaning over from his horse, Peter 
 found Murchison. 
 
 " Any news from your F.O.O. ? " asked the Brigade- 
 Major. 
 
 "No. Wire's broken. I'm having it repaired. Hallo, 
 what the devil's that ? " 
 
 Stark pointed to the crest on their right. Little figures, 
 figures of men running, rose over the skyline ; bunched to- 
 gether as they streaked down the hill. A shell burst black 
 among the figures a second shell. And up the slopes towards 
 the figures galloped miniature horses with tiny Jockeys ; and 
 as they reached the crest, horses silhouetted black against the 
 sky-rim, the Jockeys flung themselves from their saddles ; 
 dashed forward out of sight. And still little men poured back 
 over the hill, past the waiting horses. 
 
 " My God ! " said Murchison, " I thought at first they must 
 be Bodies." (For there were two hundred British guns in 
 that great saucer of ground.) 
 
 " My God I " rasped the Weasel, " I wish they had been." 
 (For it is not good to watch the unofficial side of history in the 
 making.) 
 
 Suddenly, they heard a voice, roaring, "Action." An 
 orderly dashed up. " Through to F.O.O., sir." 
 
 "Shrapnel," roared the voice. "Four six hundred. 
 At gun-fire sweep five minutes from your zero lines."
 
 IQO Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 The rest of the orders were howled down by a hurri- 
 cane of gun-crashes. . . . 
 
 7 
 
 Beyond the furthest lip of the chalk-saucer ; beyond the 
 zig-zag communication trench ; beyond the old front-line, 
 cut deep into the chalk, studded with empty gas-cylinders, 
 littered with rifles and the uncleanly debris of war ; beyond 
 the lonely tree ; beyond the burrow where O'Grady's tele- 
 phonist crouched at his dumb instrument ; beyond sight and 
 touch and hearing, and every human emotion save that last 
 instinct which is the naked life lay Second Lieutenant 
 Peabody of the Chalkshires. 
 
 His brown face was gray in the dust. He had no cap. His 
 outstretched hands were ripped and torn from clutching at 
 rusty wire. His left puttee had fallen in coils over his boot. 
 And where he lay, he panted as a hound pants after the kill. 
 
 But Peabody had not killed. . . . 
 
 He became aware of bees, swarms and swarms of bees that 
 zipped and buzzed about him. Then he feit a terrific tug at 
 his ankles; felt his face scraping against the ground. 
 Something grabbed him round the neck ; pulled him over 
 backwards. 
 
 He wiped the dust out of his eyes, and began to curse. The 
 curses were utterly inhuman. The kind of curses doctors hear 
 at times from perfectly respectable young mothers in milk- 
 fever foul blasphemies that have their roots in the sub- 
 conscious dark of sex. 
 
 The soul of Second Lieutenant Peabody returned to his 
 body. 
 
 His soul remembered peculiarly little. They had arrived 
 in artillery formation somewhere or other on a pitch-dark 
 night : occupied some trenches. He had posted sentries : 
 and the sentries had gone to sleep. Everybody had gone to 
 sleep: except himself and Arkwright. Arkwright, by the 
 way, must be dead. Otherwise, why should he think of 
 Arkwright as doubled up over something or other, with a pair 
 of wire-cutters clutched in his hand ? . . . Oh yes now he 
 came to think of it, most people were dead : because Slattery 
 had come along and said something about " half -past ten." 
 Then they had all got up with their packs on : they ought 
 to have been told to take their packs off ... 
 
 " 'Ave a drop of this, sir ? " said a well-known voice at 
 his elbow.
 
 Action Left ! 191 
 
 " Thanks, Haddock. I think I will," answered the soul of 
 Second Lieutenant Peabody. 
 
 The mind came back to the soul. " What the hell hap- 
 pened ? " asked the boy. 
 
 " Whizz-bang, sir. Thought you were gone that time, sir, " 
 answered the dirty little man with the dirty rifle. " T'ain't 
 no use going hover again, sir. We've been hover three times." 
 
 "Get me another rifle, you son of a bitch," said Peabody 
 curtly. Something cracked like a whip-lash in the air : he 
 felt a terrific kick on his left ear-drum ; collapsed to ground. 
 
 For a second the boy lay perfectly still : then, to his 
 utter amazement, he realized that he had not been killed. 
 
 The shock of that second whizz-bang seemed to have cleared 
 his brain. He hauled himself up very cautiously ; peered over 
 the edge of the shallow trench. 
 
 Just above him the ground rose two hundred yards of 
 ground littered with brown heaps some of them moving 
 at the top of the slope, more bodies hundreds of them 
 hanging grotesquely in the air. He dropped down again. 
 
 " How many of us got back, Haddock ? " 
 
 " Dunno, sir. Old Long, 'e's just round the corner, sir." 
 
 " Well, you stop here. If you see anything coming, shoot 
 at it." 
 
 The boy bent down ; crawled along the trench ; ran his 
 head into a man's knees. " Heasy on there," growled Long 
 Longstaffe, " heasy on." Then, looking down, " Sorry, sir. 
 Didn't know it was you." 
 
 The boy gave his instructions ; crawled on. Private 
 Longstaffe arranged his elbows in the dirt ; kicked his long 
 legs behind him ; cuddled the rifle-stock to his cheek. " Carn't 
 miss the sods from 'ere," he said to himself. . . . And then, 
 suddenly, he saw a cautious dot bob up on the near 
 sky-line. . . . 
 
 8 
 
 " Blast it, oh, blast it. Get me a line." 
 
 O'Grady, binoculars to eyes, could see the gray figures 
 crawling through the wire ; could hear rifles crackling just 
 below him. 
 
 The man on his knees tapped key frantically. " F. X. 
 Don," tapped the man, " F. X. Don." 
 
 More gray figures crawled through the wire. On the left 
 of the wire, up a little white road with trees on each side, 
 came another line of gray figures ; flung themselves down. 
 O'Grady could see flame from their rifles ; toy smoke-puffs.
 
 192 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " F. X. Don," tapped the man, " F. X. Don." The gray 
 figures by the road were on their feet, running. 
 
 " F. O. O.," throbbed the plate at the man's ear-drum, 
 " F. O. O." 
 
 " Got'em,sir,"saidthemantoO'Grady, " will you speak ?" 
 
 O'Grady grabbed the receiver, and said, speaking very 
 slowly and distinctly : " Esses-0-Esses. Do you under- 
 stand ? " 
 
 " Esses-O-Esses," throbbed the plate at his ear. 
 
 Private Longstaffe, wrenching frantically at jammed 
 breech-bolt, heard a- whirr as of homing pigeons over his head ; 
 was aware of white smoke-puffs bursting among the gray 
 figures all along the slope in front of him. . . . The breech- 
 bolt shot home at last, but when he lifted the rifle to his 
 shoulder and peered through the V of the backsight, the gray 
 figures had disappeared.
 
 PART XVIII 
 THE SUICIDE CLUB 
 
 i 
 
 AT midnight between September 26th and 27th, 
 1915, two men faced each other across a chequered 
 French table-cloth in the bare salle-A-manger 
 of an estaminet at Beuvry. 
 
 An orderly stood outside the door, an orderly with tiny 
 highly-polished grenades on his shoulder-straps, and below 
 the grenades two winking brass letters the second of the 
 letters being ' G.' Outside the estaminet a car waited ; 
 and past the car filed steady columns of tall men. These 
 men, too, bore a winking ' G ' on each shoulder-strap of their 
 excessively clean tunics. 
 
 Said the first of the two at the table, a broad-shouldered, 
 quiet man, rather full in the face, steady of eye, big of brown 
 moustache, a man who wore the crossed swords and star of 
 a Major General : " And so we have the job of cleansing their 
 Augean stable for them. As far as I can make out, the posi- 
 tion is this." 
 
 He spread a big white map on the table ; indicated with 
 one finger a semi-circle drawn in thick blue chalk. " On 
 the right, our line runs from the Double Grassier, halfway 
 up Hill 70, along this road, in front of the Chalk Pit : 
 and from there it bends back, crossing the Hulluch Road 
 here, just beyond the Quarries, to Fosse Eight. Whether the 
 gth can hang on to Fosse Eight or not is pretty doubtful. 
 You already know the political situation," he emphasized 
 the words a trifle scornfully, ' with regard to Hill 70. ... 
 Now, what about those guns ? . . . " 
 
 His companion, a saturnine aquiline Brigadier General of 
 Artillery, well over six-foot, glass in his eye, drew a creased 
 plan from his pocket ; spread it over the table-cloth. As he 
 did so, his long hands betrayed intense concentration : a 
 concentration not belied by the clipped phrases in which he 
 spoke. 
 
 " Fve seen both the Brigadiers, sir," he began, " and as
 
 194 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 they apparently know very little of the ground, I've arranged 
 to take over both Artilleries myself. Our own can't be up for 
 three days. The Southdown batteries," he pointed to the 
 map, " are marked in red ; the Northdown in blue." 
 
 " Too far back," commented the other, scrutinising the 
 coloured dots, the shaded arcs which shewed their approxi- 
 mate ranges. 
 
 " They seem to have done the best they could under the 
 circumstances." 
 
 ' The circumstances,' known to both the speakers, did not 
 bear overmuch thinking of being on a par with the ' political 
 situation ' which, by a premature announcement in Parlia- 
 ment of the capture of Hill 70, was forcing them to attempt an 
 attack both knew to be in the nature of a very forlorn hope. 
 
 ^The Gunner General went on detailing his plans : " I shall 
 put Stark in command of the Left Group, tie's the only 
 regular Colonel they've got." 
 
 '\Good man ? " asked the other. 
 
 " Yes, sir. Very sound. I've known him for years : 
 stuck pig with him in India. . . . We're very short of 
 ammunition for the hows." 
 
 " That's nothing unusual. Allenby's had to chuck it 
 altogether in the Salient. What about eighteen-pounders ? " 
 
 ''We can just manage a two-hours' bombardment. When 
 do you propose attacking, sir ? " 
 
 "Day after to-morrow." The senior General glanced at 
 his watch, saw it was past midnight. " As you were, to- 
 morrow. Some time in the afternoon." 
 
 2 
 
 At last Peter Jackson slept. 
 
 All through that long afternoon of sunshine, the eighteen- 
 pounders of the Fourth Brigade had been silent. Round 
 the outside lip of the chalk-saucer, attack and counter-attack 
 had died in exhaustion. Only, at its extreme left edge, under 
 the shadow of Fosse Eight, in the Hohenzollen Redoubt, 
 kilted men fought out the light, hand to hand, with bomb and 
 bayonet and grenade. In front of Loos, the saviour cavalry 
 watched the silent woods and the hill whereon death waited. 
 
 O'Grady had come back at dusk to report the situation. 
 At nine o'clock the men sleeping round the guns had been 
 awakened by a vast crackle of rifle fire far away on the left, 
 by a torrent of white lights spurting up inky skies. This 
 they had watched, as a dog too tired to bay watches the
 
 The Suicide Club 195 
 
 moon ; watched and slept again all save the weary sentries 
 peering towards the lonely tree, and the weary signallers in 
 the trench by the telephone. 
 
 But Doctor Carson might not sleep. All that afternoon 
 his red-crossed tilt had lured piteous bandaged men. All 
 that night they came ; staggering down the slopes ; waiting 
 a while ; staggering on with a " Thank yer, doctor," towards 
 Vermelles. The doctor was fifty-five and a specialist, but 
 bending over those piteous men he did not regret his 
 abandoned consulting-room in Queen Anne Street even 
 though that which he accomplished for them scarcely required 
 as much skill as he had possessed in his medical-student days. 
 
 He felt a little lonely, there in the shadowed darkness, 
 watching the lights leaping all about him ; and when, from 
 the Vermelles road, there came other men, tramping steadily 
 together, he enjoyed the modulated voices which asked him: 
 " I say, this is right for Loos, isn't it ? Thanks so much." 
 
 These voices, when he inquired who they might be, all 
 replied with one word : " Guards " ; and tramped on through 
 the night. . . . 
 
 Later, there arrived a car, with a Staff officer who inquired 
 for Colonel Stark. Him, the doctor directed to a trench 
 covered with a waterproof sheet : under which, after a moment, 
 shewed the light of a candle. The Staff officer with a " Thanks. 
 Feels like rain," departed ; but the candle still shone. And 
 after about an hour, another car arrived, with another Staff 
 officer. 
 
 Doctor Carson, seeing blue smoke curling up against the 
 candle-glow, thought to himself : ' Hello. They've woken 
 
 P. J-' 
 
 They had ; and Peter, note-book in hand, was squatting 
 on his valise, peering at two maps, copying little red 
 dots from one to the other. The original map from which 
 Peter copied had been sent from Beuvry ; and the last note 
 in his book read, " Report to G.O.C. Guards D. A. at Le 
 Rutoire Farm, eleven a.m." 
 
 3 
 
 Weasel Stark's preliminary instructions, given in the 
 candle-lit gloom of a dirty trench at three o'clock in the 
 morning, confined themselves to few words. The problem 
 of his new command consisted, firstly, secondly, and lastly in 
 efficient communication. Peter, awake at dawn, got busy 
 on it. As primary difficulty, he encountered Purves.
 
 196 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Said Purves, yawning : " As I understand things, you and 
 the Colonel are going off to Le Rutoire. I remain here as 
 Adjutant to Major Lethbridge, who will command the Brigade. 
 Communication will of course be arranged by Divisional 
 Signals." 
 
 Growled Peter, shivering in the misty dawn : " For God's 
 sake forget ' Training Manual Signallers.' How much wire 
 have we got on the telephone cart ? " 
 
 Purves sent for Corporal Waller. Corporal Waller said 
 he thought they had four and a half miles of ' D 3.' Peter 
 pulled out his map ; shewed the Corporal what he wanted 
 done. Purves sulked in the background. 
 
 At 5.15 Seabright and Pirbright, carrying a red drum 
 between them, set out to find the Third Brigade. At ten 
 minutes to six a very sleepy battery commander of that unit 
 protested down the wire that he had no instructions as to 
 taking orders from the Adjutant of another brigade. At 
 five minutes to six Weasel Stark overhearing the long- 
 range wrangle came to the 'phone and explained the 
 situation at some length of blasphemy. Throughout break- 
 fast, eaten squatting on damp clay, similar conversations 
 took place. 
 
 At 8.30 Corporal Waller reported in a far whisper 
 that he couldn't find any trace of the First Southdown batteries 
 which contrary to the usual procedure in Kitchener's Army 
 consisted of four-five howitzers. The Corporal further 
 reported that he was being heavily shelled ; and presumed 
 the brigade must have moved out in the night. 
 
 At 8.45 Corporal Waller being no longer in touch there 
 appeared a cyclist of the missing brigade with information 
 that Major Darvell had established a new headquarters at 
 Fosse Seven. Also, that they were running their own wire 
 to Colonel Stark in Vermelles. Ordered to run his wire to 
 Le Rutoire Farm, Major Darvell replied, at 9.30, that 
 Colonel Porter had now re-assumed command and refused 
 to accept orders from Colonel Stark's Adjutant. 
 
 At ten o'clock Murchison's delayed orders having appar- 
 ently arrived the tangle straightened itself. At 10.30 Cor- 
 poral Waller again telephoned. He had found the Second 
 Brigade ; was tapping into their wire. Also, he had nearly 
 run out of wire. 
 
 "See that he gets some more," rasped the Weasel to 
 Purves. " You and I must be gff, P. J." 
 
 They made their way on foot, down a sodden road, towards 
 the huge gutted farm. They were not alone on the road.
 
 The Suicide Club 197 
 
 Men, apparently aimless, stood about smoking. A four- 
 horse telephone-cart passed them at a trot spattering them 
 with mud. Followed a motor-cyclist ; two cars ; a motor- 
 ambulance { a mess-cart. Round the red shattered walls 
 of the farm itself they found more men, more vehicles. As 
 they passed under the great gateway, into the crowded court- 
 yard, something exploded with an earth-shaking concussion. 
 
 " Six-inch how.," said the Weasel. 
 
 A stainless orderly detached himself from the crowd round 
 a disused pig-sty ; quivered hand at ear in the Guard's salute ; 
 informed " 0. C. Southdown Don Ack " that " G.O.C. Guards 
 Don Ack " had been called elsewhere ; would return at two 
 o'clock. As they were turning away, a very tall young sub- 
 altern, with carefully upcurled moustache and tiny bronze 
 buttons on his tunic, came up to Peter, saluted the 
 Colonel ; and said, " Hallo, Jackson, haven't seen you since 
 you left. Come and have a drink, won't you ? " 
 
 Peter introduced ' Sandiland of Impey's ' to his Colonel ; 
 and the young Guardee led downstairs to the foul cellar they 
 had visited on the night of the twenty-fifth. It was no 
 longer a charnel-house. Down the middle of it a long table 
 spread with a white cloth testified the imminence of lunch. 
 About the table, talking quietly, stood other tall men, all in 
 identical tunics, all with the same carefully up-curled mous- 
 taches, the same modulated voices. 
 
 '.They called each other by nicknames : " I say, Bunny, 
 what about those smoke-bombs ? " " My dear Trousers, 
 don't panic." " Where's the General ? " " He won't be 
 here till lunch-time." " Is Muggins about ? " 
 
 Sandiland produced gin and vermouth. Questioned by 
 the Weasel, he replied deferentially that " of course he was 
 only attached to the Staff " Peter had by this time discovered 
 the charnel-house to be an Infantry Brigade Headquarters 
 '' but that as far as he gathered . . ." He seemed to have 
 gathered a considerable amount of information. 
 
 " Of course," he confided to Peter, " we should have 
 preferred our own artillery. The Lahore artillery, I 
 should say. Still ..." He left the vague impression that 
 the Guards didn't very much care whether they had artillery 
 to support them or not. 
 
 Peter recognised the atmosphere. It was merely glorified 
 Eton. Everybody trying their best to assume that facts 
 didn't exist : that emotions didn't exist : that they knew 
 little and cared less about the job they had at heart. It was 
 over twelve years since Peter had lived in that particular
 
 198 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 atmosphere { but he sniffed it gratefully. His voice changed 
 to it. He said, " Oh, really. Well, of course, / don't know 
 much about gunnery," knowing perfectly well that he knew 
 considerably more about it than Sandiland and, " It's been 
 very quiet round the batteries " feeling that nobody had 
 ever been quite so heavily shelled as the Fourth Southdown 
 Brigade. 
 
 The Weasel, who happened to have been at Winchester 
 before going on to Woolwich, felt suddenly and immensely 
 superior to everybody on earth. For, on that point, all old 
 English public-school men feel alike : which is what makes 
 them at times so insufferable to outsiders. If an outsider had 
 asked any of the men in that cellar why he was fighting, the 
 outsider would have met with an incredulous lift of the eye- 
 brow : that particular lift of the eyebrow which no outsider 
 understands ; but which conveys to one who can interpret 
 " My dear fellow, I was at Eton (or Winchester, or Hailey- 
 bury, or Harrow, or Radley, or a hundred other of those 
 foundations which pacific intellectuals affect to despise) and 
 one does, don'tyou know, one just does." 
 
 Luckily, there is no ' education ' at English public-schools. 
 They merely train boys to be men. 
 
 4 
 
 The Infantry Brigadier, arriving about mid-day, declared 
 to his Brigade-Major : 
 
 " My dear fellow, the whole countryside looks like Hamp- 
 stead Heath. Have someone go out and clean it up, please. 
 I really can't have men wandering about all over the skyline." 
 
 The Brigade-Major, strolling across the room, said : " I say, 
 Bunny, I wish you'd take a peep round and see what we're 
 to do about these fellows wandering about on the skyline." 
 
 Bunny disappeared and did not return till after lunch. 
 Meanwhile, Corporal Waller, emerging caked with mud from 
 a disused trench he had discovered for his wire, was informed 
 on trying to communicate through a stalwart Mess corporal 
 with Peter that " he'd better report himself to the signalling 
 sergeant. . . ." Mr. Black, the Regimental-Sergeant-Ma j or, 
 followed by the mess-cart, four of the Headquarters Staff 
 signallers, Bombardier Michael, Driver Garton, and a scratch 
 collection of cyclist orderlies from the affiliated brigades, 
 found himself for once at a loss for dignity. He and his 
 party existed coldly, in the shelter of a wall, till found and 
 rescued by Peter.
 
 The Suicide Club 199 
 
 Nobody in all that farm seemed in the least degree excited 
 about anything. Work was not done it proceeded. Stark 
 and Peter, emerging to the outer air, watched the procedure. 
 
 It had begun to rain, vaguely, unpleasantly. 
 
 At one minute to two a limousine, mud-spattered from 
 roof to axles, tore down the road, pulled up slithering 
 before the gateway. From it sprang a tall aquiline eye- 
 glassed man, who said : " Hello, Stark. Sorry to be late. 
 Look here " ; drew a very dirty map from his pocket ; and 
 swept one finger over a blue semi-circle of it. Stark, drawing 
 an identical map from his pocket, copied the semi-circle ; 
 asked : " Any particular instructions ? " 
 
 " No." The aquiline one was obviously working under 
 extreme pressure. " You'll get those from Trench later. 
 This isn't as much fun as pig-sticking, is it ? " He leapt back 
 into his car ; whirled off down the road. 
 
 Two minutes afterwards Peter note-book on knee was 
 writing from Stark's dictation : " Orders by Lt. Colonel D. 
 Stark, D.S.O., Commanding Left Group Artillery, (i) The 
 Southdown Divisional Artillery, supporting Guards Division, 
 will be known as Left Group Artillery. (2) 2nd Southdown 
 F.A.B. will cover zone from H 26 a 10 through the 2 of H 
 20 to the P. of Puits 13. (3) yd Southdown F.A.B. will 
 cover zone from P of Puits 13 to B of Benifontaine. (4) 4th 
 Southdown F.A.B. will cover from B of B6nifontaine to H of 
 Hulluch. (5) ist Southdown (Howitzer] Brigade will be pre- 
 pared to fire over entire zone." 
 
 "Underline the last 'h' of Hulluch," interrupted the 
 Weasel 
 
 " I've already done so, sir," said Peter. 
 
 Dictation went on. 
 
 At half-past four the aquiline one returned. Peter, 
 instructed to report communication completed, found him 
 closeted with a big, vaguely-seen man in the semi-dusk of yet 
 another dug-out. At five o'clock generals removed them- 
 selves. 
 
 Said the Weasel : " What sort of a dug-out was the one in 
 which you found him ? " 
 
 Said Peter : " Pretty good, sir." 
 
 Ordered the Weasel : " Then we'd better occupy it." 
 
 5 
 
 In that flimsy tin-roofed tunnel, hidden away in mud 
 between brick walls, glass-doored at each end, perpetually
 
 200 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 illumined with guttering candles, Peter spent three days and 
 three nights. 
 
 Incredible things happened in that tunnel : equally 
 incredible things in the farm above. Our own howitzers 
 shook it till the glass doors rattled to splinters : shells, 
 screaming down out of nowhere, missed it by inches, plunging 
 visibly through the shattered roof of the farm, extinguish- 
 ing candles, shattering telephone wires. Men came to it 
 all sorts and conditions of men : orderlies and generals, colonels 
 and battery commanders. Coolsdon the Staff-Captain 
 came to it, oblivious of shells, demanding to know why his 
 ' deficiency-returns ' had not been made up ; Guardsmen, 
 dizzy with shell-fumes, staggered down its steps, were given 
 gas-capsules, departed ; the Signalling Officer of the South- 
 down Division, with a four-horse telephone-waggon waiting 
 outside, spent four hours in it at the end of which time, 
 having received orders to be of no assistance, he drank a 
 fourth whisky and departed ; Murchison the Brigade-Major 
 came to it, sojourned with them two days ; a weary battery 
 commander of the Third Southdown Brigade, who had been 
 shelled out of his position with the loss of two guns and 
 twenty men, dropped down on its muddy floor and slept like 
 a dog, cap under head, in his spurred field-boots. 
 
 And always, Peter in the dark forward compartment 
 -^sat by the telephone operator. Men were blown to bits 
 above (there were one hundred and twenty casualties 
 in Le Rutoire during those three days) : orderlies, sent out 
 on cycles, failed to report, were never again heard of ; men 
 died at the batteries even as he spoke to the batteries ; the 
 farm rocked ; lights went out ; shelling stopped ; shelling 
 began again. 
 
 But always Peter Jackson was trying to explain 
 over a wire which either carried four different voices 
 or absolutely went dead, that Colonel Stark wanted fire 
 directed here, that the Coldstreams reported two field-guns 
 two hundred yards south-west of Metallurgique Tower firing 
 on G 24, that the Bois Hugo was full of M.G.'s, that if Major 
 Lethbridge couldn't fire with ' A ' Battery, because ' A ' Battery 
 had three guns out of action, he must fire with ' B '. . . . 
 
 The world-famous attack on Hill 70, when the Guards 
 went over the top (' By the right/ as the unemotional Petti- 
 grew reported afterwards, ' just as if there hadn't been a 
 Boche within miles of them') resolved itself for P. J. into a 
 jumble of buzzes translated to scribbled message-forms, a 
 pile of scribbled message-forms translated to buzzes. (For
 
 The Suicide Club 201 
 
 by that time, speech on the majority of the sodden lines had 
 become impossible.) . . . 
 
 By late afternoon of the twenty-ninth, when the most 
 incredible occurrence of all took place, Peter still sitting at 
 the telephone was too weary to appreciate it. 
 
 It had been a baddish day. Fosse Eight seemed, by the 
 accuracy of the hostile shell-fire, to have fallen at last. Major 
 Lethbridge reported twelve guns of his sixteen now out 
 of action, the remaining four being pushed up by hand owing 
 to buffer troubles. Third Brigade wires refused to act. They 
 had run out of whisky. A five-nine shell had missed the bomb- 
 store wherein the servants and the orderlies slept by two feet, 
 killing a horse and wounding three men. Murchison slept. 
 The Colonel, just returned from visiting the Infantry Brigadier 
 in his dug-out across the road, had found the Brigadier absent ; 
 tripped in a sodden trench ; looked like a scarecrow ; was 
 swearing like a fish-fag. ... At which precise moment, 
 ' Royalty ' appeared in the tunnel. 
 
 ' Royalty/ represented by a jolly fair-haired youngster 
 in a darkish rain-coat, followed the missing Infantry Brigadier 
 past the telephone shelf where Peter sat, into the rear part 
 of the tunnel. Murchison miraculously awaking, and the 
 Weasel, with his tunic off, stood up and said ' Sir.' 
 
 Peter, who imagined them to be greeting the Brigadier, 
 found a dark-moust ached man beside him. 
 
 Whispered the dark-moustached man, taking Peter's 
 knowledge for granted : "I'd rather be a Tommy in 
 the front line than have to look after him. Once the Guards 
 are in the trenches, we can't keep him away from them. 
 He ran away from G.H.Q. this morning, and he's insisted on 
 tramping all round the front line. He enjoys it. I don't ! 
 It isn't right, you know. It really isn't. He might remember 
 that he's heir to the throne. Don't you think so ? " 
 
 Peter, realizing the jolly fair-haired youngster to be the 
 Prince of Wales, whispered agreement. The conference in 
 rear of the tunnel broke up. 
 
 " Thank goodness fo's going, "whispered Peter's companion. 
 " This job will turn my hair gray." 
 
 The three passed out through the shattered glass door ; 
 up mud steps into the farm. 
 
 Very far away Peter heard a low whistle, a whistle that 
 rose to a high-pitched scream, seemed to surge up the skies. 
 Interminably they waited, penned in the dusk. Impotent 1 
 Down upon them, faster and faster, shrieking and howling, 
 rushed noise. . .. They were deaf . . . . The tunnel staggered.
 
 202 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 . . Light disappeared. ... Glass tinkled about them. . .. 
 Things thudded from walls to floor. . . . Noise stopped. . . . 
 Peter heard the Weasel's voice : " Good God, I hope that didn't 
 get him " ; saw a shadow stumble up the steps. They 
 waited interminably. Murchison's voice called : " It's all 
 right, Colonel ..." 
 
 "Will you please speak to Mr. Purves, sir?" said the 
 unconcerned operator at the telephone. 
 
 6 
 
 'And the next night, last of September, they were relieved. 
 The thing seemed impossible. They had always lived in that 
 flimsy tunnel ; would continue to live there till the end of 
 time. The big man in khaki who sat talking to them had no 
 corporeal existence. He was a joke an elaborate joke. 
 " Of course, Stark, I shan't occupy these headquarters." 
 Of course he wouldn't. Why should he ? Nobody except 
 themselves. . . . 
 
 " Hallo, "laughed a voice, " your Adjutant's gone to sleep." 
 
 " I'm not asleep, sir." Peter, very indignant, started up 
 from the Weasel's berth on which he had been sitting ; dived 
 back to his own part of the tunnel. The two colonels heard 
 his voice down the telephone : " Very well, Corporal. If the 
 Brigade's gone, you can disconnect. Are the horses ready ? 
 Just coming up the road. Thanks. ..." 
 
 And then, for the first time in his life, Peter knew fear. 
 Real crazy fear. It was midnight. Pitch dark. Not a shell 
 falling. But a shell might fall. If it did, what would happen 
 to Little Willie. Little Willie was trotting up that damned 
 road. If anything happened to Little Willie. If Jelks hadn't 
 fed Little Willie properly. Little Willie was the finest 
 horse. . . . 
 
 " Your coat, sir, and your spurs. I've packed your belt 
 in the valise. And there's only two cigars left, sir ? " 
 
 Driver Garton, smiling, proffered one of them. 
 
 " Got a match ? " asked Peter. 
 
 7 
 
 The batteries of the Fourth Brigade had been amazingly 
 fortunate ; got away almost without a casualty. 
 
 Laughed the Colonel, as he and Peter trotted side by side 
 through cool rain : " Well, P. J., you won't forget Le 
 Rutoire in a hurry."
 
 The Suicide Club 203 
 
 Peter turned in his saddle, looked back towards the farm. 
 " I should think not," he said, and added, " Though I suppose 
 that dug-out must have been pretty safe." 
 
 " Safe ? " Stark laughed again. " Why, man, it wouldn't 
 have stopped a direct hit from a pip-squeak." . . . 
 
 They passed the cross-roads of Corons de Rutoire. 
 " Francis 1 " thought Peter suddenly. Through the blur 
 of sleep, memory came back, clear-cut, horribly personal. 
 He must find out what had happened to Francis. Then he 
 fell fast asleep in his saddle ; woke with a start to find Little 
 Willie at walk through shadowy traffic. 
 
 " It's a pity that attack didn't succeed," the Colonel was 
 saying. "If it had, we might have got a brace of medals 
 between us. As it is, if you live to be as old as Methuselah 
 you'll never see a worse show than the first two days of the 
 battle of Loos." 
 
 8 
 
 Next morning, as they rode, Brigade behind them, through 
 the streets of Bethune, Peter fumbled in his breeches pocket ; 
 found a coin ; stretched it down to the boy trotting at Little 
 Willie's head ; took the proffered paper ; spread it on his 
 saddle-peak. 
 
 " Any news ? " asked the Weasel. 
 
 For answer, Peter held up the staring headlines. 
 
 " Official. Great British Victory," they read. " Triumph 
 of Staff Work. Hill 70 Ours." 
 
 Peter ripped the paper to shreds ; flung it in the gutter.
 
 PART XIX 
 RESPITE 
 
 i 
 
 FRANCIS GORDON was not killed at the Disaster of 
 Loos. A stretcher-bearer wheeled him, unconscious 
 of whistling shrapnel, to the advanced dressing- 
 station at Vermelles : and thence, still unconscious, 
 he came by Ford ambulance and Red Cross train and yet 
 another ambulance to a great bare hospital at Rouen. 
 
 For three days he knew nothing. On the fourth, very 
 dimly, he grew conscious of his suffering self. It seemed to 
 him that he lay in a four-poster bed, round which figures 
 moved vaguely. He heard one of the figures speaking : 
 " It's time for his injection " ; felt something prick his fore- 
 arm ; drowsed off again into unconsciousness. 
 
 It took his drugged mind a whole week to grasp its new 
 realities. He had been wounded, badly wounded. His left 
 thigh-bone was shattered ; his right foot badly smashed. 
 The thing above him which made the bed seem like a four- 
 poster was a ' super-structure ' : a frame-work with a pulley 
 arrangement whereby his left leg, a mass of bandages, could 
 be hauled up and down for dressing. Both left leg and right 
 foot were ' septic ' ; in the wounds had been inserted india- 
 rubber-tubing Carrel-Dakin tubes to drain them. The 
 occasional changing of these tubes caused him pain. 
 
 The screens round his bed prevented him from seeing the 
 other patients in the ward. But he knew them to be many ; 
 and, lying awake at night, he could hear the orderlies shuffling 
 round in their list -slippers : their " Are you awake, sir ? " 
 sounded an unceasing chorus to his dreams. 
 
 For the alert, clean-shaven doctor had reduced the morphia : 
 and Francis had many dreams. They came as the morphia- 
 wave surged over him in comfortable pain-killing warmth ; 
 receded as the wave ebbed, leaving him prey to suffering. 
 And always, in his dreams, he saw Beatrice : a gracious 
 figure vignetted in silver radiance against the background of
 
 Respite 205 
 
 thought. It seemed as though her spirit watched over him, 
 tender, infinitely solicitous. 
 
 He had been in hospital a fortnight before it was borne in 
 on his dazed intellect that he must write to her. Sister and 
 doctor fought him for three weary hours. " He was too ill 
 to write letters," said the doctor. " Let me write for you," 
 begged Sister Prothero. But Francis insisted. They could 
 neither persuade nor coerce him. He would write a letter ; 
 write it with his own hand. Lying there, feverish, broken, 
 not even certain of the exact words his lips uttered, he forced 
 them to his will. At last they yielded for they knew his 
 chance of life still hung by a hair : and an orderly brought 
 him paper, an envelope, an indelible pencil. 
 
 The sister propped him with pillows. As she lifted him, 
 he felt his head turning, spinning. . . . Yet he wrote, 
 tracing each word with pain. He was in hospital wounded 
 only slightly wounded, she must understand in a few 
 days, he would be about again would write her a long letter 
 meanwhile, he sent his 'very kind regards.' He folded 
 the sheet himself ; put it in the envelope ; wrote the address ; 
 signed in the left-hand bottom corner. . . . Then he fainted ; 
 and for a week, doctor and sisters blamed themselves for their 
 yielding, fearful lest the man should die. 
 
 As a ' case,' he puzzled them. The wounds were healing, 
 slowly, very slowly. Thinking to cheer him, they told him of 
 his progress. It appeared to have no interest for him. He 
 was content to drowse away the hours ; watching his leg 
 move up and down for its dressing ; listening to the murmur 
 of the ward. For he had lived in a year, this broken man who 
 lay there so quietly, a thousand aeons of terror. He had 
 walked, unarmed and alone, through countless caverns of fear. 
 Now, fear had departed ; and the mind took its revenge for 
 long coercion, refused to function. The mind knew that its 
 body would not die ; and, with that knowledge, was content. 
 
 They pronounced him ' out of danger.' Nurse Prothero 
 brought him many letters. He read them languidly. It 
 appeared that Peter had been moving heaven and earth to 
 find out if he lived : Patricia wrote asking him if he wanted 
 books, cigarettes : Prout wrote and sent on a package of 
 press-cuttings. But Francis Gordon cared for none of these 
 old things. He wanted Beatrice. 
 
 He used to lie there, hour after hour, screened from the 
 ward, thinking of her. His mind went back to days before 
 the war ; and he saw himself as he had been : the tango- 
 dancing, champagne-bibbing egotist, very proud of his little
 
 2o6 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 literary achievements, neither good nor bad, merely a drifter. 
 He saw himself, ruined financially, miserable. And he met her 
 again, in his dreams ; sailed with her, once more, the tropic 
 seas of their delight. 
 
 Beatrice, the Woman Denied ! Surely that God who had 
 once denied her to him, calling him unworthy, would not 
 refuse her to him now. Surely, now, he might say to himself, 
 in clean pride : "I have done my work ; paid full price for 
 any happiness this world can offer me " ? 
 
 And then, five weeks after he had written, came her cable : 
 " Am anxious," she wired ; " have you told me the truth about 
 your wounds ? " 
 
 He spread the cablegram on his sheet ; read it again and 
 again. Intuition, sounder than judgment, told him the truth. 
 To this girl, five thousand miles removed from the cataclysm 
 of Europe, he stood for ' heroism ' a vague figure dowered 
 with all the virtues of war. It needed only a word, a weak 
 word, to make her love him. 
 
 The mere thought was a flaring temptation. Why not ? 
 If ever man had earned woman. . . . 
 
 When the doctor made his midday visit, Francis looking 
 down at his swathed legs asked one straight question. 
 
 " You mean," said the doctor, " is there any reason, any 
 physical reason, why you should not marry ? " 
 
 " Exactly, doctor." 
 
 " None whatever." 
 
 " But I shall always be more or less of a cripple ? " 
 
 " You will walk with a limp a slight limp. That 
 isn't being a cripple." 
 
 Alone, he fought the problem out again : and decision 
 came to him, clear-cut, obvious. She was twenty, rich, 
 beautiful : he, a cripple ; and a pauper cripple into the 
 bargain. Leaving God out of the question, to take her in 
 marriage would not be the act of a gentleman. . . . Chivalrous, 
 stubborn a fool if you will, but no weakling he traced the 
 answer to her cablegram : " Much better thanks, writing." 
 
 In the middle of December 1915 they shipped him still 
 a ' stretcher-case ' to England. 
 
 2 
 
 In those early days, the Endsleigh Gardens Hospital for 
 officers was a place of easy discipline, comely V.A.D. nurses
 
 Respite 207 
 
 and frolicsome patients. Francis, still unable to walk, could 
 not be frolicsome : but they gave him a room to himself, a 
 tiny room, linoleum-carpeted, high up on the sixth floor ; 
 and in a funny introspective way he was happy. 
 
 The faithful Prout, overjoyed at his master's return, 
 insinuated himself somehow or other into the hospital ; 
 brought meals ; ran errands as of yore. A new doctor sub- 
 stituted ' B.I.P.' a saffron ointment of bismuth, iodiform 
 and petroleum for the Carrel-Dakin treatment ; and pain 
 departed. His kit arrived from France. He began to read, 
 omnivorously : old books and new. Beatrice wrote a chatty 
 letter ; was answered in the same strain. And, of course, 
 there were visitors, flowers, cigarettes, well wishes from 
 admirers. For, among a limited circle, Francis enjoyed 
 ' celebrity.' ... 
 
 It was early afternoon of Christmas Eve. He lay in bed, 
 wicker cage over his legs, propped on multitudinous pillows. 
 Through the open window by the glowing fire-place, he could 
 see the high hills of outer London, tree-fringed, blue against 
 gray skies. He had been alone all day, visioning a poem 
 which had eluded him for many years, a poem he 
 called for want of better name ' Anglo-Saxondom. ' The 
 original inspiration for that poem had come from Beatrice. 
 And now that he had, as he thought, definitely put aside 
 all hope of marrying her, the theme a federation of the 
 English-speaking races seemed somehow a consolation. 
 
 " Mrs. Jackson to see you, Mr. Francis, "announced Prout. 
 Patricia followed the little man into the room. She had been 
 driving the car ; and the dark motoring-furs accentuated the 
 blond tallness of her. Francis had thought, once or twice, 
 that the strain of Peter's absence was telling on his cousin's 
 wife, graving little lines round eyes and chin. But to-day 
 she looked young, radiant. 
 
 " Peter's coming home," she said. " On leave." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 " To-night. Isn't it splendid ? " 
 
 They talked Peter for a while. Prout brought them tea 
 on a little wicker table. 
 
 " I heard all about his brigade the other day," said 
 Patricia, bringing a second cup to the bedside. " Captain 
 Torrington you met him I think, he's a V.C. told me. 
 They must have had a dreadful time at Loos." 
 
 " Torrington ? " Francis thought the name over. " Yes, 
 I remember him. He was there the night I dined with them. 
 Where did you meet him ? Is he on leave too ? "
 
 208 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " No. He's home for good. He never ought to have 
 gone out, you know. But he insisted and broke down. 
 You men are so stupid about that sort of thing. I suppose 
 you'll want to do something again as soon as your leg's 
 right." 
 
 " I wonder," said Francis. " You see, 111 never be any 
 good at my own job again. A man with a limp is too easily 
 spotted. And as for office Jobs, there seem to be enough stay- 
 at-home heroes without me. ..." 
 
 " I wonder why it is " Patricia lit herself a cigarette 
 " that you are all so bitter against the people who stay at 
 home. Everybody can't go to the front." 
 
 " It isn't everybody who wants to," commented Francis 
 acridly. 
 
 She changed the topic ; produced the Christmas present 
 she had brought a Whytwarth fountain-pen, gold-mounted 
 and of enormous ink-capacity. He eyed it doubtfully at 
 first ; till she shewed him the simplicity of its action. Then 
 he began to take professional interest ; screwed it up and down 
 again ; tested the nib on the fly-leaf of one of the many books 
 at his bedside. 
 
 " By Jove, Pat," he said at last, " I believe you've dis- 
 covered the only fountain-pen. And I never thought you a 
 clever woman ! " 
 
 Remembering old animosities, she blushed at that ; and 
 they laughed together like two children. 
 
 " And when does Peter arrive ? " he asked. 
 
 " Late, I'm afraid. Not before midnight anyway." 
 
 " Are you going to meet him ? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 He began to tease her, aimlessly ; called her the ' ex- 
 pectant bride.' "Do you know, Pat, that I believe you're 
 madly in love with that cousin of mine. After nine years of 
 matrimony, too. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. " 
 
 Said Patricia, arranging her veil for the street : " I shouldn't 
 chaff people too much about being in love, if I were you, 
 Francis " : and with a meaning glance at Beatrice's photograph 
 on the mantelpiece, departed. 
 
 3 
 
 As Patricia paced up and down the cold, scarce-lit platform, 
 the great vault of Victoria station seemed like a tomb. 
 Already the leave-train had been announced. But it was half- 
 past two on Christmas morning, and, except for herself
 
 Respite 209 
 
 and two ordered taxis, none waited. England had not yet 
 troubled to organise any reception for her weary fighting-men. 
 They would arrive, as Patricia and a few voluntary motor- 
 drivers had so often seen them arrive, cheerlessly, unfed, 
 unwelcomed, to sleep the night as best they might in fireless 
 waiting-rooms, or tramp the streets till dawn. 
 
 " Didn't expect to see you here to-night, mum," said a 
 porter who knew her of old, touching his cap. 
 
 She told him she was waiting for her husband ; and he 
 bustled off in search of information. 
 
 " Another five minutes, mum. They must have had a 
 bad crossing. She didn't get to Folkestone till nearly one 
 o'clock." 
 
 A bell clanged : she saw the glow of smoke and sparks : 
 the train slid alongside the platform, stopped, began to dis- 
 gorge its khaki. She had met that train so often ; knew so 
 exactly what to expect : but always before she had watched 
 the third-class carriages. Now she had eyes only for the 
 Pullman. Excitedly, she scrutinised the descending officers. 
 Last of them all, very calm, cigar-butt between his lips, 
 coat-collar pulled up to the eyes, cane under his arm, came 
 Peter. 
 
 Obviously, he did not expect her. She let him saunter 
 a yard or two along the platform ; noticed the cleanliness of 
 his boots, the sheen of his spurs. Then she touched him on 
 the arm, said : " Taxi, sir ? " 
 
 He turned round ; began to say something ; recognised 
 her ; burst out, " Good Lord, Pat, what on earth are you 
 doing here ? '* 
 
 " Meeting lonely soldiers, she laughed : and put up her 
 lips to be kissed. He todk her in his arms. . . . 
 
 " But you ought to be in bed," he protested, as they made 
 way arm-in-arm along the crowded platform. 
 
 11 My dear, if I can drive Tommies home four nights a week, 
 surely I can devote one to meeting my own husband. Have 
 you had anything to eat ? " 
 
 " Rather. And a bath at Boulogne. And a cabin to 
 myself on the boat. It's quite a comfortable journey if only 
 one knows the ropes. I say, what are those poor devils going 
 to do ? " He looked at the crowd of men, mud-stained, kit- 
 loaded. 
 
 " Sleep in the waiting-rooms till the Tubes start running." 
 
 He let go her arm ; stood still. " Supposing I weren't 
 here," he said, " what would you do ? " 
 
 " Oh, we usually try and find two or three who live fairly 
 
 o
 
 210 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 close, not more than five miles out. Then we drive them 
 home." 
 
 Husband and wife looked at each other : then Peter said, 
 " Dash it all, Pat. ..." 
 
 " As you like, dear," she answered : but the heart grew 
 heavy within her. She wanted him to herself, to herself : 
 and he was away from her already, striding here and there 
 among the men. 
 
 " Any of you chaps live in London ? " asked P. J. 
 
 " Yes, sir. I do, sir. So do I, sir." A dozen voices 
 answered the question. 
 
 " West London ? Marylebone ? Regent's Park ? " 
 
 "Albany Street, sir." A heavy-laden infantryman de- 
 tached himself from the crowd ; looked up expectantly. 
 
 " Right. I'll drive you home. Anyone else live that 
 way ? " 
 
 " My mate was coming home with me. Could you take 
 'im too, sir," asked the infantryman. 
 
 " Very well. Hurry up, though," Peter turned to the 
 crowd ; said : " Sorry, you chaps. I can't manage more 
 than two. Merry Christmas to you all. " 
 
 " Merry Christmas, sir," answered a dozen voices. . . . 
 
 " I've got a brace," he told her, " and they both want 
 to go to Albany Street. It's hardly out of our way at all." 
 
 The two men followed them under the gloomy archway 
 into the blue-lit gloom without ; climbed stolidly to the rear 
 seat of the open cabriolet. Pat took the wheel ; Peter cranked 
 up ; and the Crossley crawled out into the dark canyon of 
 Grosvenor Gardens. She was a very different car now from 
 the royal-blue garnished plaything which Peter had hurled 
 along the Bath Road in August 1914 : countless muddy 
 boots had left their mark on her varnish ; countless accoutre- 
 ments had torn her gray cord lining : but the engine still 
 purred sweetly as of old, bore them smoothly past the dark 
 bulk of Hyde Park Corner, up Park Lane, homewards. 
 
 As she drove, Patricia's momentary spasm of discontent 
 vanished. They were so pathetically grateful, the comments 
 she caught from the passengers behind ; and when she 
 stopped the car at a shuttered house in Albany Street ; when 
 there came from the mysterious lower regions a woman 
 who said, " Why, Alf , is it really you ? I've been waiting up 
 just on the off-chance you might get home to-night " ; when 
 with a grateful " Merry Christmas to you, sir " the two weary 
 men stumbled down the steps out of sight ; it seemed to her 
 as though, by parting with those few moments of her own
 
 Respite 211 
 
 selfish happiness, she had somehow earned the right to enjoy 
 every moment of the seven days during which Peter would be 
 hers. 
 
 4 
 
 And, for her one week, Patricia was happy. Not a little 
 of that happiness came from the knowledge that this man 
 whom war had sent back to her was no longer the same creature 
 whom she had given to war. He had left her, a civilian in 
 khaki ; he came back a member of the British Expeditionary 
 Force. 
 
 She found the change in him difficult of analysis. The 
 old absorbed Peter still li ved a reticent animal ; unwilling 
 to tell her of his life ' out there,' though eager enough to explain 
 the changes in the Brigade : How Major Lethbridge had been 
 promoted Lieutenant-Colonel, and Conway given ' C ' Battery 
 in his stead : how Torrington's successor, Captain Sandiland, 
 was inclined to take unto himself too much credit for the work 
 done by his subalterns : how Little Willie still flourished. 
 But of Loos, of trench-warfare, of Reninghelst and Dicke- 
 busch, and the three weeks' rest at Acquin which the Fourth 
 Southdown Brigade was even then enjoying he told her 
 little or nothing. " It was really not so bad," seemed the 
 limit of his descriptive powers. 
 
 But, grafted on to the old Peter, there existed a new Peter, 
 irresistibly young, who amazed his wife. He seemed to have 
 acquired a capacity for enjoyment, a carelessness about 
 money-matters, a delight in petty personal comforts, utterly 
 out of keeping with his civilian self. 
 
 Formerly, the theatre had not appealed to him : now, 
 he wanted to go every night. He disliked eating at home ; 
 seemed happiest in some gaudy restaurant, some rag-time 
 night-club. He took taxis everywhere ; bought expensive 
 presents for her, for the children, for himself. When she 
 attempted to expostulate, he laughed at her and taxi'd 
 to Cox's to draw another cheque. 
 
 Then, too, he had become quaintly tolerant. On Boxing 
 Day, Heron Baynet gave a family dinner-party. Rawlings 
 and Violet came in their new car : Violet overdressed and 
 overbearing ; her husband, who had been promised a knight- 
 hood in the New Year's Honours list, full of it and of himself. 
 Peter, in evening dress, new enamel buttons in his white 
 waistcoat, welcomed the pair like long-lost friends ; con- 
 gratulated Hubert ; flattered Violet. " Hubert," said Peter 
 to his face, " was a devilish clever fellow. Perhaps when
 
 212 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Hubert got his knighthood, he could find him, Peter, some soft 
 job at home. ..." 
 
 " But I thought you didn't like Hubert," Patricia said to 
 him when they were alone in their bedroom. 
 
 " Oh, he's not a bad chap," laughed Peter, " not our 
 class of course I mean, one can't have any respect for him 
 still, I daresay he's all right." 
 
 When she pressed him further on the subject, he said 
 after a little hesitation : " It's a question of caste, I think, 
 Pat. One looks upon those sort of people you know, 
 politicians and the Whitehall gang as one used to look on 
 the lower orders. One doesn't dislike them : one's just sorry 
 for them." 
 
 Arthur Jackson came to town on two days' leave ; and she 
 let them make one night of it together. From their boyhood, 
 Arthur and Peter had quarrelled ; but now they seemed to see 
 eye to eye on a hundred subjects. As the flying-man he had 
 passed for his ' wings ' and was next on the roster for active 
 service -confided to Patricia : " That husband of yours always 
 wanted a good shaking up ; and this war seems to have done 
 it for him." 
 
 The swift days fled. They visited Francis ; took the 
 delighted children to the Pantomime. She drove him to the 
 City ; sat in the office while he talked away half-an-hour with 
 Simpson : whirled him westwards again. ... " And will 
 you go back to Lime Street ? " she asked as they sat down 
 to lunch. " I suppose so," he answered, " if this war ever 
 gets itself over. What shall we do this afternoon, old 
 thing?" 
 
 ' Was he in love with her ? ' Patricia asked herself that 
 question more than once during those breathless days ; but 
 found no answer to it. Obviously, her companionship, the 
 physical joy of her, moved him as never before. They were 
 pals again, better pals than ever. She told herself to be 
 content with that. 
 
 And yet, reason was not content. Reason said : " This 
 is excitement, pleasure at being back with the accustomed 
 luxuries. After what he has gone through almost any 
 woman of his own class could give him what you are giving 
 him." 
 
 She hated that thought. Moreover, something sounder 
 than reason, the instinct of matehood, told her that she mis- 
 judged him. In so far as the average man can love the 
 woman he has been married to for nine years, Peter did love 
 her. There had been no other woman in his life. Only,
 
 Respite 213 
 
 only, she wanted more from him than the average husband 
 gave to the average wife. 
 
 And so they came again to the last twenty-four hours. 
 
 5 
 
 It was raining when they woke ; very good to potter about 
 in dressing-gowns and slippers, to dawdle through their 
 baths, and take late breakfast leisurely in the roomy library. 
 (For Heron Baynet's patients already waited round the 
 book-strewn table in the long dining-room facing Harley 
 Street.) Among her letters, Patricia found one from Alice 
 Stark the first since her confinement. She wrote from 
 Devonshire : the boy flourished, had red hair like his father ; 
 Douglas had enjoyed his leave ; she had heard from him that 
 day ; the Brigade was in action ; he hoped Peter was enjoy- 
 ing himself. 
 
 Said Peter : " You would have laughed to see the old man 
 when the wire arrived. He sent out for three bottles of 
 champagne : Morency rode ten miles for them : and we had 
 to drink the youngster's health. I wish we had a boy, Pat." 
 
 She knew the chance remark almost meaningless long 
 ago, they had abandoned the hope of a son : nevertheless, it 
 depressed her. All that day when the children came in to 
 be played with, at lunch with her father, through the matine'e 
 which followed she thought of it. For now, he seemed 
 almost gone again. And it had been so good to have him 
 home. If only she could feel that he would come back safe. 
 If only she had given him a son. 
 
 " The Optimist! And the Pessimist!" sang the two 
 comedians on the stage in front of her. Patricia looked round 
 the auditorium. Everywhere she saw excited men, smiling 
 women. Once she had envied such joyous couples. Now she 
 only wondered if, like herself, all the women were hiding, 
 stifling, drugging-away somehow the sorrows at their heart. 
 "But we must laugh," she said to herself. "They mustn't 
 think of us as unhappy." 
 
 And again, as on that last day at Deepcut, Patricia played 
 out her comedy to the end. But for the first time in her life 
 she admitted as much to her father after Peter had gone 
 she let alcohol share her troubles. 
 
 Cowardly ? Perhaps it was cowardly : but she couldn't 
 face the prospect of spoiling his last night by tears. And the 
 alcohol helped her to put a brave face on things. The cock- 
 tails which he offered after tea, she took ; and the whisky-
 
 214 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 and-soda when they got home ; and the champagne for 
 dinner, the nightcap of creme-de-menthe. 
 
 Poor Pat ! She was only a very human, very loving 
 woman ; sending her man back to the lands of no-tomorrow. 
 
 6 
 
 He would not let her see him off from the station : and 
 she lay in bed, watching him as he laced his high boots, 
 straightened his spur-chains, pinned khaki collar. 
 
 " Anyway, old thing," he said, " we've had a great time 
 together. And in four or five months well make another 
 week of it. ..." 
 
 He went down to his early breakfast ; came back again ; 
 kissed her good-bye. 
 
 " Take care of yourself, Peter," she smiled at him. And 
 again he answered " Trust me, old thing." 
 
 But as she listened to the taxi purring down Harley Street, 
 to the slam of the closing front-door, it seemed to Patricia 
 as though there were no Power, either heavenly or earthly, 
 in whom a woman of those days might put her trust.
 
 PART XX 
 THE SALIENT 
 
 i 
 
 HAD Peter Jackson been an Irishman, a Gaul, an 
 Italian, his mind as he taxi'd to Victoria station 
 would have pictured to itself the physical 
 charms of the wife he was leaving : her dark eyes 
 framed in the golden aureole of hair, her smooth, loving hands, 
 the tones of her low voice. . . . But Peter, in his attitude 
 towards women, was very much the Englishman ; and his 
 thoughts of Patricia, if he could have voiced them, would 
 not have exceeded : ' Dear old Pat, she's a jolly good sort.' 
 
 Still, it needed effort not to think of her overmuch during 
 the long journey back to his Brigade. 
 
 He travelled via Folkestone-Boulogne ; and that far, the 
 journey seemed to him a khaki-fantasy on his peace-time 
 voyages to the Continent. The Pullman attendant an old 
 friend, thin, eye-glassed, clean-shaven recognised him in 
 spite of uniform ; brought him a second breakfast ; accepted 
 the old-time tip. The train made its accustomed timing 
 through the accustomed fields, its usual halt at Folkestone 
 Town. Only, instead of the cosmopolitan crowd the be- 
 spatted, monocled idlers and the women in fashionable tailor- 
 mades whom Peter remembered his fellow pilgrims were all 
 officers like himself, junior officers for the most part, and 
 nearly all heavy with sleep. 
 
 The same old Queen waited for them at the quayside ; the 
 same breeze blew in from the sea, ruffling the waves at har- 
 bour-mouth ; the same sailors, for the same tips, brought the 
 same deck-chairs. Peter secured one ; clanked down the 
 rubber companion-way to the saloon. 
 
 " Hallo, P. J.," said the languid voice of Major Billy 
 Williams, still commander of the Fourth Brigade's ammuni- 
 tion column. 
 
 " Hallo, Major. Had a good leave ? " 
 
 " So-so, P. J. So-so." 
 
 They talked aimlessly of this and that ; drifted deckwards
 
 216 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 as the boat drew away from the quayside ; sat in semi-silence 
 till she raised the cliffs of France. 
 
 " Probably take us three days to find out where the Divi- 
 sion's got to," said the Major. 
 
 They made the lighthouse of Boulogne Harbour ; steamed 
 in through the narrow entrance ; warped to the quay by the 
 railway station. Here, the illusion of peace vanished. Only 
 a few jabbering French porters, a. fiacre or so, reminded of old 
 days. All the rest waiting staff-cars, landing-officers, lorries, 
 military-police at the gangway spoke of war. 
 
 " Question is," drawled the big Major, patting silky 
 moustache, " do we take dejeuner at the station-buffet ? make 
 for the Officers' Club ? or have apow-pow with the R.T.O ? " 
 
 They passed down the gangway, giving up their landing- 
 checks ; stood watching the men being marshalled for their 
 rest-camps. 
 
 " Dejeuner, I think," decided the Major. 
 
 They crossed the railway-line ; climbed the high platform ; 
 entered the buffet ; fared sumptuously off chicken ; drank 
 a bottle of claret. 
 
 " The only good thing about comin' back off leave," said 
 the Major, helping himself from Peter's cigar-case, " is that 
 one needn't panic about rejoining one's unit. There was a 
 man in my old show who took a fortnight to get from Havre 
 to Givenchy. ..." 
 
 It was half -past three before the pair finally made way out 
 of the buffet, along the platform, across the muddy pav6 
 between the loaded railway-trucks, to the Officers' Club, where 
 in the chair-crowded reading-room the Major insisted on 
 beer before interviewing the R.T.O. at the Central station 
 across the road. 
 
 The Railway Transport Officer, a young man with eye- 
 glasses who lived in a small matchboarded office at the side 
 of the station, listened carefully to the Major's inquiries for 
 the Southdown Division ; fumbled among a file of papers ; and 
 said : 
 
 " Ah, the Southdowns ! " Then mysteriously : " Of 
 course, I can't tell you exactly where they are. But ..." 
 He shook his head. . . . " They 're a longish way f rom here. " 
 
 " They haven't gonefjto Salonica, I suppose ? " put in 
 Williams. 
 
 " It's not for me to say," answered the R.T.O. " If I 
 were you I should go to Hazebrouck to-night, and ask the 
 R.T.O. there. Your train goes at nine o'clock." 
 
 And so the chase began. One o'clock that morning found
 
 The Salient 217 
 
 them, very weary, knocking up a somnolent waiter In a large 
 frowsy hotel at Hazebrouck. The hotel had beds, but no 
 food. Food and drink a pasty of goose-liver, and white 
 wine, which they discussed for an hour they found at an 
 adjoining estaminet. 
 
 " Do you think we really are going to Salonica ? " asked 
 Peter, pulling off his boots by candle-light. 
 
 "Dunno." The Major was already in bed. "Well 
 find out in the morning." 
 
 They breakfasted at leisure ; sought out another R.T.O., 
 who said : " Southdown Division ? They're on the move." 
 He called across his office. " Corporal Wilcox, do we know 
 anything about the Southdown Division ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." The little man, obviously a railway clerk in 
 khaki, bustled in pen behind his ear. " Arneke 's their 
 railhead. Train going in half-an-hour. " 
 
 And to Arneke, which lies many miles back from Haze- 
 brouck on the branch line to Dunkirk, the pair went finding, 
 at journey's end, a tiny station and long sidings crowded 
 with laden waggons, whereamong, notebook in hand, stood a 
 diminutive Supply officer whom Billy Williams recognised. 
 
 " Lawson," said the Major, " can you tell us what's hap- 
 pened to the Division ? " 
 
 The A.S.C. man laughed. " WTiat on earth are you chaps 
 doing here ? The Division's in Wipers." 
 
 " Wipers 1 " purred the Major. " Then why the devil 
 did the R.T.O. tell us to come to Arneke ! We'll have to go all 
 the way back to Hazebrouck. . . ." 
 
 " No train till half -past five," remarked the Supply officer ; 
 " but this isn't a bad little burg . . ." 
 
 They investigated it ; discovered two estaminets, each 
 presided over by charming and almost cleanly maidens, who 
 brought them food and beer much beer ; also, late in a gray 
 afternoon, pallid tea. 
 
 To the Major, two wasted days meant nothing ; he had 
 lounged through peace, was quite prepared to lounge through 
 the war. But, as always, disorganisation irritated Peter ; 
 and he cursed, with the frank unreason of the fighting soldier, 
 all who lived in safety ' behind the lines.' 
 
 " No good getting ratty," remarked the Major, as they 
 climbed aboard yet another train. " Not a bit of good. 
 We'll be lucky if we get back to our units the day after to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The sequel proved him right. They made Hazebrouck 
 again ; expostulated with the R.T.O. ; caught yet another
 
 218 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 train ; and were decanted at about 3 a.m. in black darkness 
 which was Poperinghe. 
 
 " Our only chance of a bed," remarked the Major, as they 
 shouldered their way through jostling murk, " is the Sixth 
 Division hostel." Thither he fed the way. In the open 
 doorway of a huge square house stood an enormous padre, 
 with whom they passed in, through a hall merry with holly 
 and illuminated cards ; and having drunk good whisky, were 
 ushered to canvas bedsteads in a cold attic. 
 
 " God bless the Church," purred Billy Williams, pulling 
 his long cloak over his long legs. 
 
 They spent the next wintry morning in the investigation 
 of ' Pop ' ; wandered about the shattered square, up and 
 down the long street of low houses ; found a store of the 
 Expeditionary Force Canteen ; and there at last, in the person 
 of Colonel Brasenose's Adjutant, someone who could direct 
 them to their unit. 
 
 " Our Headquarters are resting," said Samuelson, a dark 
 young man with all the shrewdness and all the hospitality of 
 his race. " You're somewhere near the Lock-house, I think. 
 But you'd better both come back to lunch, and I'll find out 
 the exact map-references." 
 
 Colonel Brasenose, a fiery, white-moustached, blue-faced 
 Colonel of the old school, welcomed them in a draughty 
 red-brick mansion with an elaborate Dutch garden parquet- 
 floored, curtained, but windowless and shell-holed of one wall ; 
 gave them an excellent lunch ; promised to lend them horses ; 
 and having discovered they both played bridge, strongly 
 advised them to spend the night with him. 
 
 " I'll make it all right with Stark," he said. " We'll get 
 some gee-gees round after tiffin. You can find your waggon- 
 lines, and arrange for your own nags to fetch you to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 A slight snow had begun to fall ; and the advice seemed as 
 sound as Colonel Brasenose's very excellent port. 
 
 2 
 
 Three mornings after he had said good-bye to Patricia; 
 Peter lit a cigar ; pulled tight the belt of his mackintosh ; 
 drew on his gauntlets ; saluted Colonel Brasenose ; said au 
 revoirtothe Major ; and set out on his first journey to Wipers. 
 
 Little Willie, skittish after long inactivity, lashed out as 
 his master mounted ; danced erratically over the cobbles : 
 Queen Bess and Jelks jogged soberly in rear.
 
 The Salient 219 
 
 The snow had ceased ; but underfoot the streets were still 
 starred and sodden ; and when they came to the great square, 
 men were at work, shovelling dirty brown heaps to the side 
 of the road. Gloomy, the place looked, gray-housed under 
 its gray skies, inhospitable, a vision of discomfort. 
 
 Peter rode on, inclining left down a narrow brown street, 
 past the ' Fancies,' and the steam-laundry, and the toy 
 railway-station, into the long straight road between the 
 scarred poplars the Poperinghe-Ypres-Menin road which 
 led into the heart of that beastliness men called ' the Salient.' 
 
 Scant houses gave way to flat open country white on either 
 side between the shell-pocked trees. It was very silent. An 
 occasional car, a returning G.S. waggon, the clop of their own 
 horse's hooves, alone broke the silence. They came to the 
 red ruin of Vlamertinghe ; passed the church, halved by 
 a 17-inch shell as a man halves cheese with a knife, and the 
 four roads and the railway. Now the road mounted, glisten- 
 ing bluely, veneered with mud. Peter heard, in front of him, 
 the whistle and burst of a heavy shell ; slowed to a walk. 
 
 At the top of the incline, between the trees, stood a little 
 white toll-house. From it emerged a man in khaki, holding 
 up his hand. 
 
 " What's the matter ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " They're shelling the road, sir. I should wait a little, 
 if I were you. It's big stuff." 
 
 Peter dismounted ; surveyed the country. In front of 
 him the road dipped to a level-crossing ; rose again. In the 
 hollow stood a red-and-yellow chateau Goldfish Chateau, 
 forlorn among its dank gardens. Along the railway, to the left 
 of the road, shewed a line of dug-outs gigantic molehills, 
 brown and shapeless. 
 
 " Seems safe enough," he said to his groom : but even as 
 he spoke there came the ominous whistle, the double crash 
 of a five-nine shell, the black spattered fountain of it among 
 the trees on the crest in front. Hell for leather through the 
 spattered fountain galloped a heavy two-horsed waggon, 
 driver lashing frantically from his seat. The waggon bounded 
 across the railway, up the slope into safety. 
 
 By now, a little crowd had congested round the toll-house. 
 Peter heard the men talking. Said one : 
 
 " Funny ? I don't call it funny. How long have you 
 been out. Two months. I thought so. I've had over a 
 year of it. You wait till you've seen a bit more. Funny, 
 indeed ! " 
 
 They waited half-an-hour, as civilians wait for it to stop
 
 220 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 raining ; trotted on up the slope. Now they could see the 
 shattered roofs of Ypres. At that distance it still looked 
 like a city. Only as they came to it was its nakedness, the 
 ruin and desolation of the place, apparent. 
 
 The huge red bulk of the ' Asylum ' turned, as they ap- 
 proached, to a gutted skeleton of a building ; and beyond, 
 the houses which they passed leered at them in drunken 
 burlesque, shameless. Here, a made bed lurched half out 
 of a shattered window ; there, shells had ripped away the whole 
 front of a dwelling, exposing as a lewd woman exposes her- 
 self all the petty secrets of what had once been a home. 
 
 Left they swung, past the chipped and bulging Water 
 Tower, past more ruins of villadom, into a bare tree-lined 
 road ; right again. 
 
 " Colonel doesn't like the horses to come further than 
 this by daylight, sir," warned Jelks. 
 
 "Very well." Peter dismounted. "Which way do I 
 go?" 
 
 " Just up to that bridge, sir. Then, left along the canal 
 bank. You'll see the Lock-house just in front of you." 
 
 Peter found the Weasel, reading his Times by the light of 
 their one oil lamp in a low, timber-shored dug-out, which one 
 approached down greasy steps, along duck-boards laid just 
 above the water-level of a muddy creek. 
 
 " Hallo," said the Weasel. " So you've turned up at last, 
 have you ? Jolly place this. What ? " 
 
 " A trifle cramped, sir," laughed Peter ; and began to 
 explain his overdueness. 
 
 " Oh, that's all right," chaffed Stark, " we'll take the three 
 days off your next leave. I'm glad you're back, though. 
 Morency's at the waggon-lines. Purves, as acting-Adjutant, 
 does not shine. I've had to do most of the office-work myself. 
 He's out on the wires now. We're commanding a group. 
 If you get that map down, I'll shew you the battery- 
 positions." 
 
 He indicated them, four along the Ramparts, from Kaiie 
 cross-roads to the Menin Gate ; one near Headquarters, just 
 in front of the canal. " That's Sandiland's. He's supposed 
 to do counter-battery work. Rather amusing at that range, 
 and with our ammunition limit." 
 
 Doctor Carson came in, bumping his head on the lintel as 
 usual ; said " Hallo, P. J. Jolly spot, is not it ? Time for 
 lunch, I think." 
 
 Bombardier Michael appeared, carrying plates ; followed 
 by Peter's batman Carton, with food from the tiny cook-
 
 The Salient 221 
 
 house which Gunner Home had found on a tottery footbridge 
 over the creek. 
 
 Lunch over, Peter explored along the creek ; was shewn 
 the Doctor's dug-out (shared willy-nilly with Purves) ; clam- 
 bered a little mud-slope ; found the ' office,' a steel tunnel let 
 into the foundations of what must once have been a house, 
 and the ' telephone-room ' a sunk cellar. 
 
 " I've put your bed in the office, sir," announced Garton. 
 " The room next to the Colonel's leaks." 
 
 " Good lad," said Peter, looking down from the little 
 mound onto the desolation of ' Wipers.' 
 
 In the month which followed, he grew to know that view 
 as a bank-clerk knows Lombard Street. Below him, on his 
 left, stretched the muddy waters of the Yser canal, men living 
 like water-rats all along its banks. On his right, stood the 
 shattered Lock-house, beneath which slept Sergeant (once 
 Corporal) Waller and the staff. In front of him, water 
 lapped the stone quay of ' Tattenham Corner,' with its 
 tipsy blind lamp-posts, its twisted railings. For the rest, 
 the panorama was just ruined houses, skeletons of houses, 
 mockeries of homes : above them, jagged spires broken 
 dogs'-teeth against winter skies. Sometimes, at night, a blue, 
 almost Whistlerian radiance brooded over this ghost of a 
 city : but mostly blackness hid it a blackness broken only 
 by the silver of Very lights, the orange of candle-flames in 
 dug-outs, the crimson flash from a gun-muzzle. . . . 
 
 3 
 
 "P. J. " said Straker, coming in early one morning, 
 " can you come down to the t-trenches with me ? Your old 
 regiment's there the Chalkshires." 
 
 " Go if you like," said Stark. " I'm expecting generals." 
 (For Peter's friend Dunning had been found too old for 
 active service ; and a new general of amazing ubiquity, 
 whom irreverent subalterns christened the ' Whirligig,' now 
 commanded the Southdowns.) 
 
 " You're a funny devil, Straker," said P. J. as, beltless, 
 legs cased in gum-boots to the thigh, equipped only with gas- 
 helmets and long iron-shod sticks, they tramped round Tatten- 
 ham Corner, past the dug-outs and the Convent ; made, 
 along the shelter of the vast brick ramparts, for the Menin 
 Gate. 
 
 " Why ? " asked Straker. 
 
 " Because I believe you like all this."
 
 222 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Well, you see," said Straker apologetically, "it's really 
 my trade. And I must say I enjoy it. It's better than 
 peace-time soldiering, or home service, anyway." 
 
 They pashed out across the mud of the ' Gate,' a mere 
 opening in the Ramparts, through which the road spanned 
 the moat; veered right; plunged into a breast-high communi- 
 cation trench by the roadside ; followed the deepening trench 
 across country, till they came after half-an-hour of tramping 
 to a railway embankment : under which, in a culvert, sat 
 a major of Heavy Artillery. 
 
 " Morning, Major," said Straker. " Are you going to 
 have a shoot ? " 
 
 " If I can get up to H 20. Doesn't seem much like it at 
 the moment. They're shelling the duck-boards like hell. 
 Hark at 'em." 
 
 Two or three whizz-bangs cracked like enormous whip- 
 lashes as he spoke. Peering carefully round the angle of the 
 culvert, Peter saw a white line of duck-boards crossing a 
 green slope to a swelling mound covered with the stumps of 
 many trees, which the shells had whittled as a beaver whittles 
 to within three feet of ground-level. 
 
 More whizz-bangs lashed and crackled at the empty duck- 
 boards. Then, suddenly, shelling ceased. 
 
 " Come on," said Straker, " let's have a dart for it." 
 
 The three of them sprinted from cover, along the tilting 
 duck-boards ; gained the shelter of sandbag breastworks ; 
 climbed between these up a greasy slope, down which water 
 trickled between the wired snakes of ' armoured ' telephone 
 cables. Now they were in Railway Wood. Infantrymen, 
 apparently aimless, some smoking, some gossiping, some 
 feeding themselves from uncleanly mess-tins, stood about 
 everywhere. Many bayonetted rifles leaned against the sand- 
 
 One of the infantrymen, a sergeant, saluted with a smile. 
 
 " Morning, Sergeant Atkinson," said P. J., recognising the 
 face, " and how are you getting on ? " 
 
 " Pretty fair, sir. But there aren't many of the old lot 
 left. We got it bad at Loos, you know, sir. And since we've 
 been up here. . . . You heard about poor Mr. Peabody, I 
 suppose, sir ? " 
 
 "No. Not killed, is he ? ' 
 
 " Yes, sir. Night before last. On patrol. He's lying at 
 the lip of the crater now, sir. I've had two men wounded 
 trying to get him in. They've got machine guns trained just 
 on the place, sir."
 
 The Salient 223 
 
 "I'm sorry." 
 
 Peabody ! The boy's ]keen brown face, his untidy 
 hair, came vividly to Peter's mind. He remembered 
 his appearing in the Orderly Room at Shoreham with 
 news of Locksley- Jones' resignation ; remembered him that 
 subsequent night at Mess. A beastly game, this war. Per- 
 fectly beastly ! 
 
 " Come on," Said Straker's voice. " We can't see any- 
 thing from here." 
 
 They climbed to the top of the mound. Straker drew a 
 vast white map from his pocket ; spread it on the parapet ; 
 looked over. 
 
 " Don't need a periscope here, P. J." 
 
 Peering over, Peter saw to his left and backward-curving 
 the two bands of rusty wire which alone marked the oppos- 
 ing forces. These brown bands serpentined across the soggy 
 cratered fields : silent and menacing. In them, nothing 
 moved. Beyond them, eastward, the ground rose to wood- 
 land : ruins of houses marked it : here and there were rem- 
 nants of trees. Straker began indicating targets : " That's 
 Bellewarde Farm. Those houses up there no, across the 
 railway must be Frezenburg. ..." 
 
 A German battery began shelling the trenches on their 
 left ; quietly, methodically. Every minute or so they could 
 hear the swift whistle of the shell ; see it flash and smoke 
 among the rusty wire. 
 
 " That's that infernal whizz-bang battery at I 12 beer 77," 
 said Straker. " If only we weren't so bally short of ammuni- 
 tion I'd have a shot at it. However, they don't seem to be 
 doing much harm. Let's go on." 
 
 He folded up his map ; and they passed on, always be- 
 tween the rotting sandbags, till they came to the front-line. 
 Here, at intervals, mute sentries eye to periscope looked 
 out across the twenty yards which separated them from the 
 enemy. Straker, who disdained periscopes on principle, 
 took a quick peep over the bags. 
 
 " Lookthat way " he pointed with his finger as he ducked 
 down again. " You'll see the lip of the crater. His body's 
 lying just under their wire." 
 
 Peter lifted cautious head over the parapet ; saw green 
 ground stretching above him. At the top of the little slope, 
 a ragged fringe of posts and wire marked the lip of the mine- 
 crater : almost touching the wire, lay the khaki figure of 
 Peabody. He seemed asleep, stretched out full length on his 
 face ; knees bent ; head resting on one arm. So, Peter
 
 224 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 remembered him taking his ease on the sunlit downs of 
 Shoreham. Peabody ! Dead ! . . . 
 
 Peter felt a tug at his arm ; heard a bullet zip into the 
 sandbags ; ducked down. Straker, very white, was cursing 
 him : 
 
 " You bloody old idiot ! " 
 
 " Sorry," said Peter. 
 
 " Nearly got you that time, sir," remarked one of the 
 sentries. ' T'ain't safe, looking over for more than a couple 
 of seconds. I've 'ad two periscopes smashed this morning. . . " 
 
 When Peter arrived, late for tea, at the dug-out on the 
 creek, he found a very angry Purves, railing in his best 
 Oxford drawl against the stupidity of the ' Whirligig,' who 
 had ordered them to occupy new headquarters with their 
 Infantry Brigadier in the Ramparts. 
 
 " Ye gods," Purves was saying, " who would be a Gunner 
 Orderly Officer ? Here have I just completed the finest system 
 of telephone communication in this bloodstained town and 
 now it's all useless. They give us four days, four days je 
 vous demande ..." 
 
 " Oh, for Heaven's sake stow it," snapped Peter. " If 
 you're so fed up with being a Gunner Orderly Officer, why 
 don't you put in for a transfer to the infantry ? They have a 
 lovely life compared with us / don't think." 
 
 Stanley Purves accepted the merited rebuke in silence.
 
 PART XXI 
 TRENCH WARFARE 
 
 i 
 
 IT is, perhaps, owing to a higher capacity for ' adaptability ' 
 that the human animal has defeated all the other 
 animals on this planet ; made himself in fact the ' lord 
 of creation.' For example, one need but take the 
 Southdown Division during its winter in the ' City of Fear.' 
 
 Their life from front-line infantry, frozen blue or blown 
 to bits between rotting sandbags, to drivers in the swamped 
 horse-lines where the dumb beasts stood all day, tail to storm, 
 fetlock-deep in mud, and whence man and beast sallied forth 
 every night up that road of death between the scarred poplars 
 was indescribably foul, a reversion to conditions at which 
 an aristocratic caveman might well have jibbed. 
 
 In the fighting-zone itself, boredom followed fear, fear 
 boredom, with monotonous and unending regularity. There 
 were some days when never a rifle cracked, never a gun 
 barked : others as that Sunday which saw Stark's head- 
 quarters moved to the Ramparts when swift Fokkers drove 
 our poor B.E.2.C. 'planes from the air, when unanswerable 
 salvoes rained on ruined streets, on gun-positions and cross- 
 roads, on stumbling fatigue-parties and sentries acrouch 
 behind sandbags, when the very breastworks heaved and 
 blew skyward, crashing down in mud and mine-debris on the 
 corpses of the men who had inhabited them. 
 
 Nevertheless, the human animal endured. More, he learned 
 to adapt himself to this condition and that ; avoiding danger 
 by instinct ; finding his needed relaxation in petty amuse- 
 ments ; making to himself, even, some social order out of 
 the chaos wherein he dwelt. And since none, sallying forth, 
 might know if he would come back alive, a certain careless 
 spirit more hysteria than the ' war humour ' stay-at-homes 
 cliristened it stiffened endurance, irradiated relaxation. 
 
 In the Ramparts, vast catacombs of old brickwork im- 
 pervious to any artillery-fire, were pianos, gramophones, 
 
 p
 
 226 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 picture-galleries selected from coloured supplements of the 
 Sketch or La Vie Parisienne ; cheery Messes whereto came mud- 
 soaked men out of the noisy night, eager for whisky, always 
 ready to break into song. Some of those men died ; some 
 were wounded ; some sickness took : but always other men 
 replaced them and life went on. Moreover, since the human 
 animal cannot now exist without the written word, he even 
 discovered, buried away among the ruins of the city, a printing- 
 press, and type, and paper, from which evolved itself the 
 semblance of a news-sheet, yclept ' The Wipers Times.' 
 
 The young bore this strange existence best, recovered 
 easiest from fear or fatigue : but to the older men, and above 
 all to those responsible for the lives of others, the strain became 
 at time almost unendurable. Even Weasel Stark was not 
 quite his normal self : he grew irritable, restless ; spent most 
 of his days wandering about the batteries and the old roofless 
 houses of the ' observers ' ; cross-questioning his subalterns 
 about their targets ; demonstrating to his battery-com- 
 manders the insecurity of their gun-pits, the dampness of 
 their ammunition stores. On these expeditions, the ' old 
 man ' usually took Purves with him ; so that Peter found 
 himself more and more confined to the malodorous caverns 
 of the Ramparts, with Doctor Carson, complaining jocularly 
 of his rheumatism, for constant companion. 
 
 Whatever glamour active service may have once pos- 
 sessed for P. J. had long since disappeared. Towards the 
 end of February, however, chance provided him with a new 
 interest. 
 
 Monsieur van Woumen, the Belgian who had taken 
 furnished Peter's house in Lowndes Square, was anxious to 
 renew the agreement. Peter, purely from habit, wrote back 
 to the agent who made the offer, that he thought there should 
 be an increase in the rent. The agent replied that his client 
 would not increase the furnished rent ; but might be prepared, 
 on certain conditions, to take the remainder of the Crown 
 lease off Peter's hands. " Would you," wrote the agent, 
 " consider an offer for the furniture ? " 
 
 The little deal kept Peter amused for a whole month. He 
 had no particular sentiment about either house or chattels. 
 Patricia, consulted in a long business-like letter, approved the 
 scheme ; making only certain reservations some of his own 
 bedroom furniture, the desk and sideboard in the dining-room, 
 a blue carpet and various other pieces of which she thought it 
 inadvisable to dispose. Monsieur van Woumen paid his 
 deposit ; signed the agreement, and completed the purchase-
 
 Trench Warfare 227 
 
 money by the time that Headquarters made their way back 
 to a draughty, windowless house in ' Pop.' 
 
 By luck, Bromley's battery happened to be out of action ; 
 and the two friends long separated by circumstances- 
 renewed their intimacy. Together, they sought out the 
 dining-rooms at 5a Rue de Dunquerque, where ' Tina ' and 
 her two satellites dispensed clean food and uncleanly smiles : 
 together, they laughed at the nightly antics of the ' Fancies ' 
 (as the Sixth Division Concert Party called themselves), roaring 
 out the chorus of ' Hari-baloo-li-orium, old Roger Rum ' ; 
 together, they rode round the battery waggon-lines ; or 
 bought ' mixed liqueurs ' at the Expeditionary Force Canteen ; 
 or chaffed Purves as he sat, pencil in hand, at the long table in 
 the bare Mess-room. . . . For Stanley Purves had found his 
 voice (and his public) at last ; spent many blissful hours 
 glorifying war in super-polished stanzas for the magazines at 
 home. 
 
 2 
 
 After a week of Poperinghe, Peter and the Weasel rode 
 once more into action. This time, they veered right-handed 
 across the railway at Vlamertinghe, down a curving road where 
 huge guns lurked in the undipped shrubberies of lonely houses, 
 past a vast dump, piled high with shells and grenades and 
 rifle-ammunition and duckboards, till they came to the 
 famous ' Belgian Chateau,' home of many Gunner Head- 
 quarters and a thousand rumours. 
 
 It stood, this high, square building with its dank and 
 formal gardens, in full view of the front-line trenches : from 
 the little turret in its roof a man with a telescope might survey 
 all the Salient : but so far, in eighteen months of warfare, not 
 a shell had been fired at it: its doors were still on their 
 hinges, the glass still in its window-sashes. And rumour, eager 
 to explain the mystery, had it this was the property of a Hun 
 therefore immune. 
 
 Behind the Chateau, half-hidden by it, on the other side of 
 the road, was a little damaged house, timbered and sand- 
 bagged. The ' Villa Marie Louise,' the Belgians called it ; 
 from a legendary woman of that name who had once owned 
 the place. Here, and in the unsafe cat-haunted sandbag huts 
 behind, Stark and Peter, Purves and the Doctor and Morency 
 took up their abode. 
 
 There was no peace at the Villa Louise. The immunity of 
 the chateau did not extend beyond the chateau. Along the 
 ' beek ' behind them heavy guns roared occasionally from the
 
 228 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 thin shelter of trees : and these, the enemy sought for un- 
 ceasing with high and deafening shell. Other shells crashed 
 to ground all along the road ; wrecking transport-waggons, 
 spurting noisy splinters against the walls of the villa, slicing 
 earth-chunks from its protecting sandbags. And all the way 
 down the trench-tramway to the forward batteries in the 
 ruined houses of Trois Rois, among the long grass round 
 Zillebeke Lake, and the sodden hedges of Blauwe Poort Farm 
 shrapnel whizzed and spattered, making a man very grateful 
 for the new steel helmets of which the issue to the artillery 
 had just begun. But all these discomforts were luxuries 
 compared with the life of infantry and forward observing 
 officers among the shell-lashed breastworks of Hill 60 and 
 Observatory Ridge. 
 
 " Sanguinary spot," commented Stark, as they sat at lunch 
 one wet afternoon, listening to the ' five-nines ' bursting two 
 hundred yards up the road to their left. " Lodden lost three 
 more men this morning. It's his own fault. He won't make 
 them keep under cover. Where's the Doc. ? " 
 
 " He's up at ' C ' Battery, sir," said Peter. " Conway 
 'phoned through just before lunch. Monkey-face has been 
 hit." 
 
 " Badly ? " 
 
 " No, I don't think so. But it's rotten, the way we seem 
 to be losing all the old crowd, isn't it, sir ? " 
 
 " How many are there left now ? " reflected Stark dis- 
 passionately. " Three battery-commanders, Billy Williams, 
 yourself and Purves, Horrocks, the Doc. and Morency, Arch- 
 dale, Straker and Pettigrew, Merrilees and Hutchinson. I 
 don't call that so bad. We've been out nearly eight months. 
 They say the average life of an infantry subaltern's only 
 seventeen days, you know." 
 
 " Well, I must say I'm getting a bit harassed with this 
 infernal Salient," put in Purves. " We've been here over 
 three months." 
 
 " Trois mois et vingt sept jours," corrected Morency, from 
 whose journal Peter usually made up the Brigade war-diary. 
 
 " Other people have been here longer than that, young 
 man," said Stark, " but as a matter of fact, I've good news for 
 you. We're going to be relieved." 
 
 " No, sir ? When, sir ? Mais quand ? " The three 
 queries came simultaneously. The news affected these men 
 as the news of an unexpected holiday affects schoolboys. 
 For, to each in his own way, the horror of the place had entered 
 their souls.
 
 Trench Warfare 229 
 
 " Day after to-morrow," announced Stark. " Here, close 
 the shutters somebody. Those shells are getting too damn 
 near to be comfortable." 
 
 Morency sprang to the window ; pulled-to and bolted the 
 flimsy protection. Purves lit the candles ; and thereafter 
 they sat for a good half-hour, listening to the scream and 
 burst of shell-fire ; hearing the far-flung splinters tap-tapping 
 against wood and brick. . . . 
 
 3 
 
 " Relief completed, sir," announced Peter, two nights later, 
 striding into the Mess-room where Stark and the incoming 
 colonel, a peppery Anglo-Indian, sat over the remains of a 
 gloomy dinner. 
 
 " Thank God for that," said the Weasel. 
 
 It had been a beast of a day wires constantly breaking, 
 four casualties at the batteries, Coolsdon panicking on the 
 telephone from Divisional Headquarters ; but as the two 
 passed out of the Villa Marie Louise all the troubles in the 
 world seemed at an end. They had finished, for the present 
 at any rate, with Wipers ! 
 
 A mock peace beautified the Salient that night : silence 
 and moonshine brooded over the quiet road, the unmoving 
 trees, the shadows of roofs beyond the Lille Gate. Four 
 hours since, Peter had completed his last ' Situation Report ' : 
 ' headquarters being heavily shelled with five-nines.' Now, 
 not a gun fired anywhere. 
 
 And their work was over. Already, horses and drivers 
 had abandoned their stinking, uncleanly waggon-lines, their 
 canvas shelters in the mud of Ouderdom and Busseboom. 
 Remained only half the personnel of the batteries ; and these, 
 too, were even then tramping through the night towards the 
 rendezvous. For, in the Salient, incoming units took over 
 the guns of batteries they relieved, it being too dangerous, in 
 that sodden, overlooked triangle, where the enemy knew every 
 position, to change them. 
 
 So these two came, past battered outskirts of the town, to 
 the shadowy bulk of the Asylum. There a long line of motor- 
 lorries waited, tilts glistening in the moonlight. On the grass 
 by the roadside, men lounged at their ease telephone-cases 
 and miscellaneous paraphernalia beside them, cigarettes 
 glowing red. Lodden appeared ; saluted. 
 
 " Ack Battery ready to move off, Colonel." 
 
 " Very well. Get them on board."
 
 230 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Followed a stir among the figures by the roadside ; voices. 
 Men crowded round the lorries ; flinging in their kits ; swarm- 
 ing up over the backboards. Cranks twirled ; engines 
 sputtered. Lorries and men slid off through the moonlight. 
 
 Sandiland appeared with his men ; Conway ; last of all, 
 Bromley. Lorry followed lorry down the Poperinghe road. 
 
 " The captain," laughed Stark, " should be the last to 
 leave the sinking ship. Hurry up, P. J., or you'll miss the 
 bus." 
 
 He climbed to the front seat beside the driver. Laughing 
 and chattering, the few signallers of the Headquarters Staff 
 settled themselves about the floor. Peter found himself an 
 ammunition box in rear ; lit a cigar ; sat down. Quietly, the 
 lorry moved away. 
 
 " Ta-ta, Yeeps," said the voice of Pir bright. 
 
 Peter Jackson was no sentimentalist just an ordinary 
 business man, caught up willy-nilly into the vortex of war. 
 But sitting in rear of that lorry, cigar in mouth, the chequered 
 road streaking away behind, a wave of finer feeling, a mood 
 almost akin to poetry fell on him, as on most of us who have 
 lived in the City of Fear. 
 
 Ypres 1 It seemed to Peter that the place typified this 
 new horror modern warfare. It had been a city once, a hive 
 of industry shops, homes, factories. What was it now ? A 
 beastliness. An abortion. He visioned it all anew as the 
 lorry sped through the night ; saw its gutted houses, its 
 shattered churches ; saw the grim desert of the Square, the 
 glass-strewn ruins of the Cloth Hall, the blank clock-face of 
 the Banque de France ; heard its rats patter over his valise ; 
 trod its brick-strewn streets, the greasy stinking trenches 
 beyond its ramparts. . . . 
 
 Vlamertinghe disappeared astern. 
 
 Ypres ! It should never be rebuilt, should remain a 
 monument for all time to witness the foulness Huns had 
 plotted against men in the name of civilisation. 
 
 Poperinghe passed ; and with it the little mood of intro- 
 spection. 
 
 Ypres to hell with Ypres ! They, at any rate, were out 
 of it. He threw the butt of his cigar overboard ; made his 
 way forward to the Colonel. 
 
 " Hope Morency got that port," said Stark. 
 
 And the lorry shot on, down a long white road, into peace. 
 It was late, midnight past no traffic astir save an occasional 
 despatch-rider, engine phutting, headlamp aflare. On either 
 side of them, farm and field and woodland slumbered in the
 
 Trench Warfare 231 
 
 moonlight. No shell-craters marked those fields ; the houses 
 were whole, the trees unbroken. They breathed deep of the 
 quiet and the moonbeams ; knew life very good. 
 
 Mile after mile swirled by. They made the lorry-parked 
 village of Abeele ; dropped it astern ; swung into Steenvoorde 
 a living town, men and women asleep behind its closed 
 shutters. 
 
 " Easy a bit," said Stark, waking from a momentary doze ; 
 " there ought to be a guide here." 
 
 A figure on a bicycle detached itself from the shadow of a 
 house ; called out, " Headquarters. Fourth Southdown." 
 
 " Who's that ? " Peter called back. 
 
 "Driver Nicholson, sir." 
 
 " Right you are. Lead the way. We'll follow." 
 
 The figure mounted ; pedalled ahead through the town. 
 Following, they came down two miles of open road to the 
 Uttle village of Eecke, perched on a hillock above the plain ; 
 swung right-handed ; pulled up before a low, creeper-clad 
 house. 
 
 And there, in a warmed, lit room, they found Purves and 
 the Doctor. On the table, laid only for two, stood a bottle 
 of port. 
 
 " Felicitations, Morency," laughed the Weasel, peeling 
 off his British Warm. . . . 
 
 There were real sheets on the beds into which they climbed 
 that night, real grass on the fields over which they looked next 
 morning. 
 
 4 
 
 In and around Eecke, the Southdown Division Artillery 
 abode ten good days. It was earliest April. Sun shone on 
 clean farms, on green fields and white pave roads. Men, 
 cleaning harness and equipment or leading teams to water, 
 whistled at their work : the lines which the Salient had 
 graven on their faces disappeared. They chaffered merrily 
 with the peasants for eggs or milk ; sang songs in the 
 estaminets : strolled, cigarettes in mouth, to Steenvoorde or 
 Caestre, to Godewaersvelde or Sylvestre Cappel. 
 
 General Blacklock gave a dinner to his colonels ; the 
 colonels dined and wined their battery commanders. They 
 held a ' race-meeting,' at which Peter and Little Willie to the 
 intense joy of all spectators took a scunner at the post-and- 
 rails, rolling headlong and unharmed in the mud. But, 
 principally, the Fourth Brigade played poker. 
 
 They played high ; and they played fast : but they
 
 232 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 played neither high enough nor fast enough to catch the 
 Weasel. Always, he defeated them : his hard blue eyes, his 
 firm lips, gave never a hint of the cards in his hand. Even 
 Conway, who had learned his poker wisdom in Iquique 
 (where there is no rain but much whisky), and completed his 
 education at the ' Spotted Dog ' in Kualalumpur (where there 
 is much rain and still more whisky), acknowledged himself 
 overmastered. Sandiland, the newcomer a blond, clean- 
 shaven Regular who looked more like an actor than a soldier 
 stone waUed in vain ; was lured from Ms caution ; heavily 
 mulcted. Lodden, richest member of the party, found 
 bluff met with counter-bluff. Only Peter held his own. For 
 Peter, in addition to knowing the game, knew his Colonel. 
 
 " Very wrong of me to play so high with my juniors," 
 Stark used to say crushing notes into his pocket-book after 
 the defeated ones had gone ; " but they'll only rob each other 
 if I don't rob them." 
 
 Then they would sit up over a last whisky-and-soda, 
 discussing the play of this hand or that ; till Stark produced 
 his pet theory : " Say what you like, P. J., no man ever knows 
 another till he's drunk port and played poker with him." 
 
 5 
 
 Good days ! but they came to an end : and once again the 
 Brigade marched out, polished to the last bandolier-buckle, 
 along that undulating, tree-girt road which leads by Caestre 
 and Fletre and Meteren to Bailleul. Through BaUleul an 
 unshelled town it was then, picturesque with its church and 
 square, busy with butcher-shops and grocery stores, and wine- 
 merchants who sold surreptitious brandy in lordly parlours 
 they came ; and out into the plain beyond ; past the white 
 gate of the ' barrier ' ; and left towards Neuve Eglise. 
 
 " A mighty good place," assured the Canadians serious- 
 minded men from whom they 'took over.' 
 
 Here, batteries barked under the real trees of a pleasant 
 valley down which a man might ride in safety. Here, peasants 
 still lived close to the firing-line in unshelled farms ; reaping 
 their crops within two miles of the trenches. Here, Head- 
 quarters, instead of rat-infested cellars, found an unholed 
 house fields in rear, farm in front, Belgian landlady in the 
 kitchen at the foot of the village, below the skeleton of the 
 church. 
 
 But here, as everywhere along the front, danger lurked. 
 Men, grown careless by long immunity, had neglected to
 
 Trench Warfare 233 
 
 fortify their habitations. During their first week, the South- 
 down Infantry paid f or this neglect the price of one hundred 
 men, killed in their rest -billets behind the firing-line. 
 
 And if Hill 63 looked clear across the valley to the trenches 
 below Messines so did Messines and the green-blue buttress 
 of Wytschaete Ridge look clear across that same valley onto 
 the countryside below Hill 63. Wherefore, the smoke from a 
 cook-house or incautious movement drew shells ; and forward 
 batteries did not fire at night, lest the gun-flashes should give 
 away their position. 
 
 Still, compared with Ypres only a few miles away to 
 northward, the place was for gunners at any rate- 
 paradise. . . . 
 
 6 
 
 They had been at Neuve glise a week, were just getting 
 comfortable, when Miss Macpherson's telegram arrived. The 
 despatch-rider brought it shortly before tea ; and Peter, 
 busy signing the correspondence for Artillery Headquarters in 
 the bare back-room where Corporal Pitman and Driver Norris 
 had established themselves, let the thing lie for a good few 
 minutes before he opened it. Then he tore the envelope , 
 read : ' Simpson died yesterday can you get leave. Mac- 
 pherson.' 
 
 He stood there, flimsy paper in his hands : no longer 
 Lieutenant and Adjutant P. Jackson, R.F.A., but Peter 
 Jackson, Cigar Merchant, of P. Jackson & Co., Lime Street. 
 For a moment, he felt sorrow ; the words ' Poor old Tom,' 
 framed themselves at his lips : till the brain, putting sorrow 
 aside, insisted on business. 
 
 ' Tom Simpson being dead,' reasoned the brain 
 ' meant that Tom Simpson's widow would have to be paid out 
 in cash.' ' In cash ! ' the brain repeated. What a fool he had 
 been to renew that partnership agreement ! But then, who 
 would have imagined that of two partners, one on active 
 service, the other at home, the civilian should die first ? A 
 fantastic trick fantastic. . '. . 
 
 Peter stalked out of the office, through the backyard, into 
 the fields beyond. 
 
 " Wonder what's upset 'im," commented Driver Norris, 
 looking up from his typewriter. 
 
 " He's certainly worried," admitted Corporal Pitman ; 
 and bent once more over his interminable ' army forms.' 
 
 Alone in the big hedged grass field, Peter Jackson, busi- 
 ness man, wrestled with his problem. He must get leave, of
 
 234 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 course. . . . But after that ? It was no use going home 
 without a plan. ... He remembered suddenly that all leave 
 had been cancelled the day before ; strode back to the 
 house. 
 
 The Colonel sat in the Mess a comfortable room looking 
 on to the road, light-papered, tile-floored, furnished with some 
 spindly chairs and a good dining-table. 
 
 " Leave ! " said the Weasel, looking up from the vari- 
 coloured map he had been studying. " You'll be damn lucky 
 if you get it. Hang it, I haven't had my second leave yet." 
 
 Peter explained rather curtly, ending up : "If you'll sign 
 the application, sir, I'll take it in to Bailleul to-night." 
 
 " Do you know, P. J.," chaffed the Weasel, as he wrote, 
 ' Recommended. D. Stark, Lt.-Col.,' on the carefully-typed 
 foolscap, " that you're a damned undisciplined fellow ? God 
 knows what'd happen if you were Adjutant to anyone except 
 myself." 
 
 But Peter was in far too serious a mood for back-chat. 
 Outside, Jelks waited with the horses. He took the paper ; 
 buttoned it carefully into his tunic-pocket ; mounted ; rode 
 off across the fields to the main road. All the way to Bailleul 
 they made the eight miles of pave* within the hour he 
 conned over his arguments. 
 
 Coolsdon, the Staff-Captain, busy with papers in a hand- 
 somely furnished room, seemed doubtful. " Let me talk to 
 him," said Peter ; and was ushered into a plush-sofaed parlour 
 where General Blacklock sat smoking a cigar. 
 
 " Leave ! " sputtered Blacklock. " What for ? " 
 
 " Urgent private affairs, sir. My partner died the day 
 before yesterday." 
 
 " H'm. Lot of money at stake ? " 
 
 " About thirty thousand, sir." 
 
 The Brigadier signed the application. 
 
 " Stay to dinner, won't you ? " he invited. 
 
 " No, thanks, sir. I want to take this to Division myself." 
 
 At Divisional Headquarters, a vast house on the Rue 
 d'Armentie'res, Peter, running up an imposing staircase, met 
 the ' Whirligig ' himself a tall, fiery-eyed man with upturned 
 moustaches and an eyeglass. 
 
 Peter saluted ; and the Whirligig who prided himself on 
 never forgetting a face growled out, " You're Jackson of the 
 Fourth Brigade, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Can I speak to you for a minute ? " 
 
 " Go ahead." 
 
 For answer Peter, knowing his man, drew the application
 
 Trench Warfare 235 
 
 from his pocket. The General glanced at it ; noted the signa- 
 ture at foot said, " Got a pencil ? " . . . 
 
 " Hope you settle things all right," he growled outfas he 
 handed back the document. " Q's at the end of the passage. 
 Tell 'em, with my compliments, to send this on to Corps at 
 once, and mark it 'Urgent.'" 
 
 Twenty-four hours later Peter, opening the big envelope 
 from Artillery Headquarters, found his leave warrant. This 
 time, the yellow ticket seemed to hold no promise of enjoy- 
 ment.
 
 PART XXII 
 THE HOME FRONT 
 
 i 
 
 ALL through the thirty-six hours of his journey back 
 to England, business nagged at the mind of Peter 
 Jackson. He made the first twenty miles, Neuve 
 Eglise Strazeele Borre Hazebrouck, on horse- 
 back ; caught an afternoon train which crawled through 
 Amiens and Abbeville, making Boulogne too late for dinner ; 
 slept at the Officers' Club ; and crossed the Channel in smooth 
 sunshine on a boat which carried only the mails and a few 
 fortunates to whom leave restrictions did not apply. 
 
 But neither Little Willie, trotting happily along uncrowded 
 roads, nor the stammered friendliness of blue-clad, gaudy- 
 capped French officers in the antimacassared first-class com- 
 partment, nor a night in a civilized bedroom, nor any of the 
 petty pleasures of home-going, penetrated to a conscience 
 obsessed with uncomfortable thought, a brain occupied with 
 financial riddles. 
 
 ^Moreover though this Peter failed to realize that brain 
 was not quite the sure-functioning machine of old days. No 
 man comes quite unscathed through eight months of fighting : 
 even if the body be unwounded, the mind which must force 
 the body through its physical revulsion pays toll in restless- 
 ness, in loss of concentration. 
 
 And so Peter's problem, instead of coming to him clear-cut 
 and impersonal, took at first the shape of a grievance, of a 
 self-reproach. Fate had not treated him quite fairly. No 
 reasonable being could have imagined that the renewal of the 
 partnership deed with Simpson would land him in such a coil. 
 It was just rotten bad luck. 
 
 Arrived at which point, the mind began to reproach itself. 
 Bad luck ? Not a bit of it. If he, Peter Jackson, had 
 possessed any common sense, he might have foreseen this 
 happening. He, Peter Jackson, thought himself a damn clever 
 fellow ; whereas, actually, he was a fool. Otherwise, he 
 would have stayed at home, like Sir Hubert Rawlings and a 
 thousand others.
 
 The Home Front 237 
 
 He pulled himself together ; set his brains to grapple the 
 problem resolutely. It was regarded as he now managed to 
 regard it, impersonally a simple riddle. Jackson's capital 
 consisted of twenty-eight thousand pounds : half of this, 
 roughly, belonged to him, half to Simpson's estate. Under the 
 deed, he would have to pay out Simpson's executors within 
 twelve months. 
 
 He might, of course, compromise with Simpson's executors, 
 spread the payment over a longer period. But, in that case, 
 who would carry on the concern ? Miss Macpherson ? He 
 could hardly imagine a woman running Jackson's. Mallabone, 
 their sole remaining traveller ? Mallabone had no brains. 
 
 He might amalgamate with a competitor. . . . But that 
 and here the effect of war on Peter's temperament clearly 
 revealed itself contained the element of risk. He had lost 
 more than half his capital : and he funked any diminution of 
 the rest. 
 
 Funked it I He, Peter Jackson, who had never funked a 
 business gamble in his life. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 This time, no Patricia met him at Victoria. He looked at 
 the clock above the archway ; saw it was half-past two ; 
 decided on going straight to the City. 
 
 In the Underground, an elderly civilian insisted on talking 
 to him ; asked looking at his high laced boots, his soft cap, 
 his bulging haversack if he had been to the front. 
 
 "Just come from it," answered Peter, lighting a fresh cigar. 
 
 " You're in the R.F.A., aren't you ? I wonder if you've 
 ever met my nephew. No, he's not got a commission. A 
 sergeant, I believe he is. His name's Tomkins, same as mine ; 
 but I've forgotten the number of his battery. . . ." 
 
 The conversation lasted till the train pulled up in the 
 cavernous gloom of Monument station. 
 
 ' Silly old ass,' thought Peter, as he clinked along Grace- 
 church Street. ' These people at home seem to think the 
 R.F.A. is about as big as a platoon.' 
 
 Pushing his way through the glass doors of the office, he 
 bumped his haversack ; vented an Expeditionary Force oath. 
 
 No office-girl sat at the reception window. The racks in 
 the duty-paid stock-rooms were quite empty : he passed 
 between them into the back office ; found Miss Macpherson, 
 busy with ledgers and foolscap, sitting at Simpson's old desk. 
 
 "I didn't expect you so soon, Mr. Jackson," she said,
 
 238 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 rising. The war had altered the Scotswoman j higher pay 
 had clad her in a well-cut skirt, a silk blouse, good boots and 
 stockings : she looked almost comely with her dark hair, just 
 graying, her firm well-moulded features, her keen brown eyes. 
 
 "I've just been taking the bonded stock," she went on. 
 " There isn't much of it, I'm glad to say. Almost everything 
 is sold before arrival now. And the book-debts are low." 
 
 They discussed details; and Peter found himself amazed 
 at her knowledge, her capability. 
 
 " Mr. Simpson left a good deal to me at the end," she 
 explained. " He was ill for nearly three months before he 
 died. But he wouldn't have you written to about it. Poor 
 Mrs. Simpson 1 I went to see her yesterday. She was so 
 sorry you couldn't be home to the funeral. You ought to go 
 and see her if you can." 
 
 A girl brought tea. Over it, Miss Macpherson put her 
 question : 
 
 " What are you going to do about the business ? Will it 
 have to be sold ? You don't mind my asking, I hope. But 
 it's rather important to me." 
 
 11 1 haven't made up my mind yet, Miss Macpherson. You 
 know about the partnership deed, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes. Mr. Simpson told me." She finished her cup. " I 
 could run it, you know easily till you came back." 
 
 " Could you ? " Her earnestness appealed to Peter. This 
 type of managing woman, bred by the war, was new and very 
 refreshing. 
 
 " Of course I could. It's not a very difficult business." 
 
 The telephone bell rang. Miss Macpherson picked up the 
 receiver ; pushed the instrument across the desk. "It's 
 your wife, I think." 
 
 " Peter," the voice came faintly over the wire " your 
 telegram was delayed. I Just missed you at Victoria. Shall 
 I bring the car down to the office ? " 
 
 " Yes, do," he answered. 
 
 The little scene was could Peter but have realized it 
 very typical of war : women working with and for men, 
 driving cars, running businesses, doing a thousand jobs which 
 would have seemed impossible two years since. But Peter 
 Jackson had no sense of drama ; he accepted new conditions, 
 as most Englishmen, with nothing more than a mild surprise. 
 
 " I wish you'd get me the private ledger, Miss Macpherson," 
 he said ; and immersed in the ' private ledger,' Patricia found 
 him. 
 
 As she entered, tall, gauntleted, small toque low on her
 
 The Home Front 239 
 
 blond head, he looked up from his work ; rose to greet her. 
 They did not kiss : they were not of the breed that kisses 
 before employees. But there was no condescension in 
 Patricia's, ' How do you do, Miss Macpherson ? ' 
 
 " I shan't be more than ten minutes, Pat," Peter said. 
 " You don't mind waiting, do you ? " 
 
 She sat there, looking at the two of them the man in 
 soldier's uniform, bending over the account book, the middle- 
 aged woman with the fountain-pen holding her love for 
 Peter in abeyance, recognising that this was ' business,' a 
 mystery beyond her scope. And with that recognition came a 
 little flash of jealousy against the other woman, who could help 
 where the wife must sit useless. 
 
 Peter snapped-to the catch of the private ledger ; pulled 
 the telephone across the desk ; asked for a number. 
 
 " Mr. Reid in ? " Patricia heard " No. Mr. George Reid. 
 Gone for the day. Confound it. Is he free at ten o'clock 
 to-morrow ? Right. Yes, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Peter Jackson." 
 
 He turned to Miss Macpherson, said, " Do you think you 
 can have those figures ready by lunch-tune to-morrow ? " 
 received her affirmation ; asked if she knew the names and 
 addresses of Simpson's executors ; wrote them down in his 
 note-book. 
 
 " Ready now," he told Patricia : and, as an afterthought, 
 " How much petrol have you got ? " 
 
 " I filled up just before coming out." 
 
 " Good." He looked at his wrist -watch. " Then I 
 think, if you don't mind, we'll run down to Harrow and see 
 Mrs. Simpson." 
 
 3 
 
 The drive to Harrow, through traffic and tram-lines for the 
 most part, gave little opportunity for conversation. 
 
 " Are you very worried ? " she managed to ask. 
 
 " Yes," he confessed, " I am." 
 
 They drew up, at about six in the afternoon, before an 
 unpretentious, comfortable villa in an unpretentious, com- 
 fortable side-street. It was the usual English suburban home, 
 a doll's house of red brick and stucco : two lime trees sheltered 
 the little iron gate ; on either side of the gravelled path which 
 led to the front door, tiny well-clipped lawns gave onto laurel- 
 bushes. As they came up the path, a half -seen figure moved 
 behind the muslin curtains of the dining-room window. 
 
 Ringing the ivory knob of a well-polished brass bell-push, 
 they were welcomed by a maid in cap and apron ; ushared
 
 240 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 through a marble-papered hall, with a mahogany hat-stand, 
 into an over-furnished room (piano and sofa prominent), 
 whose long French windows looked out on ' the garden ' a 
 narrow strip of lawn ending in a fence crowned with trellis- 
 work and scant ivy. 
 
 " Mrs. Simpson will be down in a moment," announced 
 the maid. 
 
 She came in, a little faded woman, light -haired the pallor 
 of her accentuated by the obviously new black dress. An 
 open-faced gold locket with the miniature of her dead husband 
 hung from a gold chain at her breast. 
 
 " This is very good of you," began Mrs. Simpson. 
 
 Condoling with her, Peter felt for the first time a real 
 sorrow at loss of his partner. He remembered ' Tom ' bringing 
 his wife to dinner at Lowndes Square, remembered how Pat 
 had laughed at his calling her ' mother.' 
 
 " Won't you sit down ? " said Mrs. Simpson ; and began 
 to talk about the illness, the funeral. " Poor man, he was 
 worried, you know. Worried ! The work got too much for him . 
 I used to say to him, ' Tom, don't go to the office to-day.' 
 But he would go. And the trains are so crowded now. These 
 soldiers ! Often, he'd have to stand up the whole way home." 
 
 To Patricia, she seemed a pathetic figure ; to Peter, she 
 grew rapidly irritating. Sorrow disappeared. He had come 
 there to talk money-matters, not to hear about the ' dear 
 departed.' The front had hardened him to death : death was 
 just an incident, a daily incident : one did not mention the dead. 
 
 "Tell me, Mrs. Simpson," he interrupted, not unsym- 
 pathetically. " About money ? Are you all right ? You 
 know, it will take some little time to get the estate settled up. 
 I thought of going to see the executors to-morrow." 
 
 " It's very good of you to take so much trouble, Mr. 
 Jackson. Very good of you indeed. But I've got enough to 
 go on with. And my brother-in-law tells me . . ." 
 
 In her narrow way she was shrewd. Business, taboo in 
 Lowndes Square, had always been the staple topic of con- 
 versation at ' The Limes.' Mrs. Simpson knew all about 
 Nirvana, about Hagenburg, about the partnership deed ; 
 knew, too, exactly what she wanted. 
 
 And she wanted her money out of Jackson's ; wanted it in 
 War Loan. This, without any definite statement beyond, 
 " She hoped he wouldn't have to sell the business," and, " It 
 seemed very difficult, his being at the front," she made very 
 clear to the astute mind of Peter Jackson. 
 
 Yet she pressed them to have some tea, which they
 
 The Home Front 241 
 
 refused ; pressed them to come again. The visit, the car at 
 the gate, flattered her vanity. ' Tom/ she said to herself, 
 ' had always thought very highly of young Peter. Tom would 
 be glad that young Peter and his wife had been to see her. 
 But Tom would not like her to leave his money in the business.' 
 She walked to the gate with them ; said what a beautiful 
 evening it was ; watched the car glide off round the corner of 
 St. John's Road. Then she turned back to her lonely house, 
 her lonely life. For Tom Simpson's ' mother ' had only been 
 a joke between them : and now, he would never joke with her 
 again. 
 
 4 
 
 Instead of swinging the car left for London, Patricia drove 
 straight past the Harrow football-fields, up the Hill towards 
 the School. Holidays had emptied the Georgian street, the 
 red-brick buildings : the little low cake-shop at which they 
 halted was quite empty. 
 
 " I haven't had any tea," she explained, as they sat down 
 at a clean table. 
 
 " Sorry, old thing." Peter's voice sounded gentler than 
 usual. " I'm afraid I'm a selfish beast." 
 
 " Sometimes," she laughed ; " but I'm glad to have you 
 back all the same." 
 
 A waitress appeared from the back of the shop. Patricia 
 ordered tea for two. They wandered up to the counter ; 
 chose cakes ; sat down again. 
 
 " Now tell me about business," she said. And Peter told 
 her, a little bitterly, the whole tale. 
 
 " I can't see any hope of saving the show," he ended. 
 " Miss Macpherson thinks she can run it. Perhaps she could, 
 if one had enough capital. But one hasn't. So that's the 
 end of that. First Nirvana, then Jackson's 'they all go the 
 same way home.' Serves me right for gambling, I suppose. 
 But I wish I hadn't let you down, Pat." 
 
 " You haven't let me down," she flashed at him : and the 
 sudden anger surprised them both. " Do you think I married 
 you just for money ? Do you think I want you to be like 
 Rawlings ? . . ." 
 
 " No/' somehow her anger soothed him " of course I 
 don't." 
 
 " Well then, why do you talk about letting me down ? " 
 
 " Because, Pat," he spoke slowly, fumbling for words 
 " a man's got no right to marry a woman and have children if 
 he can't look after thorn. Two years ago, we had three
 
 242 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 thousand a year ; to-day, we'll be lucky if we've got six 
 hundred. That's failure, Pat. And you know what I think 
 of failure." 
 
 She remembered a similar conversation, long ago, at the 
 Carlton. 
 
 " It isn't your fault," she said stubbornly. " And be- 
 sides/' her voice grew very gentle " lots of people are very 
 happy on six hundred a year." 
 
 " In books 1 " he sneered. 
 
 " Peter," she looked at him and he saw her eyes suffuse 
 " that hurts." 
 
 The sudden change in her dumbfounded him. Always, 
 they had talked openly, as man to man. Now, he knew 
 instinctively that he must finesse. And he hated finesse 
 even in commerce. Yet he was sorry to have hurt her ; told 
 her so ; tried to explain. 
 
 " It's all right for some people, Pat. But it wouldn't suit 
 us. Imagine us living in a place like ' The Limes.' . . ." 
 
 Thought Patricia, ' He's been home half a day and he 
 hasn't even kissed me yet 1 ' 
 
 Nevertheless, she pulled herself together. He had come 
 home ' on business ' ; and he must be allowed to settle his 
 business in his own way. He looked thinner, she thought : 
 and it seemed to her a shame that he should be worried with 
 money-matters when his real work lay elsewhere, at the front. 
 
 She let him talk himself into optimism ; admired the 
 ultimate philosophy with which he said : " Anyway, it's 
 only temporary. One doesn't alter a deal by talking round 
 it. Jackson's will have to go. Let it ! Once this war's 
 over, I'll get into business again. And then, then my dear, 
 you'll see me make things hum." 
 
 He paid for tea ; insisted on driving home himself. They 
 spun out of twilit country into the blueing gloom of war-time 
 London ; made Harley Street in time for dinner. 
 
 The children, who had waited up, greeted them uproar- 
 iously ; could hardly be induced to bed. Later, Heron Baynet 
 produced Clicquot, a decanter of special brandy. The three 
 made semblance of enjoyment. Peter told them how he had 
 wangled his leave ; Patricia broached a plan long contem- 
 plated the taking of a little place in the country ; her father, 
 for once, did not discuss his war-work. 
 
 For it seemed to the little consultant one of the few in 
 England who had, up to that time, made any study of the 
 fighting-man's nerves that his son-in-law, at the moment, was 
 precisely the wrong person with whom to discuss neurology.
 
 PART XXIII 
 THE DROSS AND THE GOLD 
 
 i 
 
 DESPITE his father-in-law's vague suspicions, there was 
 no sign of overstrain about the quiet young fellow 
 in mufti, who sat talking figures in George Reid's 
 stuffy private office the morning after his arrival 
 in England. One by one, Peter marshalled his facts ; laid 
 them before the middle-aged clean-shaven man at the paper- 
 littered desk. 
 
 " But are you sure you can find a buyer ? " said Reid at 
 last. " It all seems to hang on that." 
 
 " You can always sell things at a price," answered Peter. 
 " The only trouble is time. One can't conclude a deal like 
 this in under a week. That's where I want your help. If I 
 start the negotiations, will you carry them through ? Of 
 course, you must name your own fee." 
 
 " I don't take fees for helping people in the army," said 
 Reid. 
 
 " But that's ridiculous. You're not here for your health." 
 
 " Ridiculous or not, I won't take any fee." There was 
 something very near emotion in the accountant's voice. " You 
 can pay for having the accounts audited if you like. But 
 beyond that, not a farthing. Hang it all, when you fellows 
 are risking your lives, the least we old 'uns can do is to see 
 after affairs at home for you." 
 
 " It's jolly decent of you," said Peter, " but all the same, 
 I don't like accepting favours." 
 
 " Favours be blowed I " Reid lit himself a cigarette. 
 " Let's get down to facts. First point : Are you quite sure 
 it's necessary to sell ? " 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Why ? The business is perfectly solvent." 
 
 " Because I happen to be in the army." 
 
 " Someone could run it while you're away. You could 
 take a partner. . . ."
 
 244 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 "It isn't that," Peter spoke coldly, impersonally 
 " but if anything happened to me there'd be the whole tangle 
 over again. Whereas, if I can get my fourteen thousand 
 out, that and the insurance money, at five per cent. . . ." 
 
 " Very well," interrupted Reid. " I follow you. Point 
 two : Who's your buyer ? " 
 
 " A firm called Beresford & Beresford. You'll find them 
 pretty tough nuts to negotiate with." 
 
 " Jews ? " asked Reid, who had a slight acquaintance with 
 the cigar-trade. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, that's one comfort. They won't mess about. 
 If they want the thing, and the price suits them, they'll have 
 it. . . ." 
 
 Peter had spoken with great certainty about Beresford's : 
 but as he climbed down the prison-like stone staircase of 
 Great Winchester House he began to wonder whether he might 
 not have misjudged the situation. Two and a half years 
 ago, Maurice would have jumped at the opportunity of acquir- 
 ing Jackson's on the terms Peter now proposed to accept. 
 But things had altered in the cigar-trade ; perhaps the argu- 
 ments he intended using would not be effective. 
 
 The whole proposition was very distasteful. He found 
 himself hating the City, almost wishing himself back in the 
 firing-line. And when, through various passages, he made 
 his own offices, distaste deepened. Sitting there, talking 
 generalities to Miss Macpherson (it would be time enough to 
 tell her the business must be sold, after he had seen Maurice), 
 memories thronged over him. He saw his father again, 
 uncording a parcel of dock-samples, old George with his duster, 
 Tom Simpson, himself as a raw youth. 
 
 Recollection conjured up many pictures that morning": 
 comedies, farces, tragedies, all enacted among the cedar- 
 boxes and the mahogany furniture of 24c. Lime Street. 
 
 After Miss Macpherson had given him the promised figures 
 and gone off to her lunch, he prowled about the place. It 
 seemed like a tomb now all the life gone out of it. The 
 faces of the two girls in the clerk's room were as strange as the 
 emptiness of the dusty racks. 
 
 Yet, for all its apparent deadness, Jackson & Company 
 still made profits. For a moment, studying the rough 
 balance-sheet Miss Macpherson had prepared, Peter doubted 
 his wisdom in selling out. Why shouldn't he make a fight
 
 The Dross and the Gold 345 
 
 for it, let her carry-on ? There was enough money on deposit 
 in the Bank to stall off Simpson's executors for at least six 
 months. 
 
 Still doubtful, he werrt out to lunch, avoiding the Lombard 
 lest he should meet Beresford, going instead to a noisy old- 
 fashioned chop-house where the food was as good as the service 
 execrable. Over his chop, wisdom prevailed. For Patricia's 
 sake and the sake of his children, he dare not risk any more 
 financial complications. With which resolution firmly in his 
 mind, Peter walked down St. Mary Axe, entered the elaborate 
 warehouses of Beresford & Beresford. 
 
 Maurice, dapper as ever, eye-glassed, patent -booted, but 
 short -jacketed and bowler-hatted in deference to war-con- 
 ditions, happened to be in the outer office ; welcomed Peter 
 as a long lost brother. 
 
 " But what are you doing in mufti ? " he asked, leading 
 way through the glass-partitioned sale-rooms (which, Peter 
 noticed, were as bare of stock as his own) into a green-carpeted 
 sanctum of saddle-bag chairs and roll-top desks. 
 
 " Usually get out of uniform when I'm on leave," explained 
 Peter. 
 
 The little man unlocked one of the desks ; sat down at it ; 
 produced a box of fat oily Cabanas ; pushed them across. 
 
 " Trust goods. But not at all bad," he said. 
 
 Peter lit up ; took the chair at the side of the desk ; asked : 
 
 " Is your brother Charlie in town ? " 
 
 " Yes. He'll be back from lunch in about ten minutes." 
 
 " Good 1 I've come round to talk business. It'll save 
 time if you're both here. " 
 
 " Business ? " queried the other, letting the monocle drop 
 from his eye-socket. " What sort of business ? " 
 
 " Tell you when Charlie comes in. How are things in 
 general ? " They settled down to desultory trade-gossip. 
 
 " Too much Government control for my liking," said 
 Maurice. " Still, except for the freights, I'm not grumbling." 
 
 His brother came in : a fat little chap with goggly eyes 
 and red hands, one of which he extended cordially to Peter. 
 
 " Very glad to see you back, Peter. Very glad indeed. 
 When's the war going to be over ? " 
 
 "Peter's come round to talk business," interrupted 
 Maurice. 
 
 " Business I " Charlie hung up his soft hat. " What 
 sort of business ? I didn't know there was any business left 
 to talk about." 
 
 He, also, unlocked his desk ; sat down at it ; took out a
 
 246 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 cigar-box, selected a weed. Looking at the two of them, 
 Peter could not help a totally unreasonable feeling of contempt 
 contempt not only for them, but for himself for wanting 
 money from them. There was a little of the Weasel's rasp 
 in his voice as he began : 
 
 " The business is this. As you know, Simpson is dead. 
 There's no one left to carry on Jackson's. And so I've got 
 to sell it. I've come to you first. You know almost as much 
 about the show as I do. If you want it, you must make 
 up your minds within twenty-four hours." 
 
 " Rather rushing things, aren't you, Peter ? " interrupted 
 Maurice. 
 
 " Possibly," it must be remembered that Peter knew his 
 men pretty well " but what am I to do ? Leave doesn't 
 last for ever ; and I've got to have the whole thing settled 
 before I go away." 
 
 " But what's the price ? " Charlie's mind moved more 
 directly if less rapidly than his brother's. 
 
 " Well," Peter spoke slowly " of course you'll take stock 
 and book-debts at a valuation. We shan't quarrel about 
 that. The only question is how much the goodwill's worth." 
 
 "Goodwill!" Maurice screwed his monocle back into 
 his eye. " My dear Peter, you must be joking. I shouldn't 
 dream of paying for goodwill." (' Then he's a buyer/ com- 
 mented Peter's mind). " A cigar importing business has no 
 goodwill. You and I decided that years ago. It's a personal 
 business." 
 
 "Not under present conditions. The import -licence 
 represents a share in an absolute monopoly." 
 
 " Only while the war lasts." 
 
 They wrangled about goodwill for ten minutes. Then 
 Maurice said casually : 
 
 " I suppose you've got to pay out a good deal of money 
 to Simpson's estate." 
 
 " A certain amount," admitted Peter, " and frankly that's 
 one of the reasons why I'm anxious to dispose of the business. 
 You see, it's a bad time to get rid of outside investments," 
 he spoke as if he had millions of them " and although 
 Simpson's capital was not enormous, I don't feel inclined to 
 realize a lot of shares to replace it." 
 
 " So you want us to do it for you," said Maurice. 
 
 " Your position's different to mine. You're both here to 
 look after things ; I'm not." 
 
 "That's quite true," interrupted Charlie. 
 
 Maurice, who wanted the business badly but did not wish
 
 The Dross and the Gold 247 
 
 to appear over-keen, looked angrily across at his brother ; 
 took up the running himself. 
 
 " You'd want to be paid in cash, I suppose," he said. 
 
 "Take your own time about that," answered Peter 
 largely. " If it suits you better to pay me out as you realize 
 the stock and book-debts, I don't mind. There'll be interest, 
 of course." 
 
 Maurice came back to the question of goodwill ; was 
 sheered off by Peter ; began to fish for figures. But these, 
 his antagonist refused to give. 
 
 "My accountant's working on them," he prevaricated; 
 " they'll be ready to-morrow. But it's no good shewing 
 them to you unless you're prepared to deal." 
 
 " Can't you give me some idea ? I'm only trying to find 
 out if we can afford it." 
 
 It was time to fire the last shot. " Maurice," said Peter, 
 ' you know as well as I do that there's no question of affording. 
 All you're asked to do barring the payment for goodwill 
 is to take over sound stock and good book-debts ; realize 'em ; 
 and pay the money over to me. If you don't want to do it, 
 say so ; and I'll either sell the show to Elkins or tell my 
 accountants to liquidate." 
 
 " You're in such a hurry," began Maurice. " Can't you 
 leave us till to-morrow ? " 
 
 " No, I can't." 
 
 "But about this goodwill. How much do you want for it ? " 
 
 " A year's profits." 
 
 The two brothers looked at each other ; and Peter, watch- 
 ing, saw that he had the fish hooked. They didn't want Elkins 
 to have the business. They didn't want it liquidated. They 
 wanted it for themselves. 
 
 " Look here, Peter," began Maurice ingratiatingly, " you 
 and I are old pals. Of course, I quite see you must have this 
 thing settled quickly. But I'm sure you wouldn't want us to 
 pay more than it's worth for the business : anymore than we 
 should like to pay you less." 
 
 " Of course not," smiled Peter. He knew Maurice Beres- 
 ford in his ' between-you-and-me-and-the-gate-post-and-as- 
 old-friends' mood. 
 
 " Well, why not leave the details to our accountants ? 
 You want to sell. We're quite prepared to buy. A few 
 hundreds one way or another can't make any difference to 
 either of us. Don't you think that's best, Charlie ? " 
 
 Charlie looked up from his desk ; began, " Well, I think 
 we ought to know how much money is involved " ; caught
 
 248 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 his brother's eye ; ended up, " Yes. I think that would be 
 the best way." 
 
 " There's only one thing," said Peter, at parting, " I think 
 you ought to keep on our old staff, at any rate until they can 
 find other jobs." 
 
 " My dear Peter," purred Maurice, " we're so short-handed 
 that they'll be a god-send." 
 
 But when Peter broke the news to Miss Macpherson, she 
 said, very firmly: " Oh, I don't think I'd like to work for 
 Beresford & Beresford, Mr. Jackson. I'd rather go into one of 
 the Government offices. You see, to have carried on while 
 you were away would have been a kind of war-work, wouldn't 
 it ? Whereas if I went to them . . ." 
 
 She left the sentence unfinished, and its hearer a little 
 puzzled. For Government offices did not pay the same wages 
 as private employers ; and patriotism in money-matters 
 except his own, about which he always felt a trifle foolish 
 was a little beyond the scope of P. J.'s imagination. 
 
 3 
 
 The Beresfords lost no time in getting to grips, no oppor- 
 tunity of pointing out the worthlessness of the concern they 
 proposed acquiring. 
 
 At his very first interview with George Reid, their inter- 
 mediary the dignified portly principal of Messrs. Guthrie, 
 Guthrie, Jellybrand, Sons & Guthrie made their attitude 
 very clear. He was given to understand, he said, that Jackson 
 & Co. had been for many years prominently associated with 
 a German firm, domiciled in Cuba, who had recently been black- 
 listed by the British Government for serious misdemeanours. 
 Under the circumstances, and as patriotic merchants, his 
 clients felt some diffidence in negotiating. 
 
 When Reid (primed by Peter who had anticipated the 
 argument) pointed out that Beresford's had also, prior to the 
 war, traded with Beckmann's, and that they had only aban- 
 doned trading with them because Ms clients, Messrs. Jackson 
 & Co., refused to supply further shipments ; Mr. Guthrie 
 professed bland ignorance. 
 
 The matter went on Mr. Guthrie was not of vast im- 
 portance : still, it undoubtedly affected the question of good- 
 will. And, while on the subject, he felt it only fair to say 
 that had Messrs. Beresford taken his advice they would
 
 The Dross and the Gold 249 
 
 have thought twice before entering into negotiations at all : 
 as, in his opinion, the excess profits tax would swallow up 
 any increased earnings that could be made. However, his 
 clients had pledged their word, and he would be glad to have 
 the balance-sheet which, with Mr. Reid's permission, he 
 would take away and study at leisure. 
 
 Meanwhile, Maurice insisted on entertaining Peter and 
 Patricia to dinner at Claridge's : a dinner during which he 
 assumed the deal already completed, and after which, over 
 enormous cigars and exiguous liqueurs, he did his best to 
 settle all disputed points in his own favour. 
 
 " Horrid cynical little man," commented Patricia, after 
 he had dropped them at Harley Street. 
 
 " Oh, we're all thieves together in the cigar-trade," ans- 
 wered Peter. " If I were in Maurice's position and he in 
 mine, I should do just the same. He knows that if he can 
 only play out time till my leave's up, he'll get the business at 
 his own price." 
 
 " Well, I think it's very mean of him." 
 
 " Don't be so foolish, Pat," Peter laughed the new bitter 
 laugh she was growing to hate. " There's no sentiment in 
 commerce." 
 
 She thought of their mad happy Christmas together ; and 
 sighed. He had reverted to his old absorbed self, the Peter 
 of Nirvana days : grim, concentrated, efficient. She was his 
 chattel again, no longer his pal. 
 
 Reason asked : ' Why do you love this man ? ' and 
 found no sure answer. Reason told her that he was hard, 
 incapable of any but the most material affection ; that his 
 fidelity indicated nothing but lack of temperament, that he 
 would have been happier unmarried. But instinct, ousting 
 reason, replied : ' And in spite of it all, you do love him.' 
 
 Still, it was a beast of a week ! Try as she might, Patricia 
 could not wrest his mind from its business problems to her- 
 self. Even during their visits to Francis he seemed incapable 
 of putting the thing aside. She grew to resent the constant 
 messengers bringing bulky envelopes from Reid, the servants' 
 " Your office wants you on the telephone, sir " ; the after- 
 noons he must spend in the City. 
 
 For Peter had no intention of allowing Maurice to play 
 out time. He hustled Reid till Reid hustled Guthrie ; met 
 this point ; refused that ; threatened here ; was purposely 
 dilatory there ; used every artifice to bring matters to a climax 
 before the Thursday morning when he must return to France. 
 
 In the end, by luck rather than judgment, he succeeded.
 
 250 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Maurice Beresford (afraid lest Peter should carry out his 
 latest threat to liquidate Jackson & Co. altogether), sug- 
 gested a conference. They met, the two accountants and the 
 three principals, at Guthrie's offices ; sat down in his maho- 
 gany board-room to a long session. Talk, as usual at such 
 meetings, coiled away from essentials ; wound itself into 
 interminable knots over unimportant minutiae . . . till 
 Peter's temper, long held in leash, got the better of him. 
 
 " And don't you think, Mr. Jackson," began Guthrie 
 blandly, " that the transfer should be made as from the" date 
 of the balance-sheet ? " 
 
 " If you want to know what I think," Peter flashed back 
 at him, " I think we're all sitting round this table like a lot 
 of blithering idiots, talking sanguinary rubbish. Anyway, 
 I'm fed up with it. Look here, Maurice," he turned on the 
 little man furiously " you've been mucking about for six 
 days. I've met you over the guaranteeing of the book- 
 debts, the price of the fixtures, and the indemnity for repairs 
 under the lease. What the hell more do you want ? " 
 
 Guthrie, ruffled out of his portly dignity, sat silent and 
 disgruntled} Reid 's eyes t winkled ; Charlie^Beresford fidgeted 
 uncomfortably ; but his brother, screwing monocle into eye- 
 socket, retorted calmly : 
 
 " I don't want to pay anything for goodwill." 
 
 "Then the deal's off." Peter began to gather up the 
 papers in front of him. " If you won't pay more than the 
 actual value of the assets, I'll wind up the show myself." 
 
 " But ..." began Maurice. 
 
 " Though why the devil you've wasted all this time, God 
 alone knows," finished Peter. He completed the collection 
 of his papers, rose to go. 
 
 For once in the history of Beresford & Beresford, the 
 junior partner saved the situation. Maurice, not realizing 
 Peter's temper unassumed, thinking it a bluff, sat silent ; 
 leaving Charlie's frightened acquisitiveness to exclaim : 
 
 " I don't see why we shouldn't pay something for goodwill. 
 Only, it's a question of how much. Couldn't we compromise, 
 Peter ? " 
 
 Our Mr. Jackson sat down again. The outburst had 
 steadied his nerves ; his commercial judgment revived. In- 
 wardly, he laughed a little : it seemed quaint that his loss of 
 temper should have brought the Beresfords to heel so quickly. 
 But what he actually said was : 
 
 " Compromise ? Why the whole amount's only chicken 
 food." 
 
 " Damn dear chicken food," commented Maurice. " You're
 
 The Dross and the Gold 251 
 
 asking a year's profits. That's about two thousand five- 
 hundred pounds." He changed his tone. " Look here, 
 Peter, your time's valuable, so's mine. I'll tell you what I'll 
 do. The indemnity under that lease of yours might run into 
 a lot of money. Supposing we waive it, and give you a 
 thousand in cash for the goodwill." 
 
 Pouted Guthrie, recovering his dignity : " That seems 
 to me a very liberal offer." 
 
 And at twelve hundred, Peter compromised. It was a 
 weak thing to do, and he knew it weak as he did it ; but 
 time pressed, and somehow he felt sick of haggling. The old 
 Peter, the Peter who would have fought up to the last ten- 
 pound note, had left his patience at Ypres. 
 
 But it was the old Peter who insisted on the immediate 
 exchange of letters ; who dictated the rough agreement to 
 Guthrie 's pert blond typist ; appended steady signature at 
 foot. 
 
 " And about the contract itself ? " asked Maurice Beres- 
 ford, as the party, all smiles and handshakes, broke up. 
 " You'll have that sent out to you, I suppose." 
 
 " It won't be necessary, Maurice. Reid has my power 
 of attorney. You see," our Mr. Jackson couldn't resist 
 a last crow over old opponents " I never expected to bring 
 you up to the scratch before I went away ! " 
 
 But Maurice only chuckled, " Well, there's one thief less 
 in the cigar-trade anyway, Peter " ; and insisted on accom- 
 panying him to the corner of Lombard Street. 
 
 4 
 
 A man's money-standard is of necessity comparative. 
 Five pounds is a fortune to the beggar ; ten thousand a charity 
 subscription for a millionaire. But in Peter's case money 
 had hitherto represented more than mere coin to spend or 
 save as the mood happened. It had stood for the measure 
 of success in his career. So that, as he walked home through 
 Lombard Street that fine April evening, he bore, in addition 
 to the weight of his loss (and no man, pauper or millionaire, 
 likes losing money) another heavier burden the burden of 
 failure. 
 
 The whole street : the gold-de viced signs that had hung 
 three hundred years and more outside stolid buildings 
 buttressed on millions, the marble-pillared windows, the iron- 
 shuttered entrances, mocked at such failures as his own ; 
 seemed glutted with money easy money for anybody with 
 the requisite brains and nerve. He hurried through it ; left
 
 252 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 the low black bulk of the Bank of England behind him ; 
 struck westwards through Cheapside. 
 
 It was late, and most of the shops had closed. He slack- 
 ened his pace to the slow dawdle of the man who thinks. 
 
 ' Failure I ' thought Peter. ' Argue round it as you like 
 the result's the same.' And so thinking, there came over him 
 another wave of that bitterness which is reserved for those 
 who volunteer to fight for their country while others, equally 
 fit, stay safe at home. 
 
 ' A fine fool I've made of myself,' he argued, ' rushing into 
 the army. Why didn't I wait ? All these people at home 
 are making more money than ever. Marcus must be coining 
 it out of Nirvana. Beresford's will get back the purchase- 
 price of Jackson's in six months. If only I'd stayed at home ! ' 
 
 He began to rail, as so many railed in that black time, 
 against the very thing to which he had dedicated himself. 
 ' What are we all fighting for ? The country ? Oh, hell ! 
 A lot ' the country ' cares. Look at it. Everyone having 
 the time of their lives more money being made and spent 
 than ever politicians at 5,000 a year yapping of patriotism 
 munition workers getting ten pounds a week while poor 
 bloody Tommy is blown to bits for seven bob.' 
 
 ' Poor bloody Tommy ! ' The thought acted life-buoy 
 in the storm of anger. What right had he, Peter Jackson, 
 Lieutenant and Adjutant of Gunners, he, Peter, with his cushy 
 job at the front, his security from want at home, to grouse at 
 hard luck, while men (thought pictured them clearly) 
 trudged the shelled duck-boards to Railway Wood through 
 endless nights, clung to whizz-banged breastworks through 
 endless days. And among those men a dozen confided 
 stories leaped to mind were plenty who had sacrificed not 
 half an inherited fortune, but everything : men with assured 
 positions skilled mechanics, dock-foremen, master-printers 
 who had thrown up fine jobs, whose wives struggled along on 
 ludicrous separation allowances, because . . . ' Because of 
 what ? ' asked thought. And reason answered thought in 
 one clear sentence, ' Because they were men.' 
 
 Evening had come as he dawdled. Twilight brooded over 
 London. But now no twilight brooded over the soul of Peter 
 Jackson. The burden of the past week dropped from him 
 as a heavy pack drops from weary shoulders. He stood 
 upright in a sudden blaze of clarity. ' Let the old, the 
 emasculate,the pimps and the panderers, haggle in their market- 
 places, babble at their talking-shops : his path led clean away 
 from their market-places and their talking-places, clean across
 
 The Dross and the Gold 253 
 
 the seas into that other country where neither his money nor 
 his talk but only a man's manhood availed him : a loathsome 
 and a desolate country, a country of fear and mud and bore- 
 dom intolerable, of maiming and of death : yet a country 
 above whose desolation shone always one clear light the 
 Light of Duty. 
 
 5 
 
 A little of that new vision which had been vouchsafed to 
 him, Peter confided to Patricia, haltingly and half ashamed 
 of it, during their last night together ; and after he had fallen 
 asleep she lay for a long time, listening to his easy breathing, 
 hoping and fearing for him, wondering about him. 
 
 Her own patriotism was a simple star-clear faith in birth 
 and flag ; his, she had never yet entirely understood. It 
 seemed to her a voiceless sullen creed superstition rather 
 than belief. Striving to analyse it, a fantasy came to her. 
 It was as though she stood among the ruins of a huge temple 
 in the midst of a desolate city. Outside, guns flashed and 
 boomed : their flashes illumined the black sky above the 
 roofless temple. Round her, on the brick-strewn floor, 
 among the fragments of granite pillars and stained-glass 
 windows, knelt men thousands upon thousands of armed 
 and helmeted men. Their helmets were dinted, their arms 
 foul and bloody, their drab uniforms wet and clotted with 
 yellow slime. And from a ruined altar, One spoke to the men 
 on their knees, saying : 
 
 " Know ye the Whys and Wherefores of this Thing ye do ? " 
 
 Then the kneeling men answered as with one voice : 
 
 " Neither the Whys nor the Wherefores of this Thing are 
 known to us ; nor do we care to know them. Only we 
 know that this Thing we do is the Fine Thing : and with that 
 knowledge we are content." 
 
 Then said the One at the altar : " This is My Work which 
 ye accomplish." 
 
 But the men on their knees answered him : " What is 
 that to us ? We have set our hands to this Work : and, Thine 
 or another's, we will accomplish it. For this Work is the 
 Fine Thing." 
 
 And so saying they rose from their knees, man after 
 helmed man ; rose and passed out into the desolation of the 
 city. . . . 
 
 But fantasy proved no consolation to Patricia when, once 
 again, she bade her man good-bye.
 
 PART XXIV 
 EARTH AND AIR 
 
 i 
 
 PETER JACKSON returned to his unit in a very 
 peculiar frame of mind : a mixture of gladness at 
 having left his business annoyances behind him, 
 regret for missed enjoyments, and determination 
 not to allow anything that might happen at home to inter- 
 fere with his work as a soldier a determination slightly 
 tinged with fanaticism, which did not improve his temper. 
 
 He detrained at Steenwerck, in pitch darkness, after a 
 nine-hour train-journey ; was accosted by his groom at the 
 exit from the station. 
 
 " Hope you had a good leaf, sir." The squat little man 
 saluted awkwardly. 
 
 " Thanks, Jelks. Quite good. Where are the horses ? " 
 
 " Just orer there, sir. I tied them up to the fence." 
 
 " Both of them all right ? " 
 
 " Queen Bess had a bit of a cold, sir. Captain Horrocks 
 made me keep her in for two days. She's all right now." 
 
 They made their way across shadows ; untethered the 
 horses. Peter mounted. 
 
 " Colonel told me to bring your gas-helmet, sir." Jelks 
 divested himself of the extra satchel he wore slung from his 
 shoulder ; handed it up to his master. " He told me to tell 
 you, sir, with his compliments," Jelks grinned as the Weasel 
 had grinned when he gave the message " orders is that 
 both officers and men should take their gas-helmets when they 
 go on leaf." 
 
 Peter, rather annoyed at being called over the coals for 
 infraction of an order nobody ever obeyed in those early 
 days, put Little Willie to a trot. They rode, under vague 
 starlight, through La Creche into the main Bailleul-Armen- 
 tires road ; were challenged at the barrier. As they turned 
 leftwards up the pave for Neuve Eglise, a mild wind blew 
 across their faces. Passing the low huts of Divisional Baths, 
 a sentry saluted them. " Gas Alert, sir," he called out. 
 
 Peter called back, " Thanks."
 
 Earth and Air 255 
 
 At the canvas house which hid the naval gun from hostile 
 airmen, another sentry gave the same warning. Peter 
 slackened to a walk ; summoned his groom. 
 
 "We'll go round by Kortepyp," he said. "It's quicker." 
 
 " Very good, sir. Turning's about a hundred yards on." 
 
 They found it ; veered away from the trees into flat 
 country. Now the wind blew direct in their faces. In front 
 of them, Very lights glowed skyward, hung and disappeared 
 silently behind the trees. ' Devilish quiet,' thought Peter. 
 Not a gun boomed, not a rifle cracked. He seemed to catch 
 the faint sound of a gong ; halted, hand-to-ear. 
 
 Again, the gas-gong belled faintly down wind : a distant 
 gun-flash winked across the darkness ahead. Then, maniacally, 
 the countryside awoke. Sound swept back, as a wave 
 sweeps, leaping down the valley towards them : horns shrieked, 
 gongs dinned, whistles blew : rifle-fire crackled, burst to a 
 roar : guns boomed dully from beyond the horizon : they 
 caught the far crash of shell-fire. The sky blazed with electric 
 flashes, with whitely-soaring lights, with orange hints of 
 machine-gun flame. Hedges, trees, crest-lines, sprang from 
 shadow into silhouette. And suddenly, near and high above 
 the silhouetted'^ valley, soared the crimson rockets of the 
 S.O.S. station on Hill 63 ; hung a moment ; waking pande- 
 monium as they drooped to ground. 
 
 A mile away among the trees, our own guns awoke, red 
 and roaring ; the flames of them cut great gashes against the 
 sky, the voice of them drowned the far crash of shells, the 
 crackle and sputter of rifle-fire. But shrill above the voice 
 of the guns, Peter and Jelks heard the howling shrieking 
 Klaxons. " Gas, "they shrieked. "Gas! Gas! Gas!" 
 
 " Better dismount, I think," said Peter calmly. " It's 
 hardly likely to come as far back as this ; but there's no sense 
 in taking risks." 
 
 They stood, bridles over arms, watching and listening. 
 Every now and then, Peter sniffed at the breeze. ' Gas- 
 training ' beyond the putting-on of the helmet had not 
 yet been invented. He felt irritatingly ignorant. How 
 long would the stuff take to reach them ? Would he be able 
 to see it ? What did it look like ? Smell like ? Could it 
 kiU horses ? 
 
 Driver Jelks began fiddling at his satchel ; extracted the 
 clammy 'P. H.' mask ; shook it out ; pulled it half -on, 
 tucking up the glass eye-pieces and the rubber mouth-valve 
 over his head. Peter saw that the man's hands were shaking. 
 
 " Not frightened, are you ? " he asked.
 
 256 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " I don't mind shells, sir," stammered Jelks, " but this 
 gas, it fairly puts the wind up me, sir." 
 
 " Don't be a bally fool, man," said Peter gruffly, " you're 
 all right as long as you've got your helmet on." 
 
 And then, suddenly, he saw the poison a low gray wraith, 
 rushing down the darkness ; heard himself say, " Pull that 
 helmet down, quick " ; caught a whiff as of rotten pears ; 
 closed mouth and nostrils ; felt Little Willie wrench at bridle 
 over his right arm ; whipped gas-helmet out and on, stuffing 
 the flaps of it under his collar ; found the rubber tubing with 
 his lips ; sucked on it ; realized instantaneously that the valve 
 leaked. 
 
 Now fear had its way with him. The eye-pieces blurred. 
 To breathe meant death. ... He must breathe. . . . His 
 lungs would burst. . . . Blood drummed in his ears. . . . 
 
 Came another wrench at bridle-rein ; with it, the madness 
 of inspiration. His right hand found the peak of the saddle, 
 his left the cantle, swung him from ground to horse. . . Teeth 
 unclenched from rubber, breath surged through mouth and 
 nostrils. . . . Now death was certain. Be damned, though, 
 if he'd die in that acrid clammy darkness. . . . 
 
 Peter jerked up the stifling cloth ; felt cool air on his eyes, 
 sweet air in Irs nostrils ; failed for a second to realize the 
 miracle. Then, instinctively, he knew that his leap to horse 
 had poised him above the heavy gas-cloud, that he was looking 
 down on it, as a man riding the fields at dusk looks down on 
 the ground mist. . . . But even as Peter looked, the tail of 
 the poison-belt blew clear. 
 
 For a full minute, he sat his horse motionless, amazed, 
 still afraid to breathe. The horror had come and gone like 
 some bestial dream. Guns were still flashing and roaring ; 
 the sky still blazed ; Klaxons howled all round him. Jelks' 
 squat figure, cowled in its goggling mask, Queen Bess's bridle 
 over its arm, stood within three yards of his stirrup. 
 
 Little Willie began coughing ; fidgeted for a second J 
 stood still again. 
 
 " You can take that thing off," said Peter. 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir," answered the muffled voice. 
 
 " You can take that damn thing off," roared Peter. 
 
 Fumblingly, the man removed his helmet. " Was it 
 gas, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 " Very much so," began Peter ; " and the next time you 
 bring me a gas-helmet, I wish to Christ. ..." He bit off 
 the end of the sentence. After all, the fault lay with him- 
 self, not with his man.
 
 Earth and Air 257 
 
 They waited half-an-hour ; heard the shriek of the Klaxons 
 die away to silence, the roar of the guns to an intermittent 
 cracking. 
 
 " I think we might go on now," said Peter. " It doesn't 
 seem to have hurt the horses, thank goodness." 
 
 Nevertheless, since the wind still blew fairly from the 
 north-east, he kept ears and nostrils a-cock as they made 
 gingerly for headquarters. 
 
 " That you, Jackson ? " called Stark's voice from the 
 lighted doorway of the villa. 
 
 " Yes, sir." Peter dismounted. " Is Captain Horrocks 
 up, sir ? " 
 
 " Up ? Everybody's up, except our ruddy Belgian land- 
 lord. He and his wife have got their respirators on, their 
 heads under the bed clothes, and the fear of God in 'em. Why 
 do you want Horrocks ? " 
 
 The Weasel looked a quaint figure. His red hair was still 
 towzled with sleep. He wore a British Warm coat over 
 silk pyjamas, striped white and crimson, rather short in the 
 leg, and heel-less slippers of red morocco-leather. From his 
 bare neck depended a vast respirator (one of the earliest ex- 
 periments in that direction), whose square box thick tube 
 hanging down like a diminutive elephant-trunk bobbed at 
 his chest whenever he spoke. 
 
 "I'm afraid the horses got a whiff or two of that infernal 
 stuff, sir," explained Peter. " Oh, and thank you very much 
 for sending me my helmet." 
 
 " Some sense in Corps Orders occasionally," said the 
 Weasel grimly. " I told Mr. Black to pick you out a new one. 
 Hope it was all right." 
 
 Peter, not wishing to make trouble, kept silence. Hor- 
 rocks, also in pyjamas, appeared,clutching a whisky-and-soda ; 
 fingered his moustaches professionally ; gave it as his opinion 
 that gas, except in very large quantities, had no effect on 
 horses. Peter dismissed Jelks ; and the three passed into the 
 Mess-room. 
 
 Dr. Carson, in mauve and yellow pyjamas, gas-helmet 
 perched drunkenly on his white hair, was just opening a 
 potted tongue. Purves, fully dressed except for his tie, and 
 very affaire, stood tracing imaginary lines on the large-scale 
 map above the mantelpiece. Morency, barefoot in unlaced 
 breeches and striped vest, held a huge bottle of Perrier in 
 one hand, a tin of sardines in the other. 
 
 Came a rap at the panelled door, a breathless signaller: 
 " Ack Battery report infantry asking for retaliation, sorr. 
 
 X
 
 258 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 They have begun firing, sorr. And they want to know if 
 Gas Alert has been cancelled, sorr. I told them it had not 
 been cancelled, sorr." 
 
 " Better go and see what they want, P. J." Stark nodded 
 to his Adjutant. " Doesn't look as though we shall get much 
 sleep to-night." 
 
 And as a matter of cold fact, it was 5.0 a.m. on the morning 
 of his return from leave to that ' cushy ' spot Neuve figlise, 
 before Peter at last crawled between his Jaeger blankets. 
 
 2 
 
 Still, Neuve figlise was for the most part a cushy place. 
 Peter woke next day to bland sunshine, among green fields 
 and white hedgerows ; breakfasted at ten ; and resumed 
 the even tenor of his Adjutancy. Murchison rang up to de- 
 mand a map of the gas-track visible as a yellow fan of withered 
 grass from the observation-posts on Hill 63. Their sour- 
 faced, black-moust ached landlord came to bewail the blighted 
 seedlings in his tiny garden. The two malevolent civilians 
 who lived opposite claimed compensation (flatly refused by 
 Morency who loathed Belgians) for the loss of a cow. 
 
 Reggie Strangeways, the Infantry Brigade-Major, tele- 
 phoned from Petit Munque Farm that casualties had been 
 extraordinarily light and that the Brigadier was very pleased 
 with the artillery support he had received. Mr. Black came 
 to complain about the fodder ; Staff-Sergeant Barrie about 
 the Ordinance. Corporal Pitman produced the usual faked 
 ammunition reports, with his usual deprecatory smile. 
 
 ' Taking it all round,' thought Peter, ' there were worse 
 places than the front for unsuccessful business-men. . . .' 
 
 A week passed in ordinary routine. 
 
 Followed another gas-attack milder than the first, but 
 all the same extremely unpleasant, a letter from Reid announc- 
 ing the paying of Beresfords' deposit -money ; a hint from 
 Stark that he didn't think " old Carson would stick it much 
 longer " ; and a row with Divisional Headquarters because 
 the Whirligig, during one of those nightly trips to the trenches, 
 which were the terror of his A.D.C., had discovered a signaller 
 from Lodden's battery on duty for twenty-four hours among 
 the front line infantry to be unprovided with shaving- 
 tackle. 
 
 Peter was sitting alone in the cleared Mess-room, com- 
 posing tactful reply to the Whirligig's 'strafe,' when his 
 brother Arthur arrived. Arthur breezed in quite casually
 
 Earth and Air 259 
 
 on a light R.F.C. lorry, accompanied by two high-tunicked 
 high-spirited youths, to demand tea. 
 
 " Not bad quarters these," he commented. " Might be a 
 villa in the suburbs at home. I've just been posted to No. i 
 Squadron at Baloo pretty good spot. Our A. E.G. told me 
 I'd find you here." 
 
 " What the devil's an A.E.O. ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " Assistant Equipment Officer, of course chap who in- 
 spects your wireless. Oh, by the way, this is Jones," one 
 of the boys grinned " and this is Younghusband, at least 
 that's his name, he isn't married yet," the other boy also 
 grinned. " My brother Peter, the head of the family." 
 
 Purves lounged in ; was introduced ; began trying to 
 extract enough information for a poem on ' Joy of the Air ' 
 which had been simmering in his mind for nearly a week. 
 But the three fliers proved disappointing to the Balliol man : 
 they talked in a strange jargon of their own, about 'stalling,' 
 ' props,' ' joy-sticks,' ' zooms,' ' stunts,' and what ' Jerry 
 did when the mad Major put it all over him with 
 the Parasol.' They also talked, unofficially, about 'that 
 blighter Billing ' and the B.E.2.C's both of which they 
 described in language utterly unprintable. 
 
 Carson and Morency had gone to buy brandy in Bailleul (a 
 clandestine process involving considerable tact ) ; but the 
 Weasel appeared in time for tea. 
 
 " You don't mind if we take my brother back to dinner, 
 sir ? " asked Arthur at the end of the meal. 
 
 " Oh, P. J. does what he likes here. He's the Adjutant : 
 I'm only the Colonel," chaffed Stark. " Don't play poker with 
 him, though. And if you can manage to make him tight 
 they say you chaps drink like fish send him home in that 
 lorry under escort." 
 
 " All rot, what he said about chaps in the R.F.C. drinking 
 like fish," expostulated Arthur, as the lorry entirely against 
 orders hummed up the hill, past the smashed houses and the 
 tottering church-tower ; swung left-handed for Bailleul. 
 " I'd like to bet there's more booze drunk at G.H.Q. than in 
 all our Messes put together. A chap can't fly and drink at 
 least, not for long." 
 
 They made the town in a scant half-hour ; chugged be- 
 tween solid unpretentious houses up the Armentieres road ; 
 traversed the Place ; nipped round sharp to the left ; halted 
 at the entrance to the aerodrome a flat gren stretch of 
 pasture behind the inevitable ' Asylum.' 
 
 " Care to look at the busses ? " asked Arthur.
 
 260 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 It was late afternoon of a gray windy day, and none of 
 the 'planes had been up. In the canvas hangars, mechanics 
 tapped and tinkered ; on the 'drome itself half-a-dozen 
 machines stood unattended. 
 
 The airman began pointing out things to the ground-man : 
 " This is one of our blinking B.E.2.C's. You can always 
 tell a B.E.2.C in the air because she's the only tractor bus 
 with two struts and a closed fuselage except the R.E.7., but 
 she's got overhang ; and of course the Morane, but the Morane's 
 got much less stagger." 
 
 Said Peter : " Look here, Arthur, either talk English or 
 shut up. / don't know what you mean by ' stagger ' and 
 ' overhang.' I don't know where the bally ' struts ' live. 
 Any more than you'd understand if I began to talk to you 
 about the 'firing-hole bush/ the 'trail-eye,' and the 
 ' apparatus adjusting running-out springs.' " 
 
 Arthur explained for twenty minutes, wandering from 
 this machine to that, tapping canvas wings lovingly, fiddling 
 with wires, passing ungloved hands over the smoothed wood- 
 work of struts and propellers. To the ground-man, the 
 flimsy petrol-kites seemed uncanny death-traps ; among 
 which he felt like a Cockney in a hunt-kennel, entirely out 
 of his element. 
 
 But that afternoon, for the first time in his life, Peter 
 began to understand his brother. Arthur was a pioneer by 
 instinct ; had taken to this new sport as men in the old days 
 took to motoring only this new sport possessed the added 
 spice of personal combat. 
 
 Arthur, however, had not brought Peter to Bailleul for 
 the purpose of talking flying-shop. He, too, had his money 
 troubles ; and though he accepted them (the latest letter 
 from his one pal in Java put the loss of his plantation beyond 
 doubt) with equanimity, he intensely disliked being in Peter's 
 debt for the 2,000 borrowed at the beginning of the war. 
 
 " I say old man," he began diffidently, as they strolled 
 back towards the Mess " I'm afraid that tobacco stunt of 
 mine's gone west. Those ruddy Ger-boys have foreclosed 
 on their mortgage. I ought to have written you about it 
 before." 
 
 "Never knew you write a letter yet, Arthur." Peter 
 covered his awkwardness with a laugh. 
 
 " No. I'm not much of a chap for letters. But look here, 
 Peter, that two thousand you lent me ..." 
 
 " Oh, for God's sake don't worry about that. Let's go 
 and have a drink."
 
 Earth and Air 261 
 
 " Yes but I mean it's rotten luck on you." Arthur 
 stammered out a few words of gratitude. " It worries me, 
 you know owing you all that money, and not being able 
 to pay the interest on it." 
 
 " Arthur," said P. J. gruffly, " did you ever hear the story 
 of the Jew who couldn't sleep ? He used to walk up and down 
 his bedroom, night after night, till he nearly drove his wife 
 crazy. After he'd been at it about a week, she said to him, 
 ' Moses, vy do you valk up and down de room all de night ? ' 
 He said : ' I valk up and down de room, Rebecca, because I am 
 so vorried. I owe Isaacs ten pounds and I cannot pay him.' 
 ' Veil,' counselled his wife, ' if I vos you I should gome back 
 to bed and let Isaacs valk up and down his room. It's his 
 vorry, ain't it 1 ' ' 
 
 Which not -very-original tale not only put the brothers on 
 better terms than ever before ; but proved no small success 
 when related to the keen-eyed unboastful Mess of No. i 
 Squadron R.F.C. 
 
 3 
 
 . . . And the war went on. 
 
 At Ypres, the Canadians, overwhelmed one midday by 
 a surprise attack which had cost six thousand men and been 
 scarcely alluded to in official history, were fighting their way 
 back inch by inch across the sodden swamps towards Obser- 
 vatory Ridge : far to the south, battle raged about Verdun. 
 
 Meanwhile, for the Southdown Division, trench-warfare 
 continued. By night, the whirling blade of the Messines search- 
 light stabbed about the skies; rifles cracked; machine-guns 
 flamed in orange plumes ; Very candles soared and dwindled ; 
 mortars blazed among the trenches, field-guns flashed under the 
 trees. And always through the night, men laboured with 
 their hands in the valleys working-parties and carrying- 
 parties and wiring-parties ; digging trenches, filling sandbags, 
 bringing up rations ; fortifying the ground above, excavating 
 the ground below. By day, their hands rested : but by day 
 as by night, their eyes might not rest. 
 
 A thousand eyes, ceaselessly at watch : peering through 
 periscopes in their trenches among the valleys, peering through 
 telescopes in their dug-outs on the hills ; peering down on hill 
 and valley over the roaring wings of 'planes at speed, peering 
 out across valley and hill from the creaking baskets of balloons 
 at sway. 
 
 Eyes on the earth and eyes in the air ever at watch, ever 
 at duel. For even as, with sniping bullet and sniping shell,
 
 262 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 watcher fought watcher on the earth below, so, in stranger, 
 deadlier combat, watcher fought watched in the air above. 
 
 4 
 
 One such historic air-combat Peter watched on the very 
 day that brought Patricia's first letter about house-hunting. 
 
 He had spent the afternoon supervising the transmission 
 of orders from an observation aeroplane to Lodden's battery 
 a mile away down the valley. It was pleasant, sitting there 
 in the sunshine, note-book on his knee and, even for Peter, 
 the work held a little of romance. 
 
 Above him, the 'plane droned and circled ; at his side, full- 
 length on the warm grass, lay the telephonist, receiver at ear ; 
 from the sandbag wireless house came the voice of the 
 Marconi-boys one at the instrument, the other in the 
 doorway passing on the messages : " Fire " . . . " Fire " 
 . . " Battery fired, sir." . . . Far away gun-beat, high 
 drone of 'plane ..." Unobserved ". . . " Unobserved " 
 ..." Fire " . . . " Battery fired, sir ". . . " C 12 o'clock " 
 ..." C 12 o'clock." So the orderly amazing process went 
 on. 
 
 " Major Lodden wants you on the 'phone, sir," said the 
 telephonist suddenly, handing up the vulcanite receiver- 
 and-transmitter. 
 
 " Can't go on firing," came the Major's voice, thinly 
 irascible over the wire. " The sausages have just gone up. 
 Send the 'plane home." 
 
 " Hadn't we better wait a few minutes, Major," suggested 
 Peter. " Perhaps they'll go down again." 
 
 " Not they. Every afternoon it's the same thing. Just 
 when I was getting on the target too. That last shot was 
 only twenty-five yards short." 
 
 " All right Major." Peter handed back the instrument to 
 his telephonist. " Another wash-out, I'm afraid," he said 
 to the boy in the doorway. " Better give 'em the C.I." 1 
 
 " C.I.," repeated the boy. 
 
 " Right-o. Put the strips out. You ought to know how 
 to do it by now," came the voice from within. 
 
 The boy sprinted across the field ; hauled at two white 
 strips of canvas ; sprinted back. 
 
 " He's seen them, sir." The second operator unstrapped 
 the receiver from his ears, loafed out into the sunshine. The 
 four watched the 'plane circle, head for home. 
 1 " Come in."
 
 Earth and Air 263 
 
 But other eyes than Major Lodden's had seen those clumsy 
 sausages belly into air behind Messines. Peter, saunter- 
 ing back to Mess, heard the drone of engines far above, looked 
 up, saw five biplanes winging towards him from the direction 
 of Bailleul. 
 
 ' Wonder what the deuce they're up to ? ' he thought ; 
 and ran upstairs for his glasses. . . . 
 
 By the time he came down, the five 'planes were over the 
 Boche lines. Peter picked them up, hawk-like dots in a 
 blue circle ; saw the first shell burst between him and them. 
 ' Behind,' thought Peter, ' but why are they flying so low ? ' 
 Now, the whole blue circle round the hawk-like dots grew hazy 
 with the green flash and dark-gray puffs of anti-aircraft fire : 
 the noise of the bursts resounded dull and hollow from the 
 near distance. . . . 
 
 Suddenly, clean down the blue circle of his vision, dropped 
 the black winged shape of a sixth 'plane. Peter, whipping 
 binoculars from his eyes, caught a glimpse of it, diving behind 
 tree line . . . saw a red hint as of flame . . . heard the inter- 
 mittent thuds of the Archie shell rise to a crescendo of ineffec- 
 tual clamour, heard the sudden rat-tat of machine-gun and 
 rifle-fire burst out along the front . . . watched the five 'planes 
 still wheeling among the smoke-puffs . . . was aware of 
 another 'plane droning towards him from behind the trees. 
 
 ' My aunt,' thought P. J. ' Never saw the Archies fire" 
 like that before. Wonder what it's all about? ' 
 
 For how should groundsman of those early days realize 
 this latest marvel, or know that far dropping shape for his 
 own brother : for Arthur Arthur circling high above the 
 five decoys, alone in the shriek and hum of the wind Arthur, 
 peering overside, seeing neither hill nor valley, neither road nor 
 trench-line, neither flash of gun nor puff of shell, but only his 
 prey, only the blind and shapeless fish, tiny and dun against 
 the flat ground ten thousand feet below Arthur, watching 
 his chance, taking his chance, setting her nose for earth, 
 feeling her fuselage lift behind his shoulder-blades, seeing the 
 blind fish and the flat ground leap at his face as he dived for 
 them Arthur, one with his wings, finger on the rocket- 
 button. . . . 
 
 Downsides he came, a howling plummet ; saw the dun shape 
 below rush at him ; touched button ; felt the faint jar of 
 rockets flashing from their struts ; saw them, even as he 
 wrenched at joy-stick, go crimson home ; heard the wind howl 
 through the banking wires above him, saw little figures tip- 
 tilted against the blur below, felt the zip of bullets as he
 
 264 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 flattened her over the twirling trenches ; saw the clouds drop 
 down to him ; knew his work accomplished. . . . 
 
 In after days, the R.F.C. did that work with Lewis gun 
 and incendiary bullet ; but Arthur Jackson had only rockets, 
 rockets fastened to the struts between his roaring wings, 
 rockets whose utmost range was the forty yards within which 
 those roaring wings must bank, or perish with their flaming 
 prey. Yet the work was accomplished !
 
 PART XXV 
 " SUNFLOWERS " 
 
 we come too, mummy?" asked Evelyn. 
 " You might take us ? " pleaded Primula. 
 
 The children came running into Heron Baynet's 
 garage where Patricia in smock and wash-leather 
 gloves stood tinkering under the open bonnet of her car. 
 
 " No, you can't. And you're both very wicked children. 
 How on earth did you manage to get here ? Without your 
 hats, too ! " 
 
 She stood there, the faulty sparking-plug in her hand, 
 half-smiling, half-frowning at the two pinafored figures. 
 
 " Well," said Evelyn proudly. " It was my idea. Miss 
 Merridew left us alone. So / said to Prim, ' Let's just rush 
 downstairs, open the front-door, and go to mummy. It's 
 only at the end of the road. . . .' " 
 
 " We did keep on the pavement," remarked Primula 
 airily ; and added : " Even if you don't take us with you, 
 you'll have to drive us as far as the front door." 
 
 " I shall do nothing of the sort." Patricia knew how 
 easily children grew to dominate their parents. " I shall 
 telephone Miss Merridew to fetch you, and you'll both do half- 
 an-hour's extra lessons." 
 
 " Oh, mummy," began Evelyn : but her mother had already 
 stepped to the house-telephone ; was ringing up for their 
 governess who appeared, flustered and hatless, a few 
 minutes afterwards ; dragged the culprits back to their 
 multiplication table. 
 
 ' That woman,' thought Patricia as she returned the 
 cleaned plug to its socket, ' is a fool, an untrained fool, and an 
 expensive fool. I shall have to take on the kids' education 
 myself.' 
 
 She peeled off smock and gloves ; arranged toque and furs 
 at the cracked mirror over the shelf whereon Heron Baynet's 
 chauffeur (long since enlisted) had kept his ' spares ' ; cranked
 
 266 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 up ; and backed the car steadily out through the folding 
 doors. 
 
 Peter had been gone nearly three weeks. He had written 
 her his usual scribbles. Reading between the lines of 
 them ; understanding now that he was away how much 
 of his financial anxiety had been for her and the children ; 
 her heart forgave him its wounds. But now she, too, had 
 her work to do, little time for musing. 
 
 She thought of that work as her firm hands steered the 
 Crossley towards Endsleigh Gardens. She had been her 
 father's unpaying guest long enough. The sale of the Lowndes 
 Square house made her homeless ; and she was not the type 
 of woman who could be without a home. She needed her 
 own things about her ; needed the bother and the fret and 
 the pleasure of housekeeping. And London, with its dark- 
 ness and its air-raids, was no place for children. 
 
 So Patricia's imagination had taken unto itself a ' little 
 place in the country ' ; a place to which Peter could come back 
 on leave if his luck held, to recover if he were wounded. 
 For that other contingency, his death and her own widow- 
 hood, even Patricia's stout heart refused to face. . . . 
 
 She pulled up at the entrance to the hospital ; jumped 
 down from the driving-seat ; slammed door behind her ; ran 
 lightly up the steps. 
 
 " Captain Gordon ? " she inquired at the porter's office. 
 
 "He's in the drawing-room, miss," the orderly smiled 
 back at her. (She had been there nearly every day for five 
 months ; and the orderly knew her name perfectly. But 
 she looked young, and she looked attractive, and she always 
 came to see the same officer. So he called her ' miss ' instead 
 of ' madam.' In days gone by, when he had been a skate- 
 fitter at Olympia, the little trick had earned Private Johnson, 
 R.A.M.C., many tips !) 
 
 Patricia walked swiftly through the hall into the ornate 
 and over-furnished drawing-room ; found Francis alone. 
 
 He had been ' up ' only three weeks ; rose to greet her 
 with difficulty, supporting himself first on the arms of his 
 chair, then on two rubber-shod sticks. 
 
 " Morning, Pat," he said. " I'm all ready, you see." 
 
 The months of illness had told on him ; graven lines of 
 pain on his temples, at the corners of his mouth . His hair, too, 
 had grayed a little above close-set ears. His eyes seemed to 
 have grown darker. But his clothes he wore mufti in sub- 
 lime defiance of Regulations were perfect as ever. 
 
 "They'll never let you out of doors in that get-up,"
 
 " Sunflowers " 267 
 
 pronounced Patricia eyeing the ' Barnard ' motoring-cap, the 
 blue-and-black old Etonian tie, the loose-fitting brown over- 
 coat. 
 
 " Wonderful what one can do in this place if one only 
 smiles at the sisters, bullies one's doctor, and gives half- 
 crowns to the orderlies," laughed Francis. 
 
 He shuffled awkwardly across the impeding carpet, through 
 the swing doors Patricia opened for him. Prout emerged 
 from the basement by the lift-shaft ; and together the two 
 helped the invalid down the steps into the car. 
 
 Patricia swung the crank-shaft ; climbed to her seat ; 
 switched gear-lever into ' first ' ; let in the clutch. 
 
 Watching them as they glided out of sight, round the 
 corner of the square, Prout's thoughts turned to bygone and 
 merrier days. " Poor Master Francis," muttered the old 
 man. " And him that was always so fond of dancing. . . ." 
 
 2 
 
 " And what perfectly-appointed country residences 
 do we inspect to-day, Pat ? " asked ' poor Master Francis ' 
 as they threaded the traffic of Tottenham Court Road. 
 
 " Look at them if you like. They're in that pocket." 
 
 Francis lifted the leather flap in the door which she in- 
 dicated ; pulled out and opened a long envelope ; began to 
 study the house-agent's slips. 
 
 " Berkshire," he read out. " Berkshire again. Oxford- 
 shire, border of Berkshire. Berkshire, border of Oxfordshire. 
 None of them sound very promising, Pat." 
 
 " No," she admitted, " but I like the idea of living in that 
 part of the world. My mother was Oxfordshire, you know. 
 Besides, we might find something." 
 
 " I don't know why you're so keen about the country all 
 of a sudden, Pat, " went on Francis. " What about your 
 lonely leave-men ? Who'll motor them home to their 
 wives ? " 
 
 Patricia drove on in silence for a few minutes ; then she 
 said : "A woman with six hundred a year and two children 
 to educate, can't indulge in the luxury of unpaid war-work, 
 Francis. And besides, there are heaps of people meeting the 
 leave-trains now ; it's become quite fashionable." 
 
 " Then why not take a paid job ? " he suggested. 
 
 " Because other women," she thought of Miss Mac- 
 pherson "not only need the money more than I, but can 
 do the work a great deal better."
 
 268 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 By now, they had cleared the heat -haze which brooded 
 over inner London. Up and out from his cloud-veils, clam- 
 bered the sun. The laburnum trees in the little suburban 
 gardens were all a-bloom with yellow. It promised a glorious 
 day. 
 
 And promise fulfilled itself. They left the last tramlines 
 of Brentford astern ; emerged mile by mile into the full 
 splendour of England's Maying. The home-counties unrolled 
 beneath their questing wheels in vista upon vista of young 
 green fields, of pink and white hedgerows, of orchards all 
 alight with blossoms, of silver river-reaches, of pleasant 
 homes where pigeons fluttered dazzlingly to age-reddened 
 roofs and the lilac bloomed palest amethyst over the glowing 
 emerald of close-clipped lawns. 
 
 But there was never a pleasant home among those which 
 Patricia's house-agents had persuaded her to visit. 
 
 3 
 
 " Never mind, Pat. It's been a topping drive," said 
 Francis consolingly. 
 
 It was nearly four o'clock ; and his cousin's wife had just 
 emerged from her last disappointment a drainless, waterless 
 abomination of mouldy stone-work, with acres of unkempt 
 gardens, ten miles from anywhere among the bleak hills beyond 
 Ipsden. 
 
 " Where now ? " he went on. 
 
 " Home, I suppose," said Patricia, drawing her map out 
 of its case. " We'd better make for Henley, I think." 
 
 She felt tired, out of patience. The house-agents were 
 idiots : three of the places they recommended turned out to 
 be glaring brick villas on the outskirts of Reading ; at the 
 fourth a converted farmhouse near Bix a long-Laired 
 foreigner had informed her, after gibbering for three-quarters 
 of an hour, that " vot he vanted vas to sell de place, not to 
 let it " ; the fifth, as far as they could ascertain from the inn 
 at Nettlebed which gave them lunch, did not exist at all. 
 To crown disaster she had wasted time, temper and petrol 
 on this mid-Victorian mare's-nest. 
 
 " It's done me all the good in the world," went on Francis. 
 " For two pins I'd let my flat the Lord knows if I'll ever be 
 able to manage those stairs again and come to live in the 
 country myself." 
 
 "Apparently, you'd have to camp out in it," said 
 Patricia.
 
 '* Sunflawers " 269 
 
 They climbed sputteringly up a rough road ; dropped to 
 an uninhabited valley ; climbed once more ; left the bare lands 
 behind. Now, their way led through burgeoning woods of 
 beech and larch-trees, past a quiet village-green, into woods 
 again. 
 
 Patricia drove slowly. The scent and the silence of the 
 woods summoned her, bidding her stay. She wanted to stop 
 the car, to wander away all alone over that flower-strewn moss, 
 down those long brown avenues, under that pale-green canopy 
 of spring-time. 
 
 All day long, ' country ' before her eyes had been calling 
 to ' country ' in her veins. A strong clear call, dominant, 
 heart -compelling. The country 1 She knew so little of it ; 
 the simplest names of its trees and its flowers were mysteries 
 to her. Yet the trees and the flowers spoke to Patricia that 
 afternoon ; spoke to her of happiness. ' Here, here, here and 
 here only,' they seemed to say, ' will you find that for which 
 you are seeking. . . .' 
 
 And then, sudden as a dream, she saw the house of her 
 dreaming. They were still among the woods ; and the 
 house she knew stood beyond the woods, at the brow of 
 the hill. Yet Patricia saw it, clear and perfect in the eye 
 of her mind a long low red-roofed home, with square windows 
 opening out from walls of mellow brick-work, criss-crossed with 
 weather-beaten oak, on to terraced garden. 
 
 The road forked. Instinctively Patricia swung the car 
 left-handed. Trees closed in above them ; macadam under 
 their wheels narrowed to a turf-edged track. 
 
 " Are you sure this is the right way ? " asked Francis. 
 
 " Certain," she answered ; and drove on, between the 
 serried tree-trunks beech and larch and alder, slim pillars 
 of gray-green and silver about their path. 
 
 " Look," said Patricia, " the woods end." 
 
 She spoke very quietly, pointing to the door of blue which 
 widened as they climbed to it, letting them out from the trees. 
 The car dropped a hundred yards between the warm coral- 
 and-ivory of hawthorn hedgerows ; seemed to stop of its 
 own accord at a quaint red-walled brown-gabled house whose 
 lower windows were almost level with their wheels. 
 
 'This isn't the place,' thought Patricia. Yet somehow 
 the peaked and ivied gable with its one leaded window looked 
 familiar familiar as the road they had climbed through the 
 woods. Just under the window, half hidden by the ivy, 
 hung an old sign-board. " T. Tebbits, Builder & Contractor, " 
 read Patricia. But Francis, sharper-eyed, had seen the other
 
 270 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 sign which peered over the garden-hedge a plain square of 
 oak, newly painted with the words : 
 
 " TWO GOOD HOUSES TO LET." 
 
 " I say, Pat," he said, pointing to it, " why not try here?" 
 
 There came out of the house, a hatless man with weather- 
 beaten face, clean-shaven except for the fringe of hair under 
 his chin, bushy of eyebrow, dressed collarless in a rusty black 
 cardigan jacket and corduroy trousers. He had hard blue 
 eyes, hairy ears, thin lips ; might have been any age from 
 fifty-five to eighty. 
 
 " Might you be wanting anything ? " he asked. 
 
 " Are you Mr. Tebbits ? " Patricia smiled down at him. 
 
 " That's my name, missis." 
 
 " We came about the houses," went on Patricia, indicat- 
 ing the notice-board. 
 
 " Be you from the agents ? " asked Mr. Tebbits sus- 
 piciously. 
 
 " No. We were just passing, and we thought. . . ." 
 
 " Well, that's a good thing." The old man smiled grimly. 
 " Because I won't have no more agents. They is all robbers, 
 it seems to me. Now what sort of a house was you looking 
 for, missis. I asks because it's no good a-wasting your time 
 if you wants the sort of house I hasn't got. There be two of 
 'em, one's a bit cottage-like and t 'other's bigger. But they 
 isn't neither of 'em what you'd call big." 
 
 " Are they a long way away ? " interrupted Patricia. 
 
 " Well, missis, one is middling far and t'other's quite close. 
 Sunflowers that's the name of the bigger one, and a silly 
 name it be to my way of thinking, because there isn't never 
 a sunflower near it her's just up the road. T'other ..." 
 
 " Could we go and see it, do you think ? " Patricia inter- 
 rupted again. 
 
 " Aye. If you'll bide a minute, I'll just go and get my 
 cap." He disappeared into the house ; re-appeared. 
 
 " Now, if you'll drive slowly, missis, I'll follow you. 'Tis 
 the first house you comes to on the left-hand side of the road. 
 'Bout a hundred and fifty yards down, two hundred mebbe." 
 
 Mr. Tebbits declined a lift, and they motored on without 
 him ; rounded a bend in the hedgerows; and saw in front of 
 them, half hidden by greenery, red roofs that curled up to 
 high red chimney-stacks and down to square windows, set 
 in walls of mellow brickwork criss-crossed with the gray of 
 weather-beaten oak. 
 
 Patricia's heart gave a great leap : for this was the very
 
 ^Sunflowers " 271 
 
 home she had imagined as they came through the woods 1 
 
 They drew up at a wooden gate, painted dull green, sup- 
 ported by low pillars of old brick-work between the hawthorn 
 hedges ; saw, peering through it, a small gravel-drive, a huge 
 walnut tree just in leaf, and a long low house, door in centre, 
 double-floored under projecting eaves. 
 
 " Francis," cried Patricia, " this is it." 
 
 He looked at her ; saw a woman transformed. Her cheeks 
 glowed ; her lips were half -parted ; her slumbrous eyes danced 
 and kindled. 
 
 " My dear Pat . . ." he began. 
 
 " Don't tell me I haven't been it yet, Francis. Don't 
 tell me it won't do ; that the drains will be all wrong ; that 
 it's a hundred miles from anywhere. Because I don't care. 
 This is going to be my house mine and Peter's. . . ." 
 
 Mr. Tebbits found them by the gate. 
 
 " You been wounded, mister ? " he asked, looking at the 
 sticks Francis carried. 
 
 " Yes," admitted Francis. 
 
 " Ah. At the war, I expect. This be a mighty bad war. 
 I've got five sons there myself. All in the Ox. and Bucks they 
 is. Two's corporals. Charlie, he couldn't go ; nor Harry 
 neither." He turned to Patricia. " This be Sunflowers, 
 missis. Likely you'd care to go in." 
 
 He swung open the gate ; held it while Francis hobbled 
 through. " The paddick goes with the house," explained 
 Tebbits, " but if you wasn't thinking 'bout keeping stock, 
 I'd be just as glad to have it for my cows." 
 
 Patricia looked dumbly over the knee-deep green to the 
 sunlit tree-fringe beyond. The house, her house, stood in a 
 semi-circle of woodland ; the green trees folded it lovingly. 
 ' What did she care about keeping stock ? ' 
 
 Mr. Tebbits drew a vast key from his trouser-pocket ; 
 opened the front -door. 
 
 " This be what we calls the hall," he began, " the kitchens 
 be along the passage. . . ." 
 
 Mr. Tebbits talked, as the British peasant talks, inter- 
 minably repetitive, all the tune they were inspecting Sun- 
 flowers. But Patricia hardly heard him. Already, in her 
 mind, she had taken the place ; was settling herself and her 
 family into it. 
 
 This hall now, with its deep fireplace, its windows either 
 side the door (which would need heavy brown velvet curtains), 
 must be the drawing-room. The dining-room, leading out of 
 the drawing-room, would be small. Still. . . . And the
 
 272 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 tiny ' study ' must be Peter's. ' Kitchen-range good, ' thought 
 Patricia. ' Hope it doesn't burn too much coal ? ' 
 
 :-She passed up the balustraded staircase, Tebbits clumping 
 at her heels ; found square bedrooms, opening onto greenery, 
 a good modern bath-room (' wonders of wonders,' thought 
 Patricia) and, best of all, at the end of the corridor, running 
 full-length of the north side, a long apartment which would 
 be ideal for the children. 
 
 Of course, she had fallen in love with the place ; meant to 
 have it at all costs. Yet, even Francis, who had as yet very 
 little sense of home, admitted to himself, as he waited in the 
 bare hall, the excellence of Sunflowers. 
 
 It was a strange combination of solid pre-Georgian 
 brickwork without ; of old wood and modern plaster within. 
 Mr. Tebbits' grandfather had converted it originally, from 
 the shell of a three-hundred-year old tithe-barn ; running his 
 floor-boards over beams of oak ; letting in the heavy fan- 
 lighted front door, the deep window sashes ; throwing out 
 the red-tiled square-beamed kitchen. Mr. Tebbits' father 
 had unroofed the kitchen, carefully preserving his father's 
 tile-work, added the long room above. Then the grandson 
 of the original builder, dissatisfied with the narrow entrance 
 corridor, had broken it down, joined it to the parlour. Till 
 finally his son Charlie (" he be a bit new-fangled, be Charlie ") 
 had' seized the opportunity, presented when the new 
 company ran its mains over the hill, to modernize the water- 
 supply, to construct a bath-room. (" An' a good job they 
 boys made of it, missis. These pipes, they be pipes.") 
 
 It was while replastering and ' making all good with 
 Parian ' that the idea of a ' garrige ' had come to Charlie 
 Tebbits : and a ' garrige ' he and his brothers forthwith con- 
 structed, using (as their great-grandfather had used his tithe- 
 barn) the shell of an old ramshackle stable, now concrete- 
 floored and water-tight. But the ' modern ' stabling con- 
 structed by their father, the ' boys ' had not touched, except 
 for the throwing of two stalls into a loose-box " just 'case 
 anyone might be wanting it." 
 
 Altogether, an amazing find. And amazing the foreknow- 
 ledge of this detail and that, which overcame Patricia as she 
 passed from room to room. But most amazing of all, the cer- 
 tainty with which she flung open the eastward window half-way 
 up the staircase ; looked out on to the gravel terrace, and the 
 slopes of green pasturage dotted with dark tree-clumps through 
 which, molten in the drooping sun, flashed far glimpses of 
 the river Thames.
 
 " Sunflowers " 73 
 
 "That be Arlsfield village, missis," explained Tebbits, 
 pointing a two-mile distant cluster of buildings above which 
 the smoke spired lazily. " You can't see the Hall from here. 
 Them big chestnuts do hide it. Too close to the Hall, they 
 is : and often I've told the old colonel so myself. But he's 
 that set on his trees . . ." 
 
 " What's the name of the Hall ? " interrupted Pat. 
 
 " Arlsfield Hall, missis." 
 
 And, for the second time, the name sounded familiar. 
 Indeed, in all that smiling prospect jade fields of ripening 
 wheat, emerald of pasture, trees and village and far-away 
 river only one feature puzzled Patricia. The oily magnolia- 
 leaves at window-sill, she seemed to know ; and the ochre 
 gravel below, and every detail of the sloping country beyond 
 them. But the slip of orchard, foaming in wave on wave of 
 wave-green grass and snow-white blossom between her 
 terrace and the countryside, her strange inward memories 
 could not recall. 
 
 " Planted they trees 'bout twenty-five years ago. Good 
 trees they is, too. Blenheims mostly," said Tebbits. . . . 
 
 It was long after five when Patricia finished her inspection. 
 
 " Likely, you'd care for a dish of tea, missis," invited the 
 old man : and to tea in Mr. Tebbits' kitchen the three went. 
 
 Miss Tebbits she was sixty and the old man's daughter 
 all over, from thin lips to the hair in her ears served them 
 their ' dish of tea ' in china which had no right to exist out- 
 side a museum ; brought home-made cake, home-made 
 bread, a great dish of saffron butter : and while the daughter 
 served, her father talked. 
 
 "He didn't believe in leases," he told Patricia. "If 
 so be she wanted the house, all she had to do was to say so. 
 He'd always got his sixty pounds a year for it : 'cept when 
 people didn't keep stock. Then he took fifty-five. 'Twas 
 a bit dear like, but his son Charlie wouldn't have him take 
 less. ..." And here the old man explained how Charlie 
 had moved the building business to Arlsfield, leaving him and 
 Harry with the farm. " I be a bit old for the building, missis. 
 Turned eighty-five. But Charlie, he'll do all the papering 
 and the painting for you. We don't let anyone 'cept ourselves 
 touch our houses. . . ." 
 
 Tea over, he stood cap-in-hand to bid them good-bye. 
 
 "We'll be down again to-morrow, Mr. Tebbits," smiled 
 Patricia, engine throbbing under her finger on the throttle- 
 lever 
 
 "Very good, missis. I'll have Charlie come up here to 
 
 s
 
 274 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 meet you. Likely, if you takes the house, there'll be one or 
 two things to talk over." 
 
 4 
 
 They came not only next day but the day after, and the day 
 after that. Charlie, a huge hairy man, only one degree less 
 obstinate than his father, consented after some persuasion 
 to an agreement being drawn up by a Henley solicitor ; prom- 
 ised Patricia that she should be ' in ' by the end of June ; 
 proposed ribbed papers, whites and creams and pale lemons, 
 for the walls, brown paint for this room, cream for that ; 
 suggested diffidently that if by any chance she were short of 
 furniture, he could easily make " chairs and tables and side- 
 boards and such-like " in proof of which he took her to his 
 own thatch-roofed cottage and shewed her specimens of his 
 work, fine solid stuff chiselled simply and lovingly from the 
 seasoned oaks and walnuts of which his timber-yard still held 
 store. For Charlie Tebbits was craftsman by heritage, not 
 by the training of butter-muslin Morris-dancing vegetarians 
 who preach ' Arts and Crafts ' to the poker-workers and 
 metal-hammerers of Hammersmith and Chelsea. 
 
 But the village, apart from Charlie's cottage and work- 
 shops, proved disappointing : most of the old cottages had 
 been crowded out by jerry-built atrocities ; a tin-roofed 
 chapel, a pseudo-artistic public -house, a ' Recreation Room ' 
 (also of tin, but painted red), and a peculiarly offensive stucco 
 schoolhouse, betrayed all too clearly the trail of the urban 
 serpent. 
 
 " Never mind, Pat," consoled Francis. " You can hardly 
 see it from Sunflowers." 
 
 Church and Vicarage stood (as if, fearing contamination, 
 they had withdrawn themselves from tfiese evidences of 
 humanity) a full mile away on the road to Arlsfield Hall 
 a fine Georgian house, ring-fenced among green vistas of 
 parklands and woods much in need of the axe. 
 
 It was while circling Arlsfield Hall that Francis and 
 Patricia found Mr. Tebbits' second ' house ' a straggling 
 cottage, brown-roofed and mellow-walled. The cottage lay 
 in a hollow of the road. Woods crept down to it from the 
 west ; eastwards, corn-fields swelled to a fringe of spruce 
 trees. South of it, lay the park of Arlsfield Hall ; and north, 
 a mile by the trodden shortcut across the pasture, Tebbits 
 Farm and Sunflowers. 
 
 Exploring, they found undulating corridors, quaint
 
 " Sunflowers " 275 
 
 octagonal rooms panelled in age-dark oak, and at the top of a 
 broad shallow staircase, up which Francis scarcely needed 
 Patricia's arm an enormous apartment, looking through huge 
 windows clean across the park to sunlit hills. 
 
 " Lord, Pat," exclaimed Francis, " a man could write 
 here." 
 
 He looked about the room, measuring, with one of his sticks, 
 the window-seat, the distance from window-seat to fire-place, 
 the recesses on either side of the fireplace ; pointing out where 
 the desk should stand, where the bookcases . . . And in 
 that moment though it took two more visits, the first ac- 
 companied by Charlie Tebbits, the second by Prout, before 
 Francis eventually made up his mind Patricia knew that she 
 would not be neighbourless at Sunflowers. 
 
 5 
 
 The night after he had signed the agreement for Glen 
 Cottage, Francis dined at Harley Street. 
 
 " A fine pair of idiots you two seem to have made of 
 yourselves while I've been away," commented Heron Baynet, 
 who had just returned from a fortnight's holiday, after 
 listening for over an hour to the usual chatter of people obsessed 
 with new possessions. " Within six months, you'll both be 
 yearning for London." 
 
 " I wonder," said Francis. " Certainly, Arlsfield doesn't 
 possess a picture-palace. ..." 
 
 " Arlsfield," interrupted the doctor (as if by common 
 consent, neither had mentioned the name of that unhappy 
 village), " Arlsfield." 
 
 For a moment he sat perfectly still, staring at one of the 
 electric candle-sticks on the dinner-table : then he pulled 
 note-book and pencil out of his pocket ; turned to Patricia ; 
 and said, in the level voice of the consulting-room : 
 
 " You mentioned a little while ago, Pat, that this house 
 what's its name again Sunflowers thanks seemed familiar 
 to you. I want you to describe to me, as accurately as you 
 can, just in what way it seemed familiar." 
 
 " Why do you want to know, pater ? " 
 
 " Never mind about that. Tell me just how you felt, both 
 before you came to it and when you were in it." 
 
 Astonished, Patricia began her story, doing her utrrost to 
 recall each fleeting sensation of that first afternoon. 
 
 " All except the orchard, I seemed to know perfectly," she 
 finished.
 
 276 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 And her father, looking up from his note-book, said : 
 "No. You couldn't be expected to know about that. As 
 far as I can recollect, there wasn't one." 
 
 Francis, instinctively scenting a story, glanced first at the 
 lined face of the little consultant, then into the astonished eyes 
 of his daughter. 
 
 " Explain, please, pater," commanded Patricia. " What 
 was it ? One of those cases of pre-natal vision you've always 
 wanted to confirm ? " 
 
 " No such luck 1 " Her father closed the note-book, 
 returned it to his pocket. " Very interesting though. You 
 had seen the place before. When you were two years old, 
 your mother and I drove you there probably through the 
 very road up which you and Francis motored. She wanted 
 me to buy a country practice. Sunflowers I'd forgotten the 
 name till Francis mentioned Arlsfield was a doctor's house in 
 those days. You ask old Tebbits and see if I'm not right." 
 
 "Curious thing the human brain," he went on, "always 
 taking snap-shots just like a camera. Stores its pictures 
 away, too, and keeps them for when they're wanted. We're 
 working on this ' picture ' theory now for our shell-shock 
 cases. If anything weakens the brain a shock, for instance, 
 or overwork the pictures get mixed up : ' confused/ we call 
 it. No one seems to know how soon the brain starts taking 
 its snapshots : some say the process starts prior to birth. I 
 don't believe that. . . . Then there are imaginative pictures. 
 You know the impression of reality a good book makes on 
 you, or a well-told story. ..." He expanded the theory, 
 ending : " It was because I didn't want you to make imagina- 
 tive pictures that I took my notes before I told you the truth." 
 
 " Well, I'm glad there was no mystery," smiled Pat. " I 
 don't want any ghosts at Sunflowers." 
 
 But Francis Gordon, whose writer's brain could summon 
 and set aside both real and imaginative pictures at will, sat 
 very silent, visioning in pale gold against the dark panelling 
 of his new home the head of a girl in America a girl whose 
 last letter had concluded : 
 1 " Somehow or other I don't think I shall ever get married."
 
 PART XXVI 
 GENERAL POST 
 
 i 
 
 AND the war continued. 
 In England, amiable old gentlemen goaded by 
 a strong Press introduced their weakling Con- 
 scription Act with a brave fanfare of oratory. 
 Government officials secured exemption; various careful 
 young men employment at the Ministry of Munitions, or 
 commissions in the less dangerous branches of the Services. 
 Some few thousand perverts developed consciences ', which did 
 not prevent them from eating food imported at the risk of 
 human life. The bulk of the nation, humping its pack with a 
 shrug, was much consoled by the announcement of the Jutland 
 victory as a defeat. 
 
 But the Southdown Division cared for none of these 
 things. 
 
 Loos took its toll of seven thousand ; the Salient exacted 
 its hundred and fifty casualties a week : bullet and bomb, 
 shell and sickness, every inevitable misfortune of battle 
 thinned away the original volunteers. But always to fill 
 their places, came other volunteers and the Division carried 
 on. 
 
 So far, thanks largely to the Weasel's instinct for preserving 
 his men's lives, the Fourth Brigade had suffered rather less 
 than most units in the Division. 
 
 Nevertheless, wastage had gone on here a subaltern, there 
 a sergeant, a gunner to-day, a driver to-morrow. Now, 
 reorganisation came to complete the process. Billy Williams' 
 command, men, mules and vehicles, was transferred prac- 
 tically en bloc to the enlarged Divisional Ammunition Column 
 still presided over by its septuagenarian Colonel Mallory. 
 Bromley's battery, though temporarily continuing under the 
 Weasel for tactical purposes, was already being ' administered ' 
 by Colonel Darvell it having been decided that a ' New ' 
 Division of Artillery should, in future, consist of four brigades,
 
 278 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 each containing three eighteen-pounder batteries and one 
 battery of howitzers ; instead of the old three eighteen- 
 pounder and one howitzer brigade organisation. 
 
 2 
 
 Said Peter, as he and the Colonel stood scrutinising their 
 new list of officers pinned to the wall of Corporal Pitman's 
 office : 
 
 " Rather puts the lid on our old show, doesn't it, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes." The Weasel had been unusually preoccupied 
 since the arrival of D.R.L.S. " You'll miss Williams and 
 Bromley, I expect. About your best pals, weren't they ? " 
 
 " I suppose so." Peter puffed slowly at his cigar. " And 
 the old Doc.'s going next week." 
 
 Corporal Pitman clattered up from the cellar to which 
 Purves warned by a solitary five-nine shrapnel, one of whose 
 bullets drilled a clean hole through the office window had 
 recently transferred the telephone exchange ; drew himself to 
 attention ; smiled " Good morning, sir," and sat down to his 
 papers. 
 
 " Just come outside a minute, P. J., I want to have a talk 
 with you," said the Weasel. 
 
 They wandered out, through warm sunshine, along the road 
 past Bromley's waggon-lines, towards headquarter stables. 
 
 Remarked the Weasel, punctiliously acknowledging two 
 salutes : " How would you care to join the gilded Staff, young 
 man ? " 
 
 " I should hate it, sir," answered Peter thinking the 
 remark a jest 
 
 " Would you ? " Stark, obviously not in jesting mood, 
 frowned at the roadway. " So shall I, I expect." 
 
 " You, sir ? " 
 
 " Yes. They've made me a brigadier. God knows what 
 for." He gave details of his command. " They're in action 
 north of Albert, I believe. A new crowd. . . ." 
 
 " Gratters, sir." The Eton phrase rose easily to Peter's 
 lips ; but his heart sank a little at thought of losing yet 
 another pal. A year and more of service together had taught 
 him to appreciate the little red man at his side, to know the 
 kindliness which underlay that rasping manner. 
 
 " Always swore I'd never become a geranium," rasped 
 Stark. " Too much intriguing for my taste. More like 
 politics than soldiering. Still, twelve hundred a year's not to 
 be sneezed at."
 
 General Post 279 
 
 They strode twenty yards in silence. Then the Weasel 
 laid a firm hand on his Adjutant's arm. " Care to come with 
 me, P. J. ? I'll have to turf out the A.D.C. anyway, I 
 expect. . . ." 
 
 Peter hesitated a moment. 
 
 " Well ? " asked the Weasel. 
 
 " It's very decent of you, sir, but I'm afraid I shouldn't be 
 much use as an A.D.C." He thought of General Blacklock's 
 Massingberd, a plausible fellow with a genius for procuring 
 Perrier Water. 
 
 " Easy enough job," rasped the Weasel. 
 
 " Too easy, sir," the thought of Massingberd, alternately 
 fawning and yawning, clinched decision " and not enough 
 of it." 
 
 " You're a rum devil, P. J.," commented Stark. " Most 
 chaps would jump at the chance." 
 
 " Possibly, sir. But I couldn't stick it." He began to 
 laugh. " I'd make an awful hash of your Mess, sir ; probably 
 quarrel with the Staff-Captain and the Brigade-Major, t. . ." 
 
 " That definite ? " interrupted the Colonel. 
 
 " Quite, sir." 
 
 By now, they had reached the ' stables ' : a farm facing 
 the roadway, cow-sheds in rear. Mr. Black, trotting full tilt 
 through the-gate, nearly knocked them over, saluted, rode on 
 down the road. 
 
 " Mis-ter Black," roared the Weasel. 
 
 " Yes, sir." The Warrant Officer reined in his horse, 
 trotted back, saluted again. 
 
 " How the devil do you expect the men to treat their 
 horses properly, if they see you hairing about the place like 
 that ! " 
 
 " I'm sorry, sir. I was rather late in getting away, sir. 
 And I have the Quartermaster-Sergeants waiting for me at 
 refilling-point, sir." 
 
 " All the more reason not to arrive with your horse in a 
 muck-sweat, Mr. Black. . . ." 
 
 The Regimental-Sergeant -Major expressed contrition ; 
 trotted off again at the regulation six miles an hour. Stark, 
 Peter following, picked his way across the farmyard to the 
 ' stables.' 
 
 " You'll take your horses and servants, I suppose, sir ? " 
 asked Peter, patting Little Willie's smooth croup 
 appreciatively. 
 
 " Yes. They're none of 'em up to much except this old 
 fellow," he gentled the huge chestnut as he spoke, and the
 
 280 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 beast whinnied to him " still, servants and horses are both 
 getting scarce nowadays. Might go further and fare worse, I 
 suppose." 
 
 He finished his leisurely inspection of the horses in the 
 three cow-sheds ; sauntered across to the men's cook-house ; 
 remonstrated fiercely about the dirty condition of two dixies ; 
 threw a ' bon jour ' to the farmer's slatternly wife ; and made 
 for home. Only when they were once more nearing head- 
 quarters, did he refer to Peter's refusal of the A.D.C.-ship. 
 
 "I'm sorry you won't come with me. Alice '11 be sorry 
 too. She thinks you're a sort of mascot. However, perhaps 
 you're right. Running a Mess and finding the general's 
 map-case are hardly jobs for a grown man. ..." 
 
 3 
 
 ^The Weasel's successor arrived next morning, riding a 
 flea-bitten gray charger, accompanied by the most immaculate 
 groom on a clipped and vicious black mare. 
 
 Brevet -Lieutenant -Colonel Percival Revelsworth had been 
 on the Quartermaster Staff of a Kitchener division since its 
 formation. He was a dapper arrogant-looking man of forty- 
 five, iron-gray of hair and moustache, black-eyed, be-medalled, 
 and almost intolerably efficient. 
 
 Purves, always at his best on first acquaintance, made an 
 immediate effect on the newcomer, who confided to Stark as 
 they made their way along the grass-road to the batteries : 
 
 " Smart fellow, that Orderly Officer of yours, Stark. More 
 discipline about him than one finds in most of these 
 temporaries."' 
 
 " Oh, yes. Very good boy, Purves." 
 
 " I didn't care much for that Adjutant fellow. He 
 seemed a conceited sort of bloke. Rather inclined to run 
 things his own way. . . . You've had them both a longish 
 time, haven't you ? " 
 
 "About fifteen months." Stark stopped in his walk a 
 moment. " I shouldn't make any changes if I were you, 
 Revelsworth." 
 
 They inspected the four batteries, returned in time for tea. 
 Watching them both, Peter knew instinctively that he would 
 not be able to stick Revelsworth for long. Stark's last words 
 as he balanced himself on the steps of General Blacklock's car 
 Revelsworth had been called to the telephone, and they 
 were alone for a moment confirmed instinct. 
 
 " Don't lose your temper with him, P. ].," whispered the
 
 General Post 281 
 
 Weasel, " and if you do change your mind about that A.D.C.- 
 ship, drop me a line." 
 
 Revelsworth returned, attended by Purves ; the Doctor 
 came running from his cottage across the road ; Morency 
 sidled out of the Mess-room. 
 
 " Au revoir, nton Colonel. Et bonne chance," said Morency. 
 
 " Good-bye, Colonel. I wager we'll see you commanding 
 an Army before long," countered Doctor Carson. 
 
 "Bye-bye, Stark," said Revelsworth. 
 
 " Good-bye, sir. I'll see that your horses and servants 
 report at Bailleul station by six ack emma to-morrow/' purred 
 Purves. 
 
 But Peter, as he shook hands, could only manage the 
 perfunctory, " Au revoir, sir," which bare courtesy demanded. 
 For, of the six men who watched Stark's car disappear down 
 the road, Peter alone had lost a friend. 
 
 4 
 
 And the loss of that friend became daily more 
 apparent during the week that followed. Revelsworth's over- 
 zealousness started by quarrelling with Corporal Pitman about 
 the ammunition returns : the Corporal smiled his usual 
 deprecatory smile, and said as subsequently confided in best 
 Yorkshire to Driver Norris ' nowt.' Not so Peter : 
 
 " Corporal Pitman's a damn good fellow, sir," he remon- 
 strated, as soon as they were alone. " Does his work 
 splendidly." 
 
 " Does he ? " Revelsworth smiled his unpleasant smile. 
 " Thanks for the information. By the way, Jackson, it isn't 
 quite customary in the service for junior officers to use the 
 word ' damn ' when talking to their seniors." 
 
 Peter apologized stiffly ; went on with his work. 
 
 The next row, naturally enough, was with Lodden. The 
 irascible ex-Territorial major of ' A ' Battery had half -expected 
 to succeed the Weasel in command of the Fourth Brigade ; did 
 not feel over-pleased at being passed over. Revelsworth, 
 instead of buttering-up the disgruntled one, criticised the 
 construction of his gun-pits. 
 
 " Concrete ! " sniffed Revelsworth. " Call that concrete, 
 Lodden ? Why, man, it's like putty : you must have mixed 
 it all wrong. And those pit -props will never take the weight 
 you've put on them." 
 
 " You're a Regular, aren't you, Colonel ? " said Lodden, 
 his voice shaking with suppressed rage ; and, without waiting
 
 282 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 for answer : " I'm afraid I haven't that advantage. When 
 I'm not in khaki," Peter, who knew exactly what was coming, 
 turned away to hide his smile " I'm an engineer. Reinforced 
 concrete happens to be one of the subjects on which I'm 
 considered an expert. ..." 
 
 But impatient as the newcomer shewed himself with men, 
 his impatience with maps and figures was worse. Preparations 
 for the Somme battles had begun to re-act in Flanders ; the 
 Southdown infantry, ordered to take over a wider line, 
 expanded fan-like in front of its protecting guns. Zones 
 needed alteration ; S.O.S. lines had to be revised, old orders 
 amended, a fresh map prepared. 
 
 Peter devised his scheme with rapid accuracy ; submitted 
 it to his chief. 
 
 Said Revelsworth, hurriedly scrutinising the draft orders : 
 
 "You've got Sandiland's S.O.S. lines all wrong. The 
 S.O.S. lines must be the same as the night lines. Look 
 here 1 " he dabbed a peremptory finger at the map. 
 " Those are the Hun trenches, aren't they ? Very well then. 
 He's got to fire at them, hasn't he ? " 
 
 " No, sir," corrected Peter, " he has to fire in front of 
 them. There's a dip in the ground just there, and if Fritz is 
 coming over, he'll use it to assemble in." 
 
 " I suppose that's one of Stark 's brilliant ideas," sneered 
 Revelsworth. 
 
 " I believe General Stark did spot it first, sir." 
 
 " Then I shall get it altered. Never heard such nonsense. 
 Who's to keep Fritz from coming out of his trenches, I should 
 like to know ? " 
 
 " We have a special S.O.S. machine-gun barrage for that, 
 sir." 
 
 Revelsworth, annoyed at his own momentary forgetful- 
 ness, passed the orders grudgingly. 
 
 " I'll sign 'em myself. Do you understand ? It isn't the 
 Adjutant's business to sign Operation Orders." 
 
 " Very good, sir." Peter, victorious but out of temper, 
 retired to the office ; handed the pencilled orders to Corporal 
 Pitman. 
 
 "I'll have Driver Norris type these out after tea, sir," said 
 Pitman. 
 
 " Thanks, Corporal. How about the ammunition return ? 
 Got it right yet ? " 
 
 " Aye, sir. But it's been a terrible job. And all for two 
 rounds of shrapnel, sir." 
 
 Peter strode out of the office into the field behind. Little
 
 General Post 283 
 
 Willie, grazing at five francs a week, came bounding over to 
 his master ; nuzzled for sugar. Thought Peter, gentling the 
 bay's muzzle : 
 
 ' Things can't go on like this. One day I shall lose my 
 temper ; and then there'll be a court-martial. . . . Blast the 
 fellow, I'm not his clerk. . . . Sure to be a row sooner or 
 later : I'd better quit before it happens. Pity 1 Who can 
 do Adjutant if I chuck it ? Purves, I suppose. . . . Shall I 
 write to the Weasel ? A.D.C. isn't a bad job. He'll laugh 
 when he gets my letter. . . . Damned if I start asking favours 
 at my time of life. . . . Very well then, that's settled. . . . 
 I'll get Revelsworth to send me to a battery. Whose ? ' 
 he ran them over in his mind ' Lodden and I would fight like 
 tiger-cats. Conway's got an extra subaltern. I don't know 
 anything about hows. That leaves Sandiland. Sandiland's 
 not a bad chap. . . .' 
 
 5 
 
 But Peter's decision to resign his adjutancy could not be 
 carried into operation immediately. It needed that detested 
 manoeuvre finesse. Sandiland had to be approached : he 
 must play up to Revelsworth, test Purves (without that 
 astute youngster discerning the reason), see that Corporal 
 Pitman's papers were in apple-pie order. 
 
 In the ten days it took to accomplish these things, the 
 Headquarter Mess disintegrated. The Doctor (bored with 
 what he described as a ' first-aid student's job/ and racked 
 with the rheumatism his old bones had contracted in Ypres) 
 departed to a specialist -appointment at the Base his place 
 being taken by Laurillard, a young and not too sympathetic 
 Bart. 's man. Morency, putting an untried hairy over the 
 usual ' perfectly safe ' ditch, fell off and fractured his ankle 
 leaving them interpreterless. Horrocks was promoted to 
 command the Mobile Veterinary Section. Of the old gang, 
 Purves alone remained : Purves, poetry laid aside, the 
 perfect Orderly Officer one eye on his Colonel 'sidiosyncracies, 
 the other on his own chances of promotion. . . . 
 
 Then, just as Peter's plans were matured, came another 
 complication. The Southdown infantry shifted northwards, 
 away from its own guns, to the trench-mortared craters of 
 Spanbroekmolen and the Bull Ring. To fill the gap, arrived 
 a gunless division of Australians ; and Peter felt he could not 
 abandon his post until the relief had been completed. 
 
 So it was not until one evening towards the end of June 
 that he said to the Balliol boy :
 
 284 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " If I were to clear out, Purves, do you think you could 
 manage the adjutancy ? " 
 
 Said Purves, delicately pouring himself a whisky-and- 
 Perrier : " I wasn't aware, P. J., that adjutants appointed 
 their own successors. Divine right of kings, what I " 
 
 " Chuck the pose, Purves," our Mr. Jackson had finished 
 with finesse " and let's get down to facts. I can play pretty 
 with Revelsworth just as well as you can. He's eating out of 
 my hand at the moment ; and he'll go on eating out of my 
 hand as long as I go on truckling to him. Unfortunately for 
 me, fortunately for you, I'm not built that way;" temper 
 began to rise " I've never truckled in my life, and I'm too 
 old to begin now." 
 
 Purves ran puzzled fingers through his brown hair : 
 
 " But discipline isn't truckling," he said. 
 
 " No. And truckling isn't discipline. That's why I'm 
 going to throw up this job." 
 
 " Do you think he'll give it to me ? " (' What a kid it is,' 
 thought Peter.) " I could run the thing, you know. As long 
 as he doesn't get rid of Pitman." 
 
 " Yes. I believe you could. But he won't give you the 
 Job if I advise him not to. . . ." 
 
 As most people with the literary temperament, Stanley 
 Purves possessed a good deal of the woman's intuition. By 
 it, he began to see P. J.'s position. P. J. loved the Brigade. 
 P. J. didn't like giving up the adjutancy ; wanted to make 
 sure that his successor would be keen on the work. 
 
 Purves' conscience began to reproach him. He admitted 
 to himself that he had seen the crisis coming ; resolved to 
 benefit by it. Being a decent lad at heart, he admitted as 
 much. 
 
 " Oh, that's all right," said Peter. " I don't blame 
 anybody for trying to get promotion. And I must say you've 
 worked like a Trojan since the Weasel left." 
 
 But now the mood for confession was strong in Purves' 
 breast : " It wasn't only promotion, P. J. I've always rather 
 hated you, you know. You were shockingly rude to me that 
 morning at Loos." 
 
 " Was I ? "Peter had forgotten the incident" Sorry I " 
 
 "Oh, you were quite right . You usually are right . That 's 
 one of the things I've hated you for. . . . And I never really 
 liked the Weasel, you know. Any more than I really like 
 Revelsworth. Only it suits me to be on H.Q. I couldn't 
 stick a battery job. . . ." 
 
 " Why not ? "
 
 General Post 385 
 
 Purves laughed a little shamefacedly before replying : 
 " Because of my ears. The drums are too thin or something. 
 The mater took me to a specialist about them when I was on 
 leave ; and he didn't want me to come out again. Talked 
 about my going deaf. . . . But I can manage the telephone 
 all right. It's standing near the guns that worries me." 
 
 Purves did not tell Peter that Doctor Carson sworn to 
 secrecy before being consulted had confirmed the London 
 specialist's opinion ; advised him to go home. Nor did he 
 mention his brother, so blinded at Neuve Chapelle that 
 deafness seemed in comparison a fate to be laughed at. For 
 the 'Oxford manner/ though at times extremely unpleasant 
 to outsiders, does not tend to self-advertisement. 
 
 " Well, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good," said 
 Peter, newly and gruffly sympathetic; and began to impart 
 serpent's counsel over a long cigar. 
 
 " This chap's easy enough to get on with, if you know 
 how to handle him," concluded Peter, " Compris ? " 
 
 " Perfectly. And I won't forget about keeping him away 
 from Lodden as much as I can." 
 
 " Right. Then I'll tackle him about my transfer and 
 your promotion to-morrow. He'll probably take the Brat for 
 his Orderly Officer." 
 
 6 
 
 Only in after years did Stanley Purves realize the exact 
 position between Revelsworth and Peter. They were both, 
 temporarily at any rate, fanatics. Both wanted to do all the 
 work. Each was jealous of the other's share in the running 
 of the Brigade. Under such circumstances, many a business 
 man has lost invaluable subordinates and the human animal, 
 even in khaki, remains the human animal. Which knowledge 
 is the wisdom of Weasels !
 
 PART XXVII 
 ' BEER ' BATTERY 
 
 ' 
 
 ONLY three people in the Southdown Division really 
 objected to Peter's transfer from the Headquarter 
 Staff to ' Beer ' Battery. The first of these was 
 his servant Garton, who had contracted an 
 amorous acquaintance in Neuve glise, and disliked deserting 
 the comfortable billet she provided for a shell-torn barn near 
 the guns ; the second, on equally personal grounds, was Driver 
 Jelks ; and the third General Blacklock. 
 
 " Why on earth did you get rid of Jackson ? " said the 
 Brigadier to an abashed Revelsworth. 
 
 " He told me he was anxious to get promotion, sir ; and 
 that the adjutancy was rather a backwater. So I let him go. 
 No good keeping unwilling horses, is it, sir ? " 
 
 Whereto Blacklock retorted in the cryptic sentences : 
 " Make much of your horses, Revelsworth, make much of 
 your horses-. Hairies need the spur, but thoroughbreds go 
 better if you gentle 'em." 
 
 Which timely advice may or may not have been responsible 
 for a distinct improvement duly noted by the Brigade in 
 its Colonel's manners. In the words of Conway : " Pugilistic 
 Percy seems to be simmering down quite nicely." 
 
 2 
 
 ' Beer ' Battery welcomed its new subaltern with cordiality. 
 
 The clean-shaven Sandiland, who always reminded Peter of 
 Gerald du Maurier in ' Raffles,' ordered Quartermaster- 
 Sergeant (ex rough-rider) Murgatroyd to " snaffle a tent next 
 time he saw one lyin' about." 
 
 Pettigrew cheeks redder, eyes bluer, spirits higher, 
 even than in Shoreham days twinkled a " Wait till we've 
 put you through it, P. J." Charlie Straker held out a big 
 hand, and stuttered : " T-thought you w-wouldn't stand 
 Revelsworth after the W-weasel." Lindsay, newly-arrived 
 junior member of the Mess a raw-boned, raw-voiced 
 Aberdonian boy, with a budding moustache, a converted
 
 * Beer ' Battery 287 
 
 O.T.C. tunic, and a passion for what he termed ' Ob- 
 sairvation Duties ' immediately offered to point out some 
 " verra interesting features of the ground " ; but being 
 informed by Straker that " P. J. knew the ground a jolly sight 
 better than he did," subsided into disciplinary silence. 
 
 Peter himself, once he grew accustomed to the restricted 
 viewpoint of a battery-subaltern, thoroughly enjoyed his 
 freedom from responsibility. 
 
 The battery Sandiland had inherited from Torrington was 
 one of those clockwork organisations which needed only the 
 mildest supervision. Its Sergeant-Major, Cresswell formerly 
 of the Royal Horse Artillery and intermediately of the Green 
 Man, Kettering brooked no interference in the waggon-lines : 
 Quartermaster-Sergeant Murgatroyd had his own methods of 
 increasing ration-allowances and replacing equipment : the 
 four ' Numbers One ' in charge of its guns Sergeants Ackroyd, 
 Abernethy, Gift and Duncan looked after their pieces as a 
 mother watches her child : its Signalling Corporal, Haviland, 
 was a former supervisor of the London Telephone Company : 
 most of its gunners (excluding Mucksweat, the butt of ' D ' 
 subsection, and the brother coal-miners who had enlisted with 
 him) came from the engineering shops of Glasgow and the 
 Clyde : its drivers were Yorkshire almost to a man and 
 Yorkshire, town or country, takes to a horse as babies take 
 to milk. 
 
 Under such conditions, Peter loyally assisted by Straker 
 and Pettigrew soon repolished his rusty knowledge of 
 gunnery. 
 
 The open-air life suited him, improved his temper. He 
 felt further than ever removed from the annoyances of business. 
 His bi-weekly letters to Patricia, busy with the furnishing of 
 Sunflowers, grew positively boyish, almost sentimental. 
 
 On the whole, he liked his new work better than the old. 
 It held more excitement, less routine. During his first duty- 
 spell alone at the ' O. Pip ' on Hill 63, he spotted a party of 
 three Huns laying telephone-wires in the open ; and managed 
 to burst his shell exactly in their faces. The thrill of it a 
 thrill only to be compared with tiger-shooting from an elephant 
 howdah kept Peter's eye to his telescope for the rest of the 
 day. And his two spells ' in the trenches/ though spent in 
 great peace at the sandbagged Battalion Headquarters, also 
 gave him a fresh experience Australia ! 
 
 For Peter had never foregathered with Australians, and, 
 like most of his countrymen, was rather inclined to think of 
 them as ' Colonials ' a vague term which formerly typified 
 to the Englishman, ' the kind of chap who can't make a
 
 288 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 living at home.' Two nights with those competent souls the 
 Nth Anzacs sufficed to cure him of illusions. As he sub- 
 sequently confided in an outburst of enthusiasm to Bromley : 
 " Colonials ! Don't talk to me about Colonials ! They've 
 got us beat, old boy ; beat in everything except one." 
 y What's that ? " asked Bromley, grave as usual. 
 
 " They haven't yet learnt how to say ' Oh, really ! ' " 
 
 But it was not only the freedom from responsibility and the 
 excitement of fresh duties which appealed to Peter. Conway, 
 with his usual luck, had tossed for and of course won the 
 only comfortable habitation in the valley : a still intact 
 though slightly battered farmhouse, in which equally, of 
 course he had re-established his ' poker-school.' 
 
 Lodden (whose concrete pits had now assumed the 
 semblance of enormous four-legged toadstools) disapproved 
 but came nightly. Bromley, hitherto immune, was learning 
 an expensive process. 
 
 They played in a room reduced to cabin-size by pit -props, 
 sandbags and nine-by-two's (the army's designation for its 
 standard plank) : constantly interrupted by the buzz of 
 Conway's telephone, and once by a misconceived S.O.S. call 
 which sent everyone scurrying back through intermittent shell- 
 fire to their spurting cannons. 
 
 Altogether, not an unpleasant existence ! Indeed, during 
 that first easy fortnight only one thing troubled Peter : some- 
 how or other he had developed a little spitty cough, usually 
 painless, but occasional stabbing the tiniest pin-prick just 
 below the heart. 
 
 " You ought to see the Doc. about that cough of yours, 
 P. J.," said Sandiland one evening, as they sat smoking in the 
 Armstrong hut of batten and canvas which Q.M.S. Murgatroyd 
 had snaffled for the Mess. 
 
 " Can't stand Laurillard," growled Peterthe pain had 
 stabbed twice. " Besides, hell only tell me to leave off 
 smoking cigars. Let's go and get those five hundred francs 
 back from Conway." 
 
 3 
 
 But'the easy time did not endure. 
 
 The first of July, nineteen hundred and sixteen, which 
 turned the British front opposite Albert from a picnic-ground 
 to a cemetery, reacted promptly on the hitherto quiescent 
 valleys below Messines. The words ' maximum activity,' 
 scribbled by a thousand telephonists, thumped on a thousand 
 typewriters, stripped tarpaulin from the twelve-inch naval
 
 * Beer ' Battery 289 
 
 gun on the railway by the cross-roads, unroofed its sister in 
 the canvas house opposite Divisional Baths, woke howitzer 
 and eighteen-pounder in their pits beneath the trees, mortar 
 and machine-gun in their hiding-places among the trenches. 
 To these, the Boche replied with his eight-inch at Oostaverne, 
 his seventy-seven's behind the ridge, and a peculiarly deadly 
 minenwerf er which ran on rails and changed position whenever 
 fired at. 
 
 Gone were the unstrenuous days, the scarcely disturbed 
 nights. Conway's ' poker-school ' vanished like a raided 
 gambling-house. 
 
 For a week, ' demonstrations ' continued. Then, on the 
 eighth night, a handful of Australians, faces blackened, dirks 
 at their belts, revolvers in hand, slipped over their parapet 
 under cover of the shrapnel-barrage, crawled along the 
 Steenbeek, dropped down into the nine-foot duck-boarded 
 trenches of ' Bon Fermier ' . . . and returned, dirks bloody, 
 revolvers reeking, with the four dazed and cowered prisoners 
 (four they were asked to bring, and four only they brought), 
 which Brigade orders had demanded. . . . 
 
 Came rumours of the battle, ' down south ' : it went well, 
 it went badly, we made progress, we did not make enough 
 progress. Followed amazing manauvres : the missing Aus- 
 tralian gunners, six-foot men who handled their leaping pieces 
 like toys, arrived to ' take over ' from the Southdowns ; 
 ' Beer ' Battery moved back to a farm behind Bailleul, were 
 ordered to dig gun-pits along the Stuiverbeek, laboured three 
 days hauling beams and sand, were ordered back into action, 
 ' took over ' from the Australians (who were ' going to the 
 Somme, by cripes,'), found their own infantry once more in 
 front of them, remained five days, were relieved by wrathy 
 Ulstermen who cursed a place called Beaumont Hamel . . . 
 and marched quietly westwards through Bailleul and Meteren 
 and F16tre and Caestre to their old rest area in the farms 
 about Eecke. 
 
 "I'm g-getting a bit fed-up with this," stuttered Straker, 
 " where the d-devil are we going to ? " 
 
 " Oh, we're going to the Somme all right, don't you worry 
 about that," said Peter, wise in Staff mysteries. " This is 
 just a preliminary canter." 
 
 4 
 
 And to the Somme they went : setting out at midnight for 
 Bailleul four guns, eight waggons and a water-cart, one
 
 290 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 hundred and twenty-five horses, one hundred and thirty-eight 
 helmeted men, heavy transport bringing up the rear. 
 
 They entrained at dawn, loading and lashing vehicles, 
 coaxing horses into trucks, shepherding men, supervising 
 equipment ; slid off to the south ; travelled endlessly through 
 endless fields, past endless villages ; till at last, dark-green 
 from the carriage-windows, Peter saw the tree-tops of the 
 Somme. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon ere the last G.S. waggon came 
 groaning to ground, the last team backed into the swingle- 
 trees at Amiens Junction. 
 
 " Now we shan't be long," said Gunner Mucksweat. 
 
 " Dinna believe it, Muckie, we'll no go into action yet," 
 warned his ' Number Two.' 
 
 And Mucksweat 's ' Number Two,' the canny Macnab, 
 proved right. Back they marched, and back ; through the 
 broad tree-gut avenues of Amiens, where French munitionettes 
 whirling homewards on rickety motor-lorries kissed greetings ; 
 over a vast canal below whose embankment silent poilus, blue- 
 cloaked and blue-helmeted, sat glued to enormous fishing- 
 rods ; back, along the white and dusty road, making their 
 tea by the roadside in a village (nameless to Gunner Muck- 
 sweat, but Dreuil-les-Amiens to his officers), that proffered 
 cigarettes and cafe-cognac and new-baked rolls of golden- 
 crusted bread ; pressing on again, weary in the twilight, 
 through Ailly and Picquigny and Crouy ; back, always back, 
 to Hangest. . . . 
 
 " Told you we'd put you through it, P. J.," chaffed Petti- 
 grew late that night as, waggons unlimbered, horses- tethered, 
 men bivouacked at last, they flung themselves to bed in the 
 lath-and-plaster room of a midden-courted farm. 
 
 " Dunno what's the matter with me," groused Peter. 
 " Little Willie isn't used to being anywhere except at the 
 head of the column. He's been pulling my arms out all this 
 evening. Given me a stitch or something; " he coughed 
 acridly in the darkness. " Wonder how long we shall stop 
 here?" 
 
 " Oh, about a week, I expect. . . . Good night," snored 
 his companion. 
 
 5 
 
 It took three days to concentrate the four brigades of 
 Southdown artillery at Hangest. 
 
 Concentration concluded, there followed a period of
 
 ' Beer ' Battery 291 
 
 desultory ' training ' taken with immense and harassing 
 seriousness by Revelsworth ; slightly less seriously by his 
 subordinates. 
 
 Fortunately, the Anglo-Saxon is not imaginative. Neither 
 officers nor men of ' Beer ' Battery bothered, as they went 
 about their lawful (or unlawful) business, to consider the near 
 future. To be out of action, away from the sound of guns, 
 sufficed them. 
 
 Thus they waited five days six days a week and a 
 week-end ; till there came, one warm summer's evening while 
 they sat at poker, a very affaire Purves, second star newly on 
 his sleeve, with orders that, " The Colonel would like to see 
 all available officers at headquarters immediately." 
 
 " Confound it," said Lodden. " I've never been in such 
 amazing luck." 
 
 " Never bring messages like that yourself," whispered 
 Peter to Purves, as they strolled across the cobbled courtyard. 
 " What's it all about ? " 
 
 " Only a pi-jaw. We're going into action to-morrow." 
 
 And a ' pi-jaw,' as Purves irreverently described it, they 
 got. 
 
 Listening to it, Peter began to think of the Brigade in its 
 Brighton days, of all the men who had come and gone since the 
 Weasel's dinner at the Metropole O'Grady, sniped on the St. 
 Eloi Spoilbank just after Loos ; Torrington ; Percy Rorke, 
 wounded in the Salient ; Halliday, their first casualty ; 
 Hall, killed by a chance shell at Neuve figlise ; ' horsy ' 
 Hutchinson, transferred with Bromley ; Billy Williams and 
 Murphy, merged in the D.A.C. ; a dozen transient sub- 
 alterns, killed, wounded or gone home sick, names almost 
 forgotten. 
 
 Yet the Brigade, the Fourth Southdown Brigade R.F.A. 
 the ' virgin-bosom * Brigade, as Stark used to call it every 
 time his meticulous recommendations for honours were struck 
 out by the bemedalled Staff still lived. The thing he, 
 Peter, had helped to make, went on ... went on, and would 
 go on, right to the finish. . . . ' A long wai ter get ter Berlin ! ' 
 He seemed to hear his Cockneys again, singing. 
 
 " So you see, when we begin moving up into action to- 
 morrow," interrupted Revelsworth's voice. . . . 
 
 Peter looked round him at the mute expressionless faces 
 above the khaki collars. There were a few of the ' old gang ' 
 still. Lodden, Conway, Purves, Pettigrew and Straker, 
 ' Brat ' Archdale (acting Orderly Officer, grown from blushing 
 boy to hollow-cheeked young man), Merrilees, solemn as an
 
 292 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 owl, unaltered. . . . Eight: including himself, nine. Nine 
 out of twenty-six ! 
 
 How many of those nine would be left after this new 
 show ? Eight at most ! One of them was done for already ; 
 couldn't hope to last more than a month. And that one of 
 them was himself. . . . Still, nobody need know about that 
 till he came out of action. . . . //he came out of action. . . . 
 
 For Peter's cough, the cough that drove him, hacking and 
 spitting, night after night gum-booted, British Warm over 
 his pyjamas out of the stifling room he shared with Petti- 
 grew into the moonlight, was not the result of over-smoking. 
 . . . Rolleston, the kindly diffident ' general practitioner ' 
 who doctored Colonel Brasenose's brigade, had told Peter 
 that much ; told it him unconsciously. 
 
 They had met quite by accident, that very afternoon ; 
 gone to Rolleston 's 'surgery.' Peter, accepting a drink, 
 choked over it ; put his handkerchief to his mouth. 
 
 " None of my business, of course," the doctor had ventured, 
 " but if I were you, I'd consult Laurillard about that wheeze 
 of yours. Never been gassed, have you ? Slightly, I mean. " 
 
 Peter kept silence. 
 
 " Funny stuff, gas," went on the doctor ; " I had a case of 
 it before I came out, while I was still in civilian practice. A 
 young Canadian came to me with a frightful cough rather 
 like that cough of yours, by the way. I tested for tubercle, 
 of course. Not a trace. Then he began talking about the 
 first gas-attack ; said he'd been in it. That put me on the 
 track." 
 
 " But surely," interrupted Peter, " after all that time ..." 
 
 " Oh, he wasn't gassed, in the Army sense of the word ; 
 but there's no doubt in my mind that a tiny molecule of 
 chlorine must have lodged in his left lung, and started the 
 irritation." 
 
 " Did you cure him ? " 
 
 " Oh yes. But it took rather a long time. Fresh air and 
 no exercise. Lucky he came to me when he did. Lungs are 
 ticklish organs. If you once start 'em downhill, they take a 
 lot of pulling back. Besides, you never know when that sort 
 of thing won't turn to consumption : the tubercle bacillus 
 doesn't take long to find a weak spot. . . . Still, if you've 
 never actually been in the gas-cloud ..." 
 
 " No, I've never been actually in the gas-cloud." Peter 
 had lied mechanically. His was not the breed which ' goes 
 sick ' on the eve of an action. . . . 
 
 Revelsworth's voice interrupted musing. " Thank you,
 
 Beer ' Battery 293 
 
 gentlemen," he was saying, " I don't think there's anything 
 else except that I should like officers to wear full equipment 
 for to-morrow's march." 
 
 At ten o'clock of a gorgeous late-summer morning the 
 Fourth Brigade marched out from Hangest ; all the way back 
 along the river-bank, past Crouy and Picquigny and Ailly ; 
 halting for hurried meal at Dreuil-les-Amiens ; on again over 
 the canal, over the river, up through curling streets, up past 
 the round fortress of the Citadel, till they made the first wave 
 of that historic ground which rolls like a frozen ocean across 
 Picardy. 
 
 Now, looking back, they could see Amiens. It lay below 
 them in the green valley : a gray-brown city, peaceful astride 
 its river-banks, twin square spires of its cathedral bulking 
 high above smoke-plumed roofs. But the Fourth Brigade did 
 not tarry for sight of Amiens. 
 
 On they marched, up a long white road ; hot wind in their 
 faces, bitter dust of the naked chalk parching their throats 
 and whitening their lashes ; on, over the swell of the first wave 
 of that frozen ocean ; till they dropped again into the valley, 
 saw the first red houses, the green fields and the greener tree 
 tops of Daours and Vacquemont. 
 
 There, in the great woods which fringe the river banks 
 woods whose tree-trunks have been gnawed smooth by a 
 thousand thousand tethered horses they rested them two 
 nights ; and thence, at midnight, they climbed the second 
 swell of the plain, made the heights beyond Corbie ere the 
 river-mist vanished from the sleeping valleys: till at high 
 nooning of a sun-scorched day they dropped down into the 
 Bois de Tailles that straggling cleft of sand and trees which 
 strides the Bray-Corbie Road. Here again officers and men 
 bivouacked under ground-sheets among uncleanly bushes on 
 the slopes horses tethered between limbers on the red-sand 
 floor of the valley below they waited, waited endlessly. . . 
 
 For in that vast crucible of fire which bulged northwards 
 astride the river from French Dompierre to English Ovilliers, 
 infantry divisions of twelve thousand men shrivelled as paper 
 shrivels to flame ; brigades melted to battalions ; battalions 
 to companies ; between a moonrise and a sun-setting, they 
 were and they were not. But always as infantry divisions 
 shrivelled, fresh infantry divisions flung themselves into the 
 crucible : and always, behind the shrivelling, melting infantry,
 
 294 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 stayed the guns stayed till human sinews could serve them 
 no longer. . . . 
 
 Vague echoes of those guns, hints of their flashes, were 
 borne o' nights to Peter Jackson as he lay sleepless among 
 sleeping men ; as he twisted over and over between the 
 niggled blankets on his creaking camp-bed ; as he sweated 
 away the darkness and shivered through the dawn-chill ; to 
 Peter with the spitting cough fouling his mouth and the pin- 
 prick pain stabbing below his heart to Peter Jackson, one 
 tiny glorious fool among the millions whose folly saved our 
 world.
 
 PART XXVIII 
 IN THE NIGHT 
 
 i 
 
 THE ' Somme' offensive ' of 1916 is ancient history 
 now : a thing of Staff maps and war-diaries, of 
 barren paper and profitless arguments, flat as the 
 faked film of it men once sold for profit in the 
 market-place. 
 
 Yet the ' Somme offensive,' bloodiest experiment ever 
 undertaken in the laboratory of war, marked the beginning of 
 the ending of War's ending, as softies dream to-day. Com- 
 pared to this holocaust, Loos was a skirmish. 
 
 Day after day, night after night, week after week, men 
 flung themselves upon the Beast ; drove him wave by wave 
 across the barren swells of Picardy : till at last, burning and 
 ravaging, defiling the very beds in which he had slept, wreaking 
 vengeance on the very trees whose fruit he had eaten, the 
 Beast withdrew for a while withdrew, and came on again, 
 and was overthrown. . . . 
 
 The ' Somme offensive ' I What remains of it to-day ? 
 Only memories, bitter memories that waken men o' nights : 
 so that they see once more the golden Virgin of Albert, poised 
 miraculously on her red and riven tower ; Carnoy shattered 
 in its hollow, a giant baby's toy- village, dropped from careless 
 hand and smashed in the falling ; the ruins that were Mametz 
 and the ruins that were Contalmaison and the ruins that were 
 Fricourt and the ruins that were Pozieres ; see once more the 
 crowded horse-lines blackening Happy Valley, the balloons 
 strung like sausages across the sky, the thousand 'planes 
 circling like hawks above them : so that they hear once more 
 the staccato of machine-gun fire high in air, the dull 
 thump of the huge and hidden naval guns at Etinehem, the 
 roar of squat nine-point-two's on their wheelless mountings, 
 the roar of the railway-gun at Becordel, the thunder of eight- 
 inch and six-inch howitzers in Caterpillar Valley, the ear- 
 splitting crash of six-inch Mark VII. 's from the road by the 
 Craters, the manifold clamour of the Archies at Montauban, 
 the constant bark of the field-guns beyond : so that they walk
 
 296 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 once more, naked and alone, among the careless ghosts of men 
 they knew, through that horror which was Trones Wood. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 " God, P. J., this is too damned awful." 
 
 Sandiland stretched grimed fingers across the bacon-box 
 which served for table ; jerked a Goldflake from its tin ; lit 
 it shakily at the guttering candle. 
 
 " Pretty bad," admitted Peter : but his hand, too, shook as 
 he tilted the whisky-bottle into his tin mug. " Better have 
 some of this." 
 
 A shell whistled over the dripping corrugated iron above 
 their heads, burst hollowly on the twisted railway behind. 
 
 "Blast that gun, "said Sandiland. . . . 
 
 They had been in action for eighteen days ; and not once 
 during that time had ' B ' Battery's guns been wholly silent. Of 
 the men who had served those guns so blithely under the trees 
 of Neuve figlise, barely one-third remained. Sergeant 
 Ackroyd was dead, breast riven by direct hit of a gas-shell ; 
 Sergeant Duncan was dead, blown to bits as he ran for shelter ; 
 Corporal Haviland's body lay drilled with machine-gun 
 bullets in the No-Man 's-Land beyond Arrowhead Copse ; 
 seven signallers were dead, five they had watched hobble, one 
 by one, up the sodden path to the dressing-station in Montau- 
 ban. Now this ultimate horror had screamed down upon 
 them out of the night, tearing the last veils between them and 
 hell. . . . 
 
 They had laboured three hours to cleanse that hell, 
 laboured calmly and cheerfully among their men, snatching 
 only this brief respite for food and drink. But the hell they 
 had cleansed from the ground still remained, desperately and 
 damnably clear, in their brains. 
 
 For the moment, the reticences of civilized life were in 
 abeyance. Each of these two knew, as he crouched over the 
 bacon-box in the sodden, broken chalk-trench, that he was 
 hanging on by the eye-teeth to his last remnant of sanity. 
 
 Each still saw the same bestial vision : smashed pit, half- 
 buried gun, slithering soil, mangled men writhing and groan- 
 ing, mangled men lying deadly still, Charlie Straker's face 
 white and drawn in the light of the hurricane-lamp and the 
 Head that watched him, the Head that still grinned under its 
 shrapnel-helmet, the Head which had been Pettigrew. . . . 
 
 "That leaves only you and me, P. J." Sandiland 's 
 fingers plucked at one of the rents in his tunic sleeve. " Only 
 you and me." His voice quavered up into his head, and he
 
 In the Night 297 
 
 began singing. " You and me together, love ; never mind 
 the weather, love." 
 
 " Shut up, you bloody fool 1 " Peter's haggard eyes stared 
 across the candle-flame. " Shut up, I tell you. Why the 
 hell don't you drink that whisky ? " 
 
 " Sorry, P. J." Sandiland crammed the mug against his 
 teeth, sucked down the raw spirit. " By God, that's good. 
 Pour me out another, there's a good chap. " He drank again. 
 " I suppose we ought to telephone H.Q." 
 
 " I did that while you were getting them away." 
 
 " Thanks, dear boy. Purves say anything ? " 
 
 " I spoke to the Colonel," Peter started to cough " and 
 he said damn this cough of mine I he said, ' should he come 
 up himself ? ' I told him the gun would be in action again 
 by midnight, and we could carry on all right if he'd get us 
 another subaltern. He's sending one up at once." Peter's 
 voice too, quavered up into his head. " Poor old Lindsay. 
 Do you remember ? " 
 
 Once again sanity trembled in the balance. Their haggard 
 eyes met across the candle-flame ; and from behind those eyes 
 naked soul looked at naked soul. 
 
 " God ! " Sandiland 's voice was low, but tense as a scream 
 " God, I never knew I was a coward. . . . I'm not a 
 coward. . . . It's sending the others into it I can't stick. . . . 
 I'd go myself. . . . You know I'd go myself, P. J. . . . But 
 I can't stand sending these chaps to their death, day after 
 day, one after the other. ... I killed Lindsay. ... It 
 wasn't his turn for F.O.O. ... I killed Haviland. ..." 
 The monologue went on. ..." Seven of them the best 
 signallers a battery ever had and I detailed them for duty. 
 . . . One by one I detailed them, didn't !?...! chose this 
 battery position, didn't I ? " He began to laugh. " And 
 it 's your turn to-morrow, P. J. . . . Your turn 1 ... Bloody 
 funny if I killed our old Adjutant, too. . . . God, I wish I 
 could go instead of you. . . . I've got to be here, P. J. Do 
 you understand that ? . . . Here : waiting by these blasted 
 cannons for some poor devil to come crawling back and tell 
 me you've been killed. ..." 
 
 But Peter, listening speechless, felt himself the greater 
 coward of the two : for he would have given everything he 
 possessed everything except that last scrap of gold which is 
 a man's self-respect not to go down on the morrow to those 
 very trenches whence he had brought back Lindsay's body, 
 through those very woods where Bromley had died. . . . 
 
 There came the scrabble of feet above their heads ; some- 
 one called down out of the darkness ;
 
 298 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Say, is this Beer Battery, Fourth Southdown Brigade ? 
 Is this Captain Sandiland's battery ? " 
 
 " It is." Sandiland's voice had lost all trace of hysteria. 
 " Who are you ? " 
 
 " My name's Henry. Colonel Revelsworth told me to 
 report to you for duty." 
 
 " Stout fellow. Come down if you can find your way. 
 Have you got a torch ? " 
 
 " Yes. Is it safe to use it ? " 
 
 " Quite. Mind the wire. " 
 
 Followed the sound of falling earth, and a huge man, long 
 gloves and revolver at belt, long torch in brown hand. The 
 newcomer flicked out his torch ; saluted with a curious 
 courteous bend of his head ; stood blinking at the light of the 
 candle. He was well over six foot, blue-eyed and broad- 
 shouldered, firm of chin and clean-shaven. He wore the usual 
 cap, collar, belt and tunic of a British second lieutenant ; but 
 his breeches bagged curiously at the knee, had the appearance 
 of being tucked loosely into his soft field-boots, at heels of 
 which shewed a pair of swan-neck spurs, loosely strapped and 
 formidable of rowel. Boots and spurs were both caked with 
 white chalk. He carried no cane. 
 
 " Sit down, won't you ? " said Sandiland. " There's a box 
 kicking about somewhere. This is Jackson." 
 
 " Glad to know you." Henry made a movement as if to 
 shake hands ; thought better of it ; found the box Sandiland 
 had indicated ; and sat down with that peculiar straddle 
 which denotes a horseman the world over. 
 
 There was the usual awkward Anglo-Saxon silence, during 
 which men try to sum up fresh acquaintances. To the new- 
 comer, his two hosts seemed two very ordinary British 
 officers ; they looked terribly tired, he thought : but their 
 controlled features gave no hint of any other emotion. (For 
 it is only to tried friends that men in battle voice the secret 
 fears of true courage.) 
 
 " Have a drink ? " asked Sandiland. 
 
 "Thanks, no." The man extracted a small looped bag 
 from one pocket, a packet of cigarette-papers from the other ; 
 flicked off a thin leaf of paper, moistened it at his lips. Then, 
 holding the paper between fingers and thumb of his right hand, 
 he opened the bag with his left ; poured a little heap of tobacco 
 onto the paper, began to roll a cigarette. 
 
 " You're a Canadian, aren't you ? " asked the battery- 
 commander. 
 
 " Yes, sir. I'm a Canadian,"
 
 In the Night 299 
 
 " Been out long ? " 
 
 " No, sir. About three months. I've been with the 
 Ammunition Column most of that time." 
 
 The newcomer spoke slowly, not nasally but with a curious 
 deliberate drawl a drawl somehow reminiscent to Peter 
 Jackson of five men sitting round a poker-table under the 
 awning of a zinc-decked ship on the Caribbean. One of those 
 five men had drawled his words with just that identical 
 deliberation and would have been very insulted if he had 
 been referred to as a ' Canadian.' 
 
 " How did you manage to get here so quickly ? " asked 
 Sandiland. 
 
 " Well, sir, I happened to be reporting for duty at head- 
 quarters just when your 'phone message got through. The 
 Colonel told me to send my horses back, and come right along 
 with the guide. He said you'd fix me somehow till my 
 blankets arrived." 
 
 Now a Canadian does not talk about his ' blankets,' he 
 uses the English word ' kit.' Nor does he as a general rule 
 smoke granulated tobacco from those looped bags which 
 are referred to as ' sacks ' in the display-ads, of the various 
 firms whose communal address is in, Fifth Avenue, New 
 York. Also, he strongly objects to walking half a mile of 
 sodden ground, trenched and littered with remnants of 
 barbed wire, in his spurs. 
 
 These details flashed subconsciously through the mind of 
 Peter Jackson, as the three of them sat together in the 
 crumbling trench : but he was very tired, his cough troubled 
 him and anyway, it was none of his business. There were, he 
 knew from experience, many such ' Canadians ' among the 
 men who originally joined Kitchener's Army. 
 
 ' But how in the devil,' thought Peter, ' did he manage to 
 get a commission ? ' 
 
 " Number two gun ready for action, sorr," called Sergeant 
 Abernethy's voice from above them. 
 
 Sandiland called back : " Splendid, Sergeant. We'll 
 come and have a look at it." 
 
 The three officers scrambled up out of the trench into the 
 noise of the night ; picked their way across to the battery. 
 It was pitch-dark, with a drizzle of rain ; so that the new- 
 comer could see nothing except the occasional crimson of gun- 
 flashes, and the circle of Sandiland 's torch as it danced over 
 yellow pock-marked ground. They jumped a deep crumbling 
 trench ; skirted the lip of a huge shell-crater ; came suddenly 
 upon the resurrected gua.
 
 300 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 By the vague glimmer of a hurricane lamp, men were still 
 at work, disinterring the buried ammunition, wiping the 
 brass cases, stacking them beside the gun-wheels. An 
 improvised tent of tarpaulin, slung between four posts, 
 provided the only overhead cover ; a few sandbags had been 
 piled in front of the shield. 
 
 Sergeant -Major Cresswell, a stout, melancholy man with 
 watery-brown eyes and a waxed moustache, whom the death 
 of Lindsay had summoned from his beloved waggon-lines, 
 saluted Sandiland, and said : 
 
 " I'm afraid that's the best we can do for to-night, sir." 
 
 "Very well, Sergeant-Major. Have the men had their 
 rum ration ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." He added, sotto voce, " They needed it, sir." 
 
 " Right. You'd better let 'em turn in then." 
 
 Number four gun spat its tongue of crimson flame, sub- 
 sided into silence for another five minutes. " You chaps can 
 knock off now," called Cresswell 's voice. 
 
 Except for the two signallers in the telephone pit, and 
 Sergeant Duncan with his two ' numbers ' at the duty-gun, the 
 whole battery-personnel officers' servants included had 
 been toiling with pick and shovel and dragropes since half- 
 past eight. Now, they disappeared into the darkness. Re- 
 mained only Sergeant Abernethy and six men two, survivors 
 of his own subsection, the remainder told off from the other 
 detachments. 
 
 A figure approached Peter, said, " Should I light the 
 candles in your dug-out, sir ? " 
 
 " You'd better turn in, I think, P. J.," interrupted Sandi- 
 land ; " or you won't get any sleep at all." 
 
 " What about telephoning H.Q., and checking the lay of 
 that gun ? " 
 
 " Never you mind about H.Q., or the gun. Just do as 
 you're told and turn in, there's a good chap." 
 
 " Very well, sir," chaffed Peter ; and stumbled off, Garton 
 leading, to his dug-out. 
 
 Sandiland and Henry made their way towards the tele- 
 phone-pit. "He's an obstinate cove is P. J.," confided the 
 battery-commander. 
 
 " He looks a mighty sick one," replied the ' Canadian.' 
 
 3 
 
 The ' dug-out ' towards which Peter and Garton stumbled 
 was a coffin-shaped hole burrowed in the soil, roofed with a
 
 In the Night 301 
 
 piece of corrugated iron and one layer of sandbags. A 
 mackintosh ground-sheet, supported on a wooden beam, 
 prolonged this improvised roof ; provided some protection 
 from the rain which drove in at the ' door ' a narrow entrance 
 reached by three ' steps,' mostly mud. Down these, the pair 
 slithered. 
 
 Carton lit a match, revealing Peter's valise, supported on 
 two ammunition-boxes and a stolen stretcher. The mud- 
 walls of the coffin touched the valise on either side, so that 
 Garton had to scramble over it before he could light ' the 
 candles ' one guttering dip stuck on a wooden shelf above 
 the head of the ' bedstead.' A pool of slime on the ' floor ' 
 served for carpet. 
 
 " You'd better turn in, Garton," said Peter, sitting down 
 heavily between the projecting stretcher-handles. " I'm 
 afraid you'll have to bring me my tea at half-past four. Rather 
 a change from H.Q. at Neuve Eglise, what ! Hope she writes 
 to you, Garton ? " 
 
 The fair-haired Yorkshireman blushed violently ; bent to 
 unlace his master's heavy boots. 
 
 " Don't bother about that, I'll do 'em myself." 
 
 But Driver Garton went on with his work ; and as his 
 muddy fingers fumbled at the muddy laces, he thought : 
 ' Poor old P. J. I He won't last much longer. Never saw 
 a man look so ill in my life.' 
 
 " Should I help you off with your breeches, sir ? ' 
 
 " No. I'll sleep in 'em. You get off to bed, lad." 
 
 With a cheery " Good night, sir," Driver Garton dis- 
 appeared. His master hauled himself painfully along the 
 valise ; sat up head touching roof ; unslung his gas-helmet, 
 which he hung from a wooden peg driven in the wall ; took off 
 his tunic, spread it on the bed ; unstudded his soft collar ; 
 felt to make sure that the box-respirator was underneath his 
 canvas-pillow ; and inserted his body inch by inch into the 
 Jaeger blankets. 
 
 " God," thought Peter, " what a fool I'm making of my- 
 self ! I ought to have gone sick days ago." He blew out the 
 candle ; laid himself down for sleep ; closed his eyes. 
 ' Sleep,' he thought, ' sleep 1 ' And for a moment sleep 
 came to him. Then he felt the warning twitch below his 
 heart ; started up ; groped for his handkerchief . The 
 cough tore at his throat, seemed to be wrenching his lungs 
 out. . # 4-* - 
 
 Pain passed, leaving him weak and sleepless. He fumbled 
 among the litter on the wooden shelf ; found matches ; lit
 
 302 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 the candle again. Number four gun fired ; shook a few flakes 
 of soil onto his valise. His whole body ached for sleep ; but 
 he was afraid to lie down again. If he lay down, there would 
 come that warning twitch below the heart, another 
 paroxysm. . . . 
 
 Listlessly, he pulled his tunic towards him ; found the 
 morrow's orders ; began studying them. " Infantry 
 will attack. . . . Objective : Guillemont Ginchy-Maurepas 
 Road Bois de Leuze. . . . A/4 S.F.A.B. ('A 'Battery Fourth 
 Southdown Field Artillery Brigade) will detail Liaison Officer 
 on the right. ... 6/4 S.F.A.B. will detail Liaison Officer on 
 the left. . . ." 
 
 The blurred type danced in front of Peter's eyes. He 
 stuffed the orders back into his tunic-pocket : doing so, his 
 hand touched Patricia's last letter. This, too, he read list- 
 lessly, hardly taking in the words. . . . Number four gun 
 fired again. ... He closed his eyes. . . . ' Sunflowers 
 Sunflowers rather a jolly name.' . . . For a moment he 
 dreamed. . . . 
 
 " Gas-shell, sir ! Gas-shell I " The voice from without 
 wrenched him from unconsciousness. 
 
 " Right," he called back. " All right." Now he was wide 
 awake, bolt upright on his haunches. Automatically he 
 pulled the respirator from under his pillow ; took up the tube ; 
 adjusted clip to nostrils, mouthpiece to lips. . . . Cough 
 wrenched at his throat. ... He put the tube down again ; 
 sat listening. . . . ' False alarm,' he thought. ' Thank 
 goodness for that.' 
 
 Then he heard, close overhead, a low, slow whistle, like a 
 sigh through the night. . . . Sighing ceased. . . Peter jammed 
 the mouthpiece back to his lips, readjusted the clip to his 
 nostrils. . . . Another shell sighed over him ; he heard the 
 faint plop of its grounding, the vague hiss of its burst. . . . 
 
 The roof quivered ; a handful of soil pattered onto his 
 valise. The candle guttered : went out. . . . 
 
 Another shell sighed to ground. . . . 
 
 He knew himself afraid horribly, shamelessly afraid. The 
 clip on his nostrils was torture : the mouthpiece stifled him ; 
 blood drummed at his ears : he wanted to cough. . . . But 
 he dared not cough. . . . 
 
 The night above him was full of sighing, poisonous things. 
 . . . God, there must be thousands of them 1 ... They were 
 falling all about him : sighing slowly down out of the night : 
 plopping to ground : sighing out their poison. . . . They 
 were looking for him ; tap-tap-tapping round the roof of his
 
 In the Night 303 
 
 coffin. . . . They wanted to find the roof of his coffin : to 
 break through it : stifle him as he lay. . . . 
 
 Courage fought panic alone in the darkness. 'Damn 
 it,' thought Peter, 'damn it. They shan't get my tail 
 down.' And shelling ceased : suddenly, miraculously, the 
 night grew still. 
 
 Peter loosed the clip from his nostrils, sniffed cautiously. 
 The air was pure no trace of gas. He let the mouthpiece 
 fall, began to cough, dropped back coughing on his pillow 
 and knew neither fear nor courage, but only the blissful 
 unconsciousness of utter exhaustion, till he heard Driver 
 Carton's, " Half -past four, sir. Half -past four. Time to 
 get up, sir."
 
 PART XXIX 
 
 THBJ LAST OUNCE 
 
 i 
 
 THE ' Canadian ' unused to gun-fire had not 
 slept. Now, in the first glimmer of dawn, he 
 climbed, map in hand, out of the telephone-pit ; 
 began to locate his position. Behind, a mere dip 
 in the ground, lay the valley through which he had walked 
 overnight. Close on his left, bulked low shattered walls 
 which he knew to be Montauban. In front, about five 
 hundred yards from the battery, he could make out a ragged 
 fringe of trees Bernafay Wood. On his right, flat ground 
 rose slightly to a hump near skyline which must be the 
 Briqueterie. On three sides of him, in the valley behind, 
 among the trees in front, and on the flat ground to his right, 
 occasional guns flashed and smoked among the rising mists. 
 
 He looked round his own patch of this desolation the four 
 crazy gun-shelters, the battered trenches, the shell-pocked, 
 wire-littered ground ; and thought : 
 
 ' You're a longish way from home, son.' 
 
 A soldier came stumbling towards him, saluted. 
 
 " Mr. Jackson's compliments, sir ; and he said I was to 
 find where you were sleeping ; and to ask if there was any- 
 thing I should do for you, sir." 
 
 " Where is Mr. Jackson ? " 
 
 "Having breakfast, sir," Driver Carton pointed to a 
 wisp of smoke about fifty yards away " over there, sir. 
 Should I get you some breakfast, sir ? " 
 
 "Thanks." Charles Henry, already accustomed to the 
 English army's habit of perpetual valeting, followed Carton 
 to the ' Mess ' the same broken chalk-trench, roofed with 
 corrugated, into which he had slithered overnight. From 
 round the traverse came smell of a wood fire, sizzling of bacon. 
 Peter, astride an ammunition box, mug of tea in front of him, 
 looked up ; said : 
 
 " Morning, Henry. Not been to bed yet ? " 
 
 " Good morning. No. Somehow I didn't feel like turning 
 in. You off to the show ? " 
 
 " Yes. As soon as I've had something to eat."
 
 The Last Ounce 305 
 
 Carton brought breakfast bacon on a tin plate. Peter 
 made pretence of eating ; pushed the plate away from him ; 
 lit a cigar ; began to cough. Looking at this haggard white- 
 faced man in the torn tunic and patched breeches, Henry 
 thought to himself : ' Well, if you ever get to those trenches, 
 it's a miracle.' What he said was : " Aren't you going to 
 take a gun revolver, I should say ? " 
 
 " Rather ! " Peter laughed. " 111 be loaded like an 
 ammunition-mule by the time Carton's finished with me 
 haversack, gas-helmet, field-glasses, Sam Browne, the whole 
 paraphernalia. Damned heavy. One gets out of the habit 
 of wearing 'em." 
 
 " Do you think the attack will succeed ? " 
 
 " Hope so. We've had about four shies at the sanguinary 
 place already." 
 
 "It's our own infantry, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Lord, no ! They got smashed up at Delville Wood weeks 
 ago. . . . Well, it's about time I was off." Peter got up, 
 took along iron-shod stick from behind him " Au revoir, and 
 enjoy yourself while I'm away." 
 
 Henry watched him scramble painfully out of the trench, 
 and remembered Sandiland's words: 'An obstinate cove.' 
 " I should say so," muttered Henry. " I should just about 
 say so." 
 
 " You chaps got your rations ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 Peter looked at his three men : Bombardier FirUayson, 
 tall, tight-lipped, clean-shaven, shrapnel-helmet atilt on the 
 back of his head ; Blenkinsop, a dark, keen little North- 
 umbrian ; and Mucksweat, huge, hairy, ' more like a bear than 
 a man,' who had volunteered for ' runner.' 
 
 " Then we'd better be off." 
 
 Dawn was not yet day as the four crossed the track in front 
 of the guns ; tramped away towards the wood. They 
 walked slowly, eyes on the black telephone-wire. " Seems 
 O.K., so far," said Peter; " better test her though." The 
 bombardier unslung his telephone-case, inserted pin in the 
 wire, tapped, was answered. 
 
 Now the wire rose from ground to poles ; spanned a road 
 yellow with mud ; disappeared breast-high among tree- 
 trunks. They pashed across ; tested again ; passed in among 
 the trees ; began fighting their way through the undergrowth 
 along the lip of a zig-zag and water-logged trench.
 
 306 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Lucky we didn't run her down there, sir," grinned the 
 bombardier. 
 
 " Rather." Already Peter felt dog-weary. Twice he 
 stumbled, and Mucksweat helped him to his feet. Then, 
 fatigue reacted ; the poison of over-strain distilled its poison 
 of over-energy. The apprehension of overnight disap- 
 peared. 
 
 They worked their way through Bernaf ay Wood to the hill- 
 side. In front, the world seemed asleep. From behind, came 
 the occasional thud of a gun. A 'plane droned over, high in 
 air. Below them, lay the Bois de Trdnes, still black in the half- 
 light : all along the fringe of it they could see waiting infantry. 
 The wire dipped into a dry trench ; they followed it down- 
 hill. 
 
 They emerged from the trench and the wire ended 
 abruptly. " Call up the battery," ordered Peter. . . . 
 " Battery on, sir." ... He took the instrument : " Is 
 Captain Sandiland there ? . . . Hello I That you, Sandi- 
 land ? . . . We're at the edge of Trdnes Wood. ... All 
 O.K. up to here. . . . What's that ? ... No good trying to 
 run her any further . . . Quite. ... I'll leave Finlayson 
 here. . . . You'd better send him up a linesman. What's 
 that ? Oh yes. I'm quite all right. Cheerio." 
 
 " Hadn't you better leave Blenkinsop, sir ? " suggested 
 the bombardier. " Why ? " asked Peter. Finlayson 's lips 
 tightened. " Blenkinsop's a very good operator, sir." 
 
 " I know that as weU as you do, Bombardier. What are 
 you driving at ? " 
 
 " WeU, sir, as N.C.O. of the party ..." 
 
 ' Sportsman 1 ' thought Peter ; and reversed an order for 
 the first tune. They left Blenkinsop at the instrument ; made 
 their way, three helmeted figures, across a road dark with 
 slime and rotted leaves, past the waiting infantry into TrOnes 
 Wood. The wood still stank of putrefying flesh. Barbed 
 wire looped the trailing undergrowth. Here, a shell-axed tree 
 leaned drunkenly against its bullet-pocked neighbour. There, 
 fresh-turned earth betrayed the scavenging pick. Beyond 
 the tree-trunks, day glimmered. Above, black branches 
 trellised gray sky. A ditch full of water led through this 
 place of death. 
 
 Ahead of them, something whistled into the undergrowth. 
 They dropped into the ditch ; waded along, single file, calf- 
 deep in liquid mud ; ducked under a fallen log ; waded on 
 again. Another shell whistled into the undergrowth above 
 them. " Whizz-bang," said Peter laconically.
 
 The Last Ounce 307 
 
 Now they were under open sky, making their way along 
 a battered trench towards the support-lines. In front of 
 them and behind them, hidden by humped earth from the 
 enemy, toiled little parties of infantry : bomb-carriers, water- 
 carriers, men with loaded rifles and men with empty stretchers. 
 
 The liquid mud deepened to quagmire. 
 
 Peter, fighting his way forward, felt the false energy of 
 over-fatigue ebbing from his veins. With every painful pace 
 his feet rooted themselves deeper. Sodden leather wrenched 
 at his ankles. Heavy water-bottle, heavier revolver-holster, 
 dragged at hip and shoulder. Each gasped breath seemed to 
 tear at his heart. His helmet was a shifting torment. Bitter 
 sweat blinded his eyes ; dripped from chin to tie. Time and 
 again, only the long iron-shod stick saved him from col- 
 lapse. . . . 
 
 Gradually they neared destination ; edged way past 
 crouching men, past the gap where Lindsay had died, to a 
 little eminence above plain-level. Here three mud-lanes met 
 in heaped breastworks. Listless stretcher-bearers and a 
 bundle of S.O.S. rockets marked Battalion Headquarters a 
 Boche dug-out, thirty feet below ground-level, reached by a 
 deep chute of greasy slime. 
 
 Peter sank down on one of the bomb boxes which littered 
 the ground ; leaned gasping on his stick. 
 
 " Feeling tired, sir ? " asked Finlayson ; and getting no 
 answer, unslung his water-bottle, drew out the cork. " Try 
 a drop of this, sir. It's cold tea." 
 
 "Thanks, Bombardier but you'd better keep it for 
 yourself I'll be all right in a minute." 
 
 A little strength came back to him. He slipped off his 
 helmet ; loosed belt at waist. A dozen times during the 
 half-mile from Trdnes Wood Peter had wanted to give in ; 
 the last three hundred yards had been just a blur of con- 
 tinuous effort. ' Like rowing,' he thought, ' got to put your 
 last ounce into it ' ; and like a rowed-out oarsman he rested 
 for a little knowing only blessed relief. 
 
 " Where's Mucksweat ? " he asked at last. 
 
 " You told him to stop about twenty yards back, sir. Just 
 round the corner." 
 
 " Quite right. So I did. You'd better go and join him. 
 I'll observe from there. This place is rather dangerous. " He 
 staggered to his feet ; made for the entrance to head- 
 quarters. Finlayson watched him disappear down the 
 greasy mud-chute ; shrugged shoulders ; rejoined his com- 
 panions.
 
 308 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " I dunno what you think about it, Muckie," said Bom- 
 bardier Finlayson ; " but it seems to me we're in for a hell of 
 a day." 
 
 Answered Mucksweat, crouching bear-like in yellow slime, 
 " He shouldn't have come. That's what / say." 
 
 3 
 
 Peter slid, feet first, into cavernous darkness. A hand 
 gripped him by the shoulder ; helped him up. A voice said, 
 " Hallo. Who are you ? " 
 
 " Gunner Liaison Officer, sir." 
 
 Darkness cleared to half light. Peter was aware of a man 
 sitting over a map at an uncleanly table. 
 
 " Well, if you'd come away from the door we might see 
 something of you." 
 
 " Sorry, sir." 
 
 Peter shifted position ; found himself in a square cave of 
 concrete. The orderly who had helped him arrive, grinned ; 
 proffered an ammunition-box. An R.A.M.C. officer emerged 
 from the gloom ; said " Good morning." 
 
 " I dunno what they send you chaps out for," began 
 the Infantry Colonel, a wiry resolute man, square of chin and 
 square of forehead " you can't do anything. How do you 
 propose getting your messages back ? " 
 
 " Runner to beyond Trdnes Wood, sir. Then telephone." 
 
 " H'm. We can do as well as that ourselves. What's the 
 use of information two hours old ? These new creeping 
 barrages are the very devil. No stopping 'em once they start. 
 Where are you going to observe from ? " 
 
 Peter told him ; and they discussed details for ten 
 minutes. The Colonel's servant brought him tea. 
 
 " Have some ? " asked the Colonel. 
 
 Peter, wet through and shivering, accepted gratefully. 
 Asked the doctor, watching him as he drank : "Do you go 
 over the top with the first attack ? " 
 
 " He's supposed to come with me," interrupted the 
 Colonel. Then to Peter : " You'd rather be on your own, I 
 expect ? " 
 
 " I think so, sir." 
 
 " Right," the Colonel dabbed a finger at the map " I 
 shall make for here. Join me if you can. I must be off now. 
 It'll take me the best part of an hour to go round the front 
 line. ' He took his helmet from the wall behind him ; gripped 
 a stout stick j and scrambled off up the mud-chute.
 
 The Last Ounce 309 
 
 " Shouldn't like your job much," commented the doctor, 
 
 " Shouldn't like his," observed Peter, looking at the 
 disappearing soles of the Colonel's boots. . . . 
 
 By now it was nearly nine o'clock. Above, all seemed 
 quiet. Peter finished his tea ; said au revoir to the doctor ; 
 hauled himself breast on mud into the upper air again ; 
 found Finlayson and Mucksweat waiting in the narrow mud- 
 floored trench from which he had elected to observe ; rested 
 elbows on parapet ; peered cautiously over. 
 
 Immediately beneath him a smashed railway-line ran 
 northwards, ending in the heap of twisted metal, upcurved 
 like the ribs of a skeleton horse, which had been Guillemont 
 Station. Over the railway, straight to his front, bare ground 
 dipped to green cut by the narrow brown cleft of our own 
 front line. Beyond this, four hundred yards away, great 
 molehills of white chalk marked the enemy's position. But 
 between the narrow brown cleft and the white molehills lay 
 the sunken road which had so often defied assault. At that 
 distance it was hardly visible ; shewed only as a discolouration 
 on the drab landscape a discolouration which ended at sky- 
 line in the three-cornered bush-clump of Arrowhead Copse. 
 Right of the copse our ground rose the trees of Trdnes 
 Wood : left of it, beyond sunk road and white molehills, the 
 enemy's territory stretched in colourless desert, tossed to 
 occasional fountains by long-range shell-fire. Of what had 
 been Guillemont village nothing shewed except four tree-tops 
 on the extreme left of the shell-tossed desert. 
 
 It still lacked two-and-a-half hours to the time of the 
 attack ; and Peter, having shewn the ground and explained 
 his plans to the bombardier and Mucksweat, sat down to wait. 
 
 Ten minutes passed a quarter of an hour twenty 
 minutes. He looked at his watch, lit a cigar. Half an hour 
 went by. Two hours more to wait 1 A couple of infantry- 
 men appeared, took station beside him. Round the traverse 
 he could hear other infantrymen coming up. Damn it, would 
 the time never pass ? . . . Very high overhead, five Hun 
 machines planed gleaming across gray sky. ... He began to 
 be afraid. . . . Fear gripped his stomach. ... He must look 
 over again, make sure of his way to those white molehills. 
 . . . Twenty past ten a whole miserable hour and forty- 
 three wretched minutes more. 
 
 Suddenly, the first enemy shell howled across the sky, 
 burst hollowly at the edge of Trdnes Wood. 
 
 " Dommed if that one didn't come from behind us," 
 ejaculated Mucksweat.
 
 3io Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Pretty well," said the bombardier calmly. " Often got 
 'em that way in the Salient, didn't you ? . . . Course you 
 did. . . . Well, this is a Salient too, see ! " 
 
 " I see," said the huge hairy man. Even while he spoke, 
 the second shell screamed and lit crashing to the ground 
 behind. Splinters whizzed over them, as they crouched to 
 cover. 
 
 Barrage fire began a slow barrage, terrifying in its very 
 deliberateness. Scream followed scream down the un- 
 changing sky ; crash followed crash now right of them, now 
 left, now directly behind. Only their own tiny portion of 
 trench, the sodden mud-walls between which they huddled 
 under whirling splinters, seemed immune burrow of safety in 
 an exploding world. 
 
 ' Christ ! ' thought Peter, ' how long can this go on ? ' For 
 a second, he knew absolute panic ; his legs wanted to run 
 away with him ; he couldn't stick it, couldn't stick it another 
 minute. Came a pause in the crash of sound. 
 
 Peter looked at the two infantrymen, crouching white- 
 faced below the parapet ; at Finlayson, tight-lipped, ap- 
 prehensive ; at Mucksweat biting his huge moustache. Then, 
 very deliberately, he stood upright ; drew field-glasses from 
 case ; peered over towards the enemy. One of the infantry- 
 men joined him. " Do you know the ground ? " began 
 Peter. . . . 
 
 The shell gave no warning. He was aware only of a 
 terrific thunder-clap, of a savage boot-hack at ear-drum. . . . 
 Then blackness, blackness through which he struggled for 
 light. ... In the slime he struggled, fighting a warm dead 
 thing. . . . The thing lifted from him. . . . Light came 
 back. . . . He felt hands gripping him ; heard Mucksweat 's 
 voice. 
 
 Face down in the slime lay the dead body of the infantry- 
 man, helmetless, brains oozing crimson sweetbreads from 
 shattered skull. Above the body, bent its living mate the 
 second infantryman. Suddenly he turned ; snarled over his 
 shoulder : " You killed him, damn you. You 1 You 1 You ! 
 You bastard ! " 
 
 " Easy on, mate," cut in the voice of Finlayson, " you're 
 talking to an officer." 
 
 " Officer ! Who the hell cares for 'tillery officers ? " 
 the man rose, sworded rifle gripped in both hands. " Blast 
 you! You killed him. And now you'll bloody well bury 
 him," bayonet drew back for the plunge. " Come on, you 
 bloody coward, you ! We're going over the top, you and me
 
 The Last Ounce 311 
 
 going to bury my mate decent, we are like a Christian. " 
 
 Said Peter, and he spoke as tired men speak in dreams : 
 " Don't make an ass of yourself, lad." 
 
 Mucksweat's doubled fist crashed home to chin-point. 
 The madman's rifle fell clattering across his mate's body as 
 he toppled backwards. 
 
 " Who the devil told you to do that ? " Peter's voice was 
 again the voice of command. " Pick him up, will you ? " 
 the bear stooped over his victim " take his helmet off." 
 
 But already the infantryman had regained consciousness. 
 " What happened, sir ? " he asked, head on the coal-miner's 
 knee. Then he saw the body on the ground ; stared at it. 
 
 " Oh, Gawd," he sobbed, " it's Harry ! Poor old Harry." 
 Swiftly the man rose to his feet ; picked up his rifle ; started 
 to climb out of the trench. Mucksweat pulled him back. 
 " Let me go," he howled, " let me go. I'll give 'em something 
 for this. Christ, I'll give 'em something they won't forget." 
 
 They wrestled with him, panting, there in the trench ; 
 fought him till the madness passed. Shells screamed and 
 crashed about them as they wrestled ; splinters hissed into 
 the slime. But for the moment these four had forgotten shell- 
 fire. . . . 
 
 Stumbled a man through the mud, a man who shouted, 
 " Artillery Liaison Officer. Colonel wants the Artillery 
 Liaison Officer." 
 
 Automatically, Peter staggered off round the traverse. A 
 shell screamed down. He fell on his face ; heard the splinters 
 whizz over ; picked himself up, saw the exploded S.O.S. 
 rockets fizzling red and useless among a knot of crouching 
 stretcher-bearers. Then he was slithering down the mud- 
 chute, slithering to a moment's safety. 
 
 4 
 
 Peter stood on his feet ; blinked about him in the half- 
 light. The dug-out seemed full of men. At his table sat the 
 Colonel. Peter walked across to him, saluted. 
 
 " You sent for me, sir." 
 
 A shell crashed to ground thirty feet above ; rocking the 
 solid concrete. " Anybody hurt ? " roared the doctor. A 
 moment's pause ; then, " No, sir," from the top of the mud- 
 chute. 
 
 " Can't you do anything to stop this ? " asked the Colonel. 
 "I'll lose half of my men before the show starts." 
 
 Peter looked at his wrist-watch ; saw that the face of it
 
 312 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 was caked solid with mud. He wiped away the mud with his 
 sleeve. The hands pointed to eleven o'clock. 
 
 " I'm afraid not, sir. There's no time to get a message 
 back. . . ." 
 
 Came voices from above : " Easy on there, mates. Let me 
 get down first. That's right, now his feet. All right, sir, 
 you'll be all right in a minute." Light vanished. Followed 
 the sound of heavy bodies slithering down the mud-chute. 
 Light appeared again. Peter was aware of a huge officer, 
 helmetless, red bandage across his forehead an officer who 
 staggered to his feet, cursing someone who was trying to 
 assist him. " Damn you," he cursed, " damn you, I don't want 
 your help. I'm all right, perfectly all right, I tell you. ..." 
 
 " Of course you are, old chap. Of course you are," the 
 doctor's voice sounded perfectly calm. " You come over here 
 with me. We'll fix you up in a minute. ..." 
 
 " But I told him to keep his helmet on, I told them all to 
 keep their helmets on. ..." 
 
 " Quite right, old chap. Quite right. Now just you sit 
 down for a moment." 
 
 The officer sank down in a gloomy corner of the cave. 
 Doctor bent over him. Delirium ebbed away to vague 
 mutterings. Another shell exploded above. 
 
 " You'd better stop here a bit," said the Colonel. 
 
 For a second, Peter Jackson hesitated. Brain, still numb 
 from the shell-kick, conveyed no message to faltering limbs. 
 Then that fine sixth sense which is the inmost core of courage 
 seemed to whisper : ' And your men ! ' 
 
 " I think I'd better be getting back, sir," said Peter. . . . 
 
 5 
 
 Pain stabbed at him as he hauled himself up the mud-chute 
 to open air. At the top of the chute, he lay gasping. A 
 stretcher-bearer helped him to his feet. " Thanks." Peter 
 leaned heavily on his stick. He began to cough; stood 
 there, racking his throat out. . . . 
 
 The barrage had shifted to the left ; seemed to be slacken- 
 ing. Only every now and then a near crash shook the 
 ground. Peter stopped coughing. Fear departed from his 
 soul. The brain cleared. He knew himself very weak. But 
 he knew, also, knew definitely, that he was not yet beaten ; 
 that enough will-power for the ultimate effort still remained 
 in him. 
 
 'The last ounce,' he thought again, 'the last absolute
 
 The Last Ounce 313 
 
 ounce ' ; and started to toil back through the mud. In his 
 absence, riflemen had packed the trench : he edged past 
 them ; found his own men. 
 
 " How much longer, sir ? " asked Fmlayson. 
 
 " About half an hour." 
 
 They waited in silence. All about them, infantrymen 
 were grousing. " Wish we wasn't in the supports." " Sup- 
 ports always gets it wust." " Must have had a lot of casu- 
 alties already." . . . Five walking wounded, ticketed tunics 
 buttoned over strapped arms, accoutrements abandoned, 
 puttees cut away, came toiling towards them through the 
 mud ; edged past them ; disappeared wordless round the 
 traverse. . . . Shelling increased. . . . Someone on their 
 left cried, "Stretcher-bearers. Hi! Stretcher-bearers." 
 . . . They saw a body on a stretcher heaved up out of the 
 trench; saw two men bearing it steadily along the open 
 ground behind. . . . More shells came, but the bearers 
 trudged on. ... A fleet of British 'planes sailed across Tr6nes 
 Wood, stayed circling above them. 
 
 " Ten minutes more," said Peter Jackson. He looked over 
 the parapet towards the brown cleft below. He turned to his 
 two signallers, repeated his instructions : "I shall make for 
 that shell-hole the moment our barrage starts." 
 
 Again, he took his place at the parapet ; glued his eyes to 
 the ground in front. 
 
 " Five minutes more," he called over his shoulder. . . . 
 "Three minutes." . . . "Two." . . . "One." . . . 
 
 Finlayson and Mucksweat heard a vast rush as of wings 
 above their heads ; saw Peter scramble over the parapet ; 
 followed him blind in a mad, stumbling run. The three 
 dropped in a panting heap to earth. 
 
 " So far, so good," gasped Peter, extricating his head from 
 Finlayson 's legs. He hauled himself on his elbows up the 
 side of the crater ; looked over. A hundred yards in front of 
 him a row of helmets marked the front line. Beyond these 
 billowed a roaring wall of flame-spangled smoke. Above the 
 wall, red and green rockets soared despairingly. Shells 
 whistled over him towards the wall a stream of shells 
 ceaseless. And always the wall billowed higher, blurring the 
 rockets. Now, the helmets rose from the ground, became 
 men a long line of men who walked slowly towards the 
 flaming wall, lay down at foot of it. Sunk road, chalk-pits, 
 desert beyond, skyline everything had disappeared. Peter 
 eould see only the wall, the wall and the prone figures at foot 
 of it.
 
 314 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Suddenly, flame died out in the wall : the prone figures 
 rose ; flung themselves forward into the smoke. . . . From 
 behind the smoke came the sharp reports of bombs bursting, 
 little whickers of machine-gun fire. . . . The wall thinned, 
 revealing the sunk road, glimmer of chalk-mounds, of shapes 
 struggling with shapes. . . . But beyond the struggling 
 shapes, other shapes moved forward with the moving smoke. 
 
 Peter called over his shoulder, " Come on, you chaps, we've 
 got 'em." The three rose to their feet, dashed downhill. As 
 they ran, they were unconscious of everything except the one 
 strong desire to get forward. All about them, from the edges 
 of Trdnes Wood, from Arrowhead Copse, other men were 
 running ; men moved by that same desire ; men equally 
 unconscious, in that one supreme moment, of the enemy bar- 
 rage that screamed over their heads, plunged to ground in 
 bolts of flame behind them. 
 
 Finlayson reached the old front line first ; stumbled as he 
 leaped ; fell headlong. Peter and Mucksweat, slowing their 
 pace, scrambled deliberately across ; helped the bombardier 
 to his feet. For a second they looked back. " You were 
 right about that shell-hole, sir," gasped Finlayson. " They're 
 knocking hell out of the supports." 
 
 " Come on," said Peter Jackson. " They'll be barraging 
 the sunk road next. ..." 
 
 He set off at a swift walk ; scrambled up a bank ; dropped 
 down, the pair of them at his heels. 
 
 In the sodden roadway, between the bloodstained chalk, 
 the killers were still at work ; ferreting the Beast with bombs, 
 braining him as he crawled from his hole. The place stank 
 of cordite, of blood and the flesh of men. But the three 
 gunners had not been sent out to kill. . . . 
 
 Peter, scrambling first up the chalk-bank, saw a shattered 
 roadway ahead ; caught a glimpse of two gigantic chalk- 
 mounds, of the barrage beyond ; heard a terrific explosion 
 overhead ; felt a clanging hammer -stroke on his helmet, knew 
 frightful pain at his heart ; knew a great darkness a 
 darkness through which he sank to merciful oblivion. . . . 
 
 Mucksweat and Finlayson, blown back by the shell, 
 looked at each other for one panting second. Then they, too, 
 scrambled up the bank. 
 
 Peter had fallen forward on his face, left arm doubled 
 beneath him. There was a great dent as from a hammer in 
 his helmet. They turned him over. He gave no sign of 
 life. Blood oozed from the corner of his mouth. " Is he 
 dead ? " asked Mucksweat.
 
 The Last Ounce 315 
 
 Half a dozen blood-mad infantrymen surged past. 
 
 "Dead or alive, we can't leave him here," Bom hardier 
 Finlayson's eyes took one quick glance at the chalk-mounds, 
 Bombardier Finlayson's mind took one quick decision. " Can 
 you carry him, Muckie ? " 
 
 " Carry him ? " Mucksweat laughed. " Carry ten of 
 him." 
 
 " Take him to those dug-outs then. Do you understand ? 
 There'll be some cover there. And wait till I come back." 
 
 " What are you going to do, Bombardier ? " 
 
 " Me ! I'm going to do his Job, of course. What the hell 
 do you think we're here for a picnic ? " 
 
 Lips set, eyes resolute, Finlayson set off down the shattered 
 road towards the disappearing infantrymen. Mucksweat 
 bent down ; wound his two bear's arms round Peter's body ; 
 picked him up like a child ; and started for cover. 
 
 6 
 
 For an hour and three-quarters, ' B ' Battery's guns had been 
 thudding steady fire one round per gun per minute. For 
 an hour and three-quarters Cresswell and Charlie Henry had 
 been walking from shelter to quivering shelter asking always 
 the same question getting always a different reply. 
 
 " What's your range, Sergeant ? " 
 
 " Four seven hundred, sir. Four seven fifty, sir. Four 
 eight hundred, sir." 
 
 Sandiland, watch at wrist, firing-schedule in hand, stood 
 at the mouth of the telephone-pit. Every five minutes he 
 called across to his subalterns, " What are you at now ? " 
 referred their answers to the paper in his hand ; ticked off the 
 ranges. 
 
 There was no excitement at the battery, and, for the 
 moment, no danger. Work proceeded automatically. 
 
 Right and left of the battery, in the valleys behind and 
 even among the woods in front, other batteries were firing in 
 the same orderly, unhurried manner. The great voice of 
 massed pieces rolled and echoed in continuous thunder to the 
 observers in the sausage-balloons behind them, to the ob- 
 servers in the high-circling 'planes above. Only the makers 
 of that thunder were deaf to it, isolated ; cut off by the 
 thudding of their own labours from all other sound. Stead- 
 fastly they worked eye and hands, ears and mind, con- 
 centrated on the leaping guns. 
 
 But Sandiland's mind was not with the guns.
 
 3i6 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Any news ? " he called down into the telephone-pit. 
 
 " Message just coming through from Headquarters, sir." 
 A pause " Have we heard from our F.O.O. yet ? " 
 
 " Tell them No. And get on to Blenkinsop again." 
 
 " Blenkinsop's on, sir." Sandiland stepped down into the 
 pit a square, tin-roofed cave scooped from the soil ; took the 
 instrument from his telephonist. " Captain Sandiland speak- 
 ing. Are they still barraging Trdnes Wood ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. Firing's very heavy. Five-nines I think, sir. " 
 
 The battery-commander returned to his guns. What 
 could have happened to Peter ? Charrington, Liaison Officer 
 on the right, had already reported twice ; ' B ' Battery's sig- 
 nallers had overheard the messages repeated to Headquarters : 
 ' Infantry had gone over ': ' Infantry were in Guillemont.' 
 
 Sandiland tried to put away apprehension. P. J. was no 
 fool. P. J. knew that no message of his could affect the 
 ordered barrage. P. J. would not risk a runner's life till he 
 had definite information. And yet, Sandiland was afraid. 
 His conscience reproached him. He ought to have made P. J. 
 report sick days ago. If anything happened to P. J. ... 
 Sandiland wrenched thought back to his guns. 
 
 One fifty-three ! Already the figures on the range-dials 
 marked six thousand yards. In another few minutes they 
 would reach maximum elevation. " Six one hundred, sir," 
 called Henry's voice. "Six one fifty six two hundred. . . ." 
 
 Undoubtedly, something must have happened to P. J. ! 
 
 "Six two fifty six three hundred." Still the guns 
 lifted. . . . 
 
 " Bombardier Finlayson on the 'phone, sir." The battery- 
 commander dived to his telephone-pit as a rabbit dives to its 
 burrow, seized the instrument. 
 
 " Our infantry crossed the Ginchy road at 12.50," 
 Finlayson's voice came so distinct over the wire that Sandiland 
 could almost hear the pant in it " and are pushing on. 
 Patrols are going forward to Lousy Wood." 
 
 Sandiland wrote down and checked back the message ; 
 said, " Call up the Adjutant on the other 'phone." But the 
 instrument at his ear went on : 
 
 " Is that Captain Sandiland speaking ? This is Bom- 
 bardier Finlayson, sir. Mr. Jackson was hit just after the 
 infantry went over. I left him with Gunner Mucksweat. . . ." 
 
 " Mr. Purves speaking, sir." 
 
 Sandiland said, " Wait, Bombardier," grabbed the second 
 telephone, repeated Finlayson's first message (" Splendid," 
 murmured the voice of Purves) " and I want to speak to the
 
 The Last Ounce 317 
 
 Colonel. . . . Thanks. ... Is that you, sir ? ... Jackson's 
 been hit. ... I don't know, sir. ... I'm to send out 
 another F.O.O. . . . Very good, sir." 
 
 The battery-commander handed back the instrument with 
 a little gesture of disgust. Technically, of course, Revels- 
 worth was right. They ought to send out another F.O.O. 
 Still, it seemed unnecessary risk of a valuable life. Whom 
 should he send ? ... He spoke to Finlayson again. Fin- 
 layson had not seen Mr. Jackson since he was hit. Finlayson 
 could not say if Mr. Jackson were alive or dead. Finlayson 
 had obtained his information, come straight back with it. 
 Finlayson, too, was in the right. . . . 
 
 And the battery-commander thought : ' Which is worse ? 
 To face danger oneself or send others into it ? There's the 
 very devil of a barrage on Trdnes Wood, and the sunk road 
 will be hell. Cresswell's got a wife and eight kids. Henry's 
 never been in a show before.' 
 
 Then he took a five-franc piece from his pocket ; said, 
 " Heads Henry. Tails Cresswell " ; and spun the coin in 
 the air. 
 
 7 
 
 The mind of Peter Jackson, emerging slowly from the dark 
 of unconsciousness, was aware of pain.^Thought followed \ 
 then sight. 
 
 He was in a dug-out, lying at the foot of deep steps atop 
 of which light glimmered. Opposite to him, propped against 
 the wall, sat a wounded officer a subaltern of infantry. The 
 subaltern, who was smoking a cigarette, said : " Hallo. 
 Thought you were dead." Then he shouted up the steps : 
 " Hi, you gunner hi ! " 
 
 Mucksweat 's voice answered, " Yes, sir. What is it, sir ? " 
 
 " Your officer isn't dead. He's just opened his eyes." 
 
 The huge coal-miner clambered backwards down the 
 steps, bent over Peter ; and Peter spoke to him, vaguely, as 
 men speak in delirium : "My water-bottle. Do you under- 
 stand ? My water-bottle." Mucksweat unslung his own 
 " No. Not yours. Mine." 
 
 Mucksweat pulled out his clasp-knife it was impossible 
 to unsling the bottle without moving the man cut the straps, 
 uncorked, put the aluminium neck to Peter's lips. 
 
 The whisky-and-water a good tumbler-full of which 
 splashed over his face as he drank woke Peter to effort. He 
 sat up ; looked at his throbbing bandaged arm ; asked where 
 he was.
 
 3i3 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Mucksweat explained : " You remember they chalk- 
 heaps, sir ? Well, we're inside one of them. Bombardier 
 said I was to wait here till he come back." 
 
 " Who bandaged this arm of mine ? " 
 
 "I did, sir." 
 
 " Good lad." Gradually Peter's aching brain pieced the 
 situation together. He could just remember the scramble 
 out of the sunk road, the hammer-clang on his helmet. 
 " Where's the bombardier gone to ? " 
 
 " I dunno, sir. He said he was a-going to do your job." 
 
 " A-going to do your job." The words acted like a spur 
 on Peter's dazed mind. " Do my job ? " he echoed. " I'll 
 see the fellow in hell first. Give me a hand, will you ? " 
 
 Wonderingly, the coal-miner obeyed ; and Peter staggered 
 somehow to his feet. The dug-out spun round him ; his arm 
 hurt abominably : but he was going to do his job oh, un- 
 doubtedly, he was going to do his job. It lay, the job he was 
 going to do, somewhere up above up those damned steps 
 blast the steps there must be millions of them and the 
 light atop of them had gone out. . . . 
 
 " Better lay him down again," said the infantry subaltern 
 calmly. " I expect it's only a faint." 
 
 He lit a cigarette, looked down at his own legs, both 
 broken by machine-gun bullets, thought : ' They can't get us 
 away before dark ' ; and went to sleep. 
 
 Mucksweat, left alone with two unconscious officers, picked 
 up the smouldering cigarette, put it in his mouth, scratched 
 head meditatively and returned tojris watch at the stair- 
 head. 
 
 8 
 
 A torch, flashing in Peter's face, recalled him to a moment's 
 consciousness. A voice asked : 
 
 " How are we going to get him up those steps, sir ? " 
 
 Answered another voice : " Tote him on a blanket if we 
 can find one, Bombardier." 
 
 Said Peter Jackson : " That's you, isn't it, Henry ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Well all I can say is," the words were hardly audible 
 "that it's sporting of you to have come. ..." 
 
 Then he fainted again : leaving Charles Henry, American 
 Citizen, to puzzle out the exact meaning of the sentence as he 
 had puzzled his way through the barrages on Trones Wood.
 
 PART XXX 
 BROKEN MEN 
 
 CHARLIE TEBBITS, faithless to all traditions of the 
 building trade, kept his promised date : and 
 Patricia moved into Sunflowers by the end of June. 
 She ' moved in ' without servants or children ; 
 assisted only by a great grenadier of a woman who came from 
 Arlsfield Village just too late to prepare breakfast and left 
 just too early to prepare dinner. But Patricia had been 
 homeless for eighteen months, long enough to revel even in the 
 discomforts of home-making scamped meals, chairs without 
 loose-covers, curtainless windows, floor-boards minus carpets, 
 workmen all day and solitude all night. 
 
 The more she grew to know this house she had fallen in love 
 with, the more she fell in love with it. 
 
 Still, infatuation apart, it really was a jolly house ; and 
 by the time that Charlie Tebbits, assisted by Harry Tebbits, 
 old man Tebbits, Miss Tebbits, and an amazing handyman 
 from Little Arlsfield, had laid carpets, tacked down linoleum, 
 hung curtains, arranged old furniture and carried up new, 
 Patricia could honestly look round and say to herself : ' This 
 is just how I planned things, the day I first saw it.' 
 
 She spent hours wandering from the berugged cream- 
 papered hall into Peter's little study (for which Charlie 
 Tebbits was still making her walnut book-shelves to match 
 Peter's writing-table), through the dining-room and the 
 servants' quarters ; up the balustered dark-blue-carpeted 
 staircase (stopping always to look out from the window-seat 
 on the half-landing) to the nurseries, gay with Cecil Aldin 
 hunting-friezes, with chintz curtains and shiny white furni- 
 ture ; and from there (giving only a casual glance at the spare 
 room) into her own bedroom and Peter's dressing-room 
 white-papered both, both looking out across the orchard 
 towards the river. 
 
 Her own room, except for the blue carpet saved from the 
 cupidity of M. van Woumen, contained no relics of Lowndes
 
 320 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Square : the low, gray-painted Empire bedstead of carved 
 wood and basket-work she had ' looted ' from her father's 
 house in Harley Street ; Tebbits' ingenuity provided flounced 
 dressing-table to match ; artfully enclosed wall-spaces evaded 
 the difficulties of a wardrobe ; the fireplace (as all the fire- 
 places at Sunflowers) was of irreproachable white tilework, 
 devoid of unnecessary brass and iron. But Peter's dressing- 
 room contained all Peter's own familiar furniture his 
 mahogany bow-fronted wardrobe, his brass bedstead, the glass- 
 doored wall-case of guns and hunting-crops and fishing-rods, 
 his collection of sporting prints. 
 
 " He must like the place," she kept saying to herself, " he 
 will like it." 
 
 For Sunflowers represented though Patricia would never 
 have admitted the fact her last bid for Peter's love. Their 
 house in Lowndes Square had been a ready-made residence, 
 full of Peter's inherited chattels : entering it, she too had 
 become his chattel mere Mrs. Jackson. Whereas Sun- 
 flowers was of her own rinding, her own creating : the little 
 house she, Patricia, would make ' home ' for her man against 
 his return from the wars. 
 
 2 
 
 Rainy June turned to a glorious July. Patricia found two 
 servants ; engaged a gardener ; sent for the children ; dis- 
 missed their governess ; was ' called on ' by the vicar and half 
 a dozen neighbours and began to buy her experience of life 
 on a moderate income in the English home counties. 
 
 Peter's wife possessed all the town-dweller's illusions about 
 living in ' the country ' : one took a ' little place ' and 
 banished care automatically ; one's servants smiled and sang 
 about their deft work ; one's garden grew by itself (" the man 
 does everything, my dear "), provided vegetables, eggs, fruit 
 and flowers, as a department-store provides groceries ; while 
 one wandered about in a floppy hat with a pair of scissors, or 
 went for long walks in green lanes where one met the most 
 attractive people the Squire, the sporting parson, peasant 
 women who curtsied and farmers' boys who touched their 
 hats. And in this paradise chiefly owing to the honesty of 
 the country-folk as compared with the rascality of town one 
 spent literally nothing at all ! 
 
 Strong in that last belief, Patricia came like a godsend to 
 the hungry village of Arlsfield : and Arlsfield robbed her as 
 the country mouse robs the town mouse with effective
 
 Broken Men 321 
 
 simplicity. Roger Fry, the gardener a hulking fellow with a 
 sly smile acted principal go-between. 
 
 " The Grounds," said Roger Fry, " needed a lot of seeing 
 to." Patricia agreed. Roger Fry saw to them : he made her 
 a sunk lawn at the foot of the paddock, near the walnut tree 
 and pouched a week's extra wages over the price of turf : 
 he regra veiled the ' drive ' and extracted five shillings a load 
 commission from the gravel-supplier : he re-fenced the 
 orchard on the same financial basis. 
 
 Then she desired chickens and Roger Fry found them 
 for her (" ten-and-sixpence each, mum, and the best little lot 
 I've seen for a long tune "). Also, Roger Fry arranged with 
 a friend of his for the supply of chicken-corn and by a 
 judicious admixture of maize contrived to keep the four-year- 
 old biddies in lay for nearly six weeks. 
 
 Grocer, greengrocer (she had arrived too late to plant her 
 summer vegetables), butcher and baker, ironmonger and 
 laundrywoman all joined the league of plunder : keeping 
 back their accounts till such time as memory would find it 
 impossible to check them. 
 
 Still, it was a joyous conspiracy, a conspiracy of smiles and 
 " Thank you, madams," and, at the outset, none of the 
 conspirators enjoyed it half so much as their victim. 
 
 For nearly two months, Patricia was happy as husbandless 
 woman can be. She had her disappointments, of course : the 
 servants who made her long for the efficient Smith of Lowndes 
 Square days, the vicar's oleaginous questing after charity 
 subscriptions, the persistence of callers when she wanted to 
 be by herself, the loneliness when she would have liked 
 company : but these were very trivial clouds in the soft sky 
 of a sunlit existence. 
 
 She began the re-education of her children ; finding them 
 hopelessly backward in everything except parrot knowledge. 
 She gossiped with old man Tebbits, who sold her a piglet at 
 the exact market-price of the day, provided her with milk 
 and butter ; but kept shut mouth about the delinquencies of 
 ' they Arlsfielders. ' She entertained her father for a week-end, 
 the Rawlings to a supercilious lunch, and her brother Jack 
 still only a Gunner Captain and rather disgruntled at having 
 been transferred to a Kitchener battery for half his leave. 
 She superintended Fry's greasing and oiling of the Crossley, 
 out of commission till ' after the war ' ; and explored the 
 country afoot. 
 
 She got up at seven, and went to bed at ten, living every 
 minute of the fifteen wonderful hours. 
 
 x
 
 322 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Towards the end of August, Francis Gordon arrived to 
 stay for a week, while Prout engaged what he called a ' female,' 
 and got Glen Cottage ready for occupation. Patricia had not 
 seen her cousin for two months ; and the first sight of him, 
 stepping carefully down from the hired trap, shocked her. 
 
 It was not his physical infirmities she noticed at that first 
 meeting, but his face. She remembered him smooth-faced 
 boy, she saw him now a middle-aged man. His hair had 
 grayed at the temples ; his eyes had lost their laughter. He 
 walked easily enough, using only one stick ; but he no longer 
 held himself upright, his shoulders drooped as though he 
 carried a burden on them. 
 
 She led him to a deep chair in the ' hall ' ; brought him 
 tea ; began to question him. 
 
 " So they invalided you out after all ? " 
 
 " Yes. I could have got an office job : but I wouldn't 
 take it." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " Frankly, Pat, I don't know. Somehow or other, I feel 
 done in. It wasn't so bad in hospital, you see, one had other " 
 he looked down at his legs " cripples to talk to. But 
 London . . . No, I don't think I could stick London. The 
 streets, you know ; and getting in and out of Tubes. People 
 jostle one." 
 
 " But what are you going to do ? " 
 
 " Oh, write, I suppose." 
 
 The last sentence struck Patricia as the most hopeless 
 words she had ever heard from human lips. She felt desper- 
 ately sorry yet furiously angry with him. She said to 
 herself : ' Here is a man who is almost whole. He has enough 
 money to live on. He has brains. The one thing that he 
 cares for in the world is literature, there is nothing to prevent 
 him . . .' 
 
 But at that, Patricia's anger vanished : for intuition, and 
 her own love for Peter, told her clearly that ' literature ' was 
 not the one thing in the world for which Francis Gordon most 
 cared. She remembered the photograph incident at Mecklin- 
 burgh Square, the postcard she had read unwittingly at 
 Brighton, his look when she chaffed him about being in love 
 at the end of her Christmas Eve visit to Endsleigh Gardens. 
 Her curiosity itched to ask him about this mysterious girl in 
 America. Why didn't he marry her ? Or was she already 
 married ? Wouldn't she have anything to do with him ? 
 Had they quarrelled ? Couldn't they make it up ? 
 
 But Francis, during his stay at Sunflowers, repelled every
 
 Broken Men 323 
 
 attempt to extract confidences ; kept conversation rigidly to 
 the impersonal. Somehow, he frightened Patricia. It seemed 
 to her as though he had utterly lost interest in life. Except 
 for his own writing-room, he left all arrangements at Glen 
 Cottage to Prout. The war he hardly mentioned. " As far 
 as I'm concerned," he said, "it's over." Literature he 
 referred to contemptuously as " the last resource of people 
 who hadn't the capacity for doing real things." 
 
 f : Even the children noticed this change. "What's the 
 matter with Uncle Francis ? " asked Evelyn, now a pre- 
 cocious, long-legged creature of eight. " He always used tc 
 talk such a lot, and now he hardly talks at all." 
 
 " He's got a bad leg, dear," explained her mother. 
 
 " But he doesn't talk with his leg, mummy," put in 
 precocity : and Patricia was driven to the usual : " Go on 
 with your lessons, darling. Uncle Francis will be quite well 
 again soon." 
 
 But would Francis ever be well again ; well in mentality ; 
 able to reconstruct his life ? Patricia's reason said ' Yes ' to 
 these questions ; Patricia's instinct said ' No.' And when he 
 finally shuffled off, through Tebbits' cow-yard, down the hill- 
 side path to his new home, her fantasy pictured him a stricken 
 beast, crawling away to die in solitude. . . . 
 
 But next day's telegram from the War Office dispelled all 
 fantasies. Peter was wounded, back in England, in London : 
 the world, for Patricia, shrank to the size of her husband's 
 left arm. 
 
 3 
 
 1- Peter's wife had waited thirteen months for that telegram ; 
 and, once her anxious eyes deciphered its exact meaning, she 
 knew no feeling except relief. Her man was home again, out 
 of it, not for a week's exeat but for months, perhaps for good ! 
 They would give him leave. He would see Sunflowers. She 
 would nurse him back to health. . . . 
 
 She sent Fry into Arlsfield with telegrams to her father and 
 the invalid ; she packed her bag ; she urged the children to 
 behave themselves during her absence ; she borrowed Teb- 
 bits' trap, and caught the 3.45 from Henley with exactly one 
 minute to spare. Neither in the trap, the train, nor the taxi 
 which whirled her through unfamiliar streets to her destination, 
 did she panic. 
 
 At the entrance to the hospital a, great barrack of a 
 building, set foursquare round a gravel courtyard difficulties 
 began. An R.A.M.C. sergeant, standing stiffly to attention
 
 324 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 informed Patricia that visitors were allowed only between two 
 and four p.m. She asked to see the Matron, and was con- 
 ducted down a cold stone corridor to an unfriendly waiting- 
 room. After ten minutes appeared a forbidding woman of 
 uncertain age, dressed in the regulation Red Cross uniform, 
 who said : " She knew of no patient named Jackson in the 
 officers' ward ; but she would make inquiries." 
 
 Patricia waited another ten minutes. The Matron 
 returned. She had discovered Peter : he was as well as could 
 be expected : Mrs. Jackson could come to see him the following 
 afternoon. 
 
 " But I want to see him at once," insisted Patricia. 
 3" I'm afraid we can't allow that." The Matron smiled a 
 superior smile. " It's against orders." 
 
 " Then you must disobey orders." 
 " My dear Mrs. Jackson " began the woman. 
 
 But at that, Patricia 's^temper exploded. 
 
 " Don't ' dear Mrs. Jackson ' me," she flashed out. " He 
 may be your patient. But he's my husband. And I'm going 
 to see him." 
 
 V The Registrar might let you. I can't." 
 
 " Then please go and fetch the Registrar." 
 
 There appeared, after a further twenty minutes during 
 which Patricia's annoyance rose to fever-point, a pompous but 
 kindly individual with drooping moustaches, who peered at 
 her through gold pince-nez, and said : 
 
 " The Matron tells me you want to see your husband. We 
 really oughtn't to allow it, you know. Really, we oughtn't. 
 Of course, if he were in any danger, it would be a different 
 thing." 
 
 "It's rather natural I should want to see him, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Entirely, my dear young lady, entirely. But we have 
 to think of the other patients, you see. Still, as a great 
 favour, and just for ten minutes ..." 
 
 He led her up stone staircases, down endless miles of 
 corridors where blue-clad patients shuffled and limped on 
 noiseless slippers, till they came to a white-painted doorway, 
 marked, ' Officers Only ' ; up yet another staircase to a bare 
 half -landing. Here a capped nurse met them. 
 
 "This is Mrs. Jackson," said the Registrar. "I've 
 promised her she may see her husband. But only for ten 
 minutes, Sister. Only for ten minutes." 
 
 " Is he very bad ? " asked Patricia. 
 
 " He's asleep, I think," said the sister. 
 
 The Registrar made his adieux : clattered off downstairs.
 
 Broken Men 325 
 
 The two women passed into the ward : a long, bare room of 
 ten beds whose occupants looked up incuriously at the 
 accustomed swish of the sister's linen skirt, displaying 
 scarcely more interest on sight of Patricia. 
 
 The last bed of all was screened. 
 
 " He's in here," whispered the sister. She shifted one of 
 the screens noiselessly ; and Patricia tip-toed in. 
 
 For a moment, the joy of seeing him eclipsed judgment. 
 Then it was no longer merely the loving woman, Peter's wife, 
 who looked down on him ; but Patricia Baynet, the doctor's 
 daughter, sickness-wise by inheritance. 
 
 He lay on his back, bandaged arm outside the coverlet. 
 In the shadow cast by the screens his unshaved face shewed 
 thin and fine-drawn. She hardly noticed these symptoms ; 
 she had expected and discounted them. She noticed some- 
 thing else his breathing. It came spasmodically, in quick 
 uneven jerks through half -opened lips. Listening to it, she 
 had the premonition of danger. Twice, during the ten minutes 
 she stood watching him, he seemed about to awaken ; moaned 
 in his sleep. . . . The sister signalled to her that it was time 
 to leave him. Very quietly she withdrew, and they passed 
 out of the ward again. 
 
 " Well," asked the sister, " what do you think of him ? " 
 
 Patricia looked doubtfully at the unintelligent eyes under 
 the white cap. " How long has he been here ? " she asked. 
 
 " Two days, I think. I've only just come to this 
 ward." 
 
 " Could I see the doctor who's attending him ? " 
 
 " He's left, I think. But the Orderly Officer's in his room. 
 I'll take you to him if you like." 
 
 They found the Orderly Officer, an ascetic-looking young 
 man, seated at a large desk, telephone in front of him, stylo in 
 hand. He offered Patricia a seat, listened carefully to her 
 questions. 
 
 " Yes," said Captain Territt, " your husband's been here 
 two days. I saw him when he came in. He told me that a 
 piece of shrapnel hit him on the helmet. Slight case of 
 concussion, I expect. He'll soon get over that. And he's got 
 a touch of bronchial catarrh. Exposure, you know." 
 
 " When did you take his temperature last ? " 
 
 " Five o'clock, I expect." He turned to the nurse. 
 " What was it, Sister ? " 
 
 The girl hesitated. " I I didn't take it. He seemed so 
 sound asleep." 
 
 " Well, please go and do so at once/'
 
 326 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 The girl hurried out of the room. " We're frightfully 
 understaffed, you know,!' explained the doctor. Patricia 
 looked at him, summed him up. She was half mad with 
 anxiety ; but she spoke without a trace of emotion. " May I 
 use your telephone, doctor ? " " Certainly." She pulled the 
 instrument towards her ; called up her father's number. 
 
 The nurse, returning white-faced, thermometer in hand, 
 heard her say : "Is that Jenkins speaking ? . . . This is 
 Mrs. Jackson. . . . Then you must put me through to his 
 consulting-room. ... Is that you, pater ? . . . Did you get 
 my wire ? . . . I'm at the hospital now. . . . No, he's very 
 ill, and I want you to come down at once. . . . It's pneu- 
 monia, I think. ... In half an hour. . . . Thanks awfully, 
 pater." 
 
 She hung up the receiver ; turned to Captain Territt . "It 
 is pneumonia, isn't it ? " 
 
 " I'm afraid so. The temperature's rather high." 
 
 " How high ? " 
 
 " A hundred and four point one, under the arm." Doctor 
 and sister hurried out of the room. 
 
 She waited their return ; waited miserably ; visioned 
 Peter fighting for breath as she had seen her brother Jack 
 fighting for breath, years and years ago, in the night -nursery 
 at Harley Street. All the relief at knowing him saved from 
 the firing-line, all the rosy expectations of his coming to 
 Sunflowers, faded like silly dreams. Supposing they had only 
 brought him home to die 1 
 
 Heron Baynet, entering with the quiet unhurried step of 
 the professional consultant, hardly recognised his daughter : 
 her face was so drawn with agony love-agony of which he 
 had never dreamed her capable. 
 
 " Am I in time ? " he asked, doubting the answer. 
 
 She rose, tottered towards him. " I don't know, pater. 
 I don't know anything. . . ." He caught the panic in her 
 voice, hardened to it. " Don't be hysterical, Pat. It does 
 you no good ; and it may harm Peter. Now, tell me exactly 
 what has happened and why you telephoned." 
 
 At the sound of his voice, nerve came back to her ; land 
 she told him of her suspicions, of their confirmation. 
 He was asleep, you say ? " asked Heron Baynet. 
 Yes." 
 
 On his back, or propped up ? " 
 On his back." 
 
 Oh, you women 1 " Heron Baynet smiled at his 
 daughter. " You know so much, and yet you know so little.
 
 Broken Men 327 
 
 If it had been as bad as you've imagined for the last half- 
 hour, do you think he could have slept ? Why, Pat, he'd have 
 been bolt upright, breathing fifty to the minute. . . ." 
 
 She said, very quietly : " But supposing I hadn't insisted 
 on seeing him. Supposing that idiot of a sister . . ." 
 
 A step sounded outside. Captain Territt came in ; 
 stiffened at sight of the civilian ; was introduced ; wilted at 
 mention of the civilian's name ; answered the technical 
 questions with the deference due to a consultant. Yes, the 
 patient had bronchial pneumonia. At least, in Doctor 
 Territt 's opinion it was bronchial pneumonia. Perhaps 
 Doctor Baynet would prefer to form his own opinion. . . . 
 
 The two members of the closest Trade Union in England 
 passed out together, leaving Patricia again alone. 
 
 Supposing they had only brought Peter back to die 1 
 
 4 
 
 Peter Jackson just escaped death. The pneumonia ran 
 its course two days of choking misery for him, of mad anxiety 
 for his wife then the passing of crisis the slow return to 
 painless breath and solid foods. 
 
 For the first forty-eight hours Patricia stayed by him. 
 The hospital staff, knowing her Heron Baynet's daughter, 
 made full amends : Matron grew kindly ; neglectful sister was 
 unremitting in service. On the third day, Peter said very 
 weakly, " Hello, old thing, what are you doing here ? " 
 and she went back to Harley Street a happy woman. 
 
 Followed a week of daily visits, during which she talked 
 and he listened. Temperature dropped to ninety-nine point 
 three. Wound in arm drained away its poison. She grew 
 nervous about her children, left alone with the servants ; ran 
 down to Sunflowers for the day ; found chaotic idleness ; 
 stayed the night ; straightened things out ; returned to town. 
 
 At the end of the second week her father pronounced his 
 patient definitely out of danger ; persuaded her to leave 
 London. She yielded hesitatingly, realizing for the first tune 
 the handicaps of reduced income lack of car, lack of governess 
 for the children, of efficient servants ; torn between her love 
 for the man and her duty to his home. 
 
 Peter himself, during that first fortnight, was too ill for 
 emotion. To be hi bed, to be under a solid roof, to be washed 
 these sensations contented him. He rather liked waking 
 at night to hear rain outside, turning to sleep with the thought, 
 ' Well, I'm out of that anyway.' He liked having his meals
 
 328 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 brought to him on clean china, the sound of women's voices. 
 He experienced a prof ound relief at the absence of danger. . . . 
 
 But as Peter passed from illness to convalescence, he grew 
 aware of new dangers. These dangers were manifold, and 
 each terrifying. Never, at the front, had he known fear as 
 he knew fear at home. 
 
 There was the Fear in Sleep a horror which woke him, 
 sodden with sweat, from visions of Bromley still dying in 
 Trones Wood, still dying but not yet dead. . . . There was 
 the Fear in Daylight a visionless misery, an immense black 
 cap which the soul donned or doffed at its own bitter will. 
 While that Fear lasted, the soul under the cap prayed in- 
 gratiatingly for death. . . . There was the Fear of the 
 Future, in which the future held no hope beyond the present : 
 and the Fear of the Present, when the present held no hope save 
 the future. . . . There was the Fear of Time when time 
 hung dead through eternity or spun so fast that none might 
 accomplish a second's labour between his cradle and his 
 grave. . . . There was the Fear of Pain, and the Fear of 
 Poverty, the Fear of being Sent Back to the Front, and the 
 Fear of having to Stop at Home : but strangest, strongest of 
 all the fears Peter learned in those first days was the Fear of 
 Consumption. 
 
 He used to lie for hours remembering Rolleston's story of 
 the gassed Canadian, hearing Rolleston's words about tubercle, 
 till every little cough seemed a warning of death : then the 
 Fear in Daylight would come to him, whispering, ' Perhaps 
 that is best,' and the Fear of Poverty would mutter, ' There'll 
 be the insurance money for them if you die. . . .' 
 
 Peter did not realize that these fears were among the 
 commonest symptoms of neurasthenia. Peter knew nothing 
 about neurasthenia, except that ' Pat's governor made rather 
 a hobby of it ' ; nothing about shell-shock beyond the army 
 dictum of the period, ' that it meant a chap got rather shocked 
 at being shelled.' His fears shamed him ; and so he hid them 
 away. 
 
 This almost impossible battle, the battle of the neuras- 
 thenic with his own soul, Peter Jackson entered on unaided 
 feeling himself lost to all honour, coward and traitor in sight 
 of his own manhood. Yet at the outset he fought well ; so 
 well that, while he remained in hospital, not even Heron 
 Baynet suspected his condition. . . . 
 
 At the end of his first month came letters from Garton, 
 from Sandiland and Purves. The Brigade had been moved 
 northwards (" quite close to where we first went into action,"
 
 Broken Men 329 
 
 wrote the censor-wise Carton). " Mr. Henry " was riding 
 Little Willie and had taken Jelks for groom ; Lodden was 
 home, ' sick ' ; Corporal Pitman had been promoted Sergeant. 
 It all seemed very far away from the bare echoing hospital, 
 from the gossip of the ward. . . . 
 
 Passed another month of aimless existence, varied only by 
 Patricia's weekly visits, by a letter from his brother Arthur, 
 by a box of cigars from Maurice Beresford, by a state-call of 
 Sir Hubert and Lady Rawlings. . . . 
 
 His arm healed rapidly. They took away his sling, 
 allowed him ' down ' to meals where he learned the Fear of 
 Eating in Public. He went for his first walk and discovered 
 the Fear of Traffic. Then, quite unexpectedly, he was sum- 
 moned to a Medical Board, at which three kindly men 
 examined his arm, tested his lungs, and asked him how he 
 ' felt in himself.' 
 
 " Quite all right," said Peter, " but of course I'd like to go 
 home for a bit." 
 
 They gave him three months' leave, and advised him to take 
 care of himself. " One never knows with lungs, you know," 
 said the President. . . . And Peter, the Fear of Consumption 
 eating out his last remnant of will-power, took train to the 
 home Patricia had planned for him.
 
 PART XXXI 
 
 THE NEW SCIENCE 
 
 i 
 
 INTO every marriage there comes times of crisis, when 
 man and woman gaze at each other dumbly across a 
 great wall of misunderstanding. Peter's homecoming 
 from hospital provided that crisis in his life and 
 Patricia's. 
 
 Poor Patricia I She had looked forward so rapturously to 
 having him at Sunflowers ; worked so hard to make the place 
 perfect. And now it seemed to her as though not only house 
 and children but she herself must be distasteful to him ; as 
 though even palship were ended. Night after night, his placid 
 kisses banished her to loneliness : night after wakeful night, 
 she watched the light in his dressing-room glimmer through 
 the chinks of the door between them. 
 
 Poor Patricia ! unable to realize that this man who an- 
 noyed her by the very placidity of his demeanour was 
 struggling every minute of the day and every hour of the 
 night to prevent his hands from trembling, his voice from 
 quivering, his every tone and every attitude from betraying 
 the terrors which were eating away his self-respect. 
 
 Poor Peter ! he strove so desperately to conceal his 
 miseries. Poor Peter ! who only succeeded by not voicing 
 them, in finally convincing his wife that the something he 
 strove so obviously to conceal from her was lack of affection. 
 
 Thus, brick by reticent brick he with his nameless, shame- 
 less fears, she with her certainty of love lost for ever these 
 two built up their pathetic wall of misunderstandings. 
 
 In all their lives they had never had so many opportunities 
 for companionship : in all their lives they had never been so 
 uncompanionable. They were always together but they 
 were never in'harmony. Mutual existence turned to a game of 
 finesse ' I mustn't let her know this/ ' I mustn't let him 
 see that.' Yet, outwardly, they remained a very ordinary 
 married couple. No visiting stranger, not even Francis,
 
 The New Science 331 
 
 whom they saw almost daily, perceived the barrier between 
 them. 
 
 Walking together, talking together, in the dining-room 
 with the children, in the garden with Fry, morning and 
 evening, the game went on. 
 
 And the man used to say to himself : ' O God, am I going 
 mad ? I am afraid, afraid. Everything frightens me. One 
 day she will know I am afraid. Then, she will despise me. 
 The servants know I am afraid ; they talk about me : I 
 cannot hear what they say, but I know they are talking about 
 me : they talk about me aJl the time. The children know I am 
 afraid. . . . Oh, God, what am I afraid of ? Of what am I 
 not afraid ? 1 wish to God I could go back to the front. 
 Death is simpler out there. And I am only fit for death, 
 because I am afraid to go back to the front. . . . She mustn't 
 know that I am afraid, she must never guess that I am 
 afraid." 
 
 And the woman used to say to herself : ' O God, what 
 is behind Peter's eyes ? He hates it all me, the children, 
 this house I have made for him. His voice praises, but his 
 heart condemns me. O God, if he'd only say what he is 
 thinking I We used to be pals once and that was not enough 
 for me. I used to call myself his chattel. Now, I am not 
 even chattel to him. We are strangers in a strange house. 
 He hates me. He mustn 't guess that I know of his hatred.' 
 
 The woman, at any rate, had work for anodyne. By now, 
 Patricia began to realize that country life on a moderate 
 income is not the simple paradise which town dwellers imagine 
 it. Children, house, servants, garden, animals all needed 
 her. The man Fry, grown arrogant on the proceeds of pecu- 
 lation, turned lazy, insubordinate ; required constant prodding. 
 Fanny and Elizabeth half-trained, utterly uneducated, liars 
 by inheritance of serfdom could not be trusted to work 
 unwatched. Also, accounts had begun to roll in. 
 
 None of these inevitable pettinesses would have been a 
 burden if she could have laughed over them with Peter. 
 But household affairs had always been taboo between them, 
 her job and hers only. They had made that rale in the 
 prosperity of three thousand a year ; and she was not the type 
 of woman to break it in the adversity of six hundred. More- 
 over, intuition warned her that he must, for the present, be 
 shielded from financial anxieties. 
 
 Peter, who had no work for anodyne and cherished all 
 the prejudices of the caste which is not accustomed to see its 
 womenfolk labour, watched her busied about the house, feeding
 
 332 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 her chickens, educating the children ; till the Fear of Poverty 
 wiped out all other fears, and he said to himself : ' This is the 
 way my clerks used to live ; I've brought her to this, I shall 
 bring her to worse than this . . .' Then he would take his 
 twelve-bore from the case in his dressing-room, drop a couple 
 of No. 5's into the breech, and slip through Tebbits' farm, 
 down the hill to Francis Gordon's cottage. 
 
 " Why the devil do you always bring that gun of yours ? " 
 Francis used to ask. 
 
 " Might see a rabbit." Invariably Peter gave the same 
 answer to his cousin's question : invariably he felt shamed 
 by it. 
 
 And when Peter used to ask, " Done any work, old man ? " 
 Francis would answer, " Oh, I'm just lying fallow for a bit." 
 But Francis was not even ashamed. . . . 
 
 2 
 
 Heron Baynet arrived at Sunflowers on Christmas Eve. 
 Nothing about the house suggested tragedy : the hedges were 
 clipped, the ground dug j holly decked the hall j above the 
 oak dining-table hung a bunch of mistletoe ; Peter's study 
 had been cleared for the children's tree and presents. The 
 day itself brought its usual gift-giving, its usual church-going, 
 the usual roast beef for lunch, the usual turkey, the usual 
 champagne and Francis Gordon who hobbled through 
 Tebbits' cow-yard in full evening kit and a fur coat for 
 dinner. 
 
 The usual Christmas dinner-party 1 Yet all through it 
 Heron Baynet felt conscious of tension. To his professional 
 mind, these three fairly ordinary people the young wife, 
 the convalescent and the invalided soldier seemed somehow 
 out of tune with the world and with each other ; he sensed 
 discord in the apparent harmony of their even small talk. 
 Remembering old suspicions he began to analyse them, to 
 look for tangible symptoms of that intangible tension. 
 
 What could be the trouble ? Covertly, he studied Peter. 
 The man looked thin, of course : that was to be expected 
 after his illness. He spoke rather more slowly than usual, 
 drank more than his share of wine, seemed to grip knife and 
 fork. ... 'I wonder,' thought Heron Baynet. Then 
 Fanny, entering hurriedly, caught her foot in the edge of the 
 carpet j stumbled ; recovered her balance. The doctor saw 
 Peter's face twitch for the fraction of a second ; saw the lower 
 Jaw drop, jerk Ixick into position as the fifth nerve sent its
 
 The New Science 333 
 
 message of control from the taut brain. ' Poor devil, ' thought 
 Heron Bay net. . . . 
 
 In the light of that subtle revelation, many things became 
 clear to the neurologist's mind : he understood his daughter's 
 occasional glances at her husband, Peter's carefully modulated 
 voice, the whole atmosphere of watchful distrust in which 
 these two must have been living since his son-in-law returned 
 from hospital. Professional instinct satisfied, he turned 
 his attention to Francis. 
 
 But nothing in Francis Gordon's demeanour betrayed 
 tension. On the contrary, he seemed compared with the 
 super-alertness of Peter and Patricia a mind gone mute. 
 He talked, and he ate, and he drank, like an automaton. 
 
 Meal over, Patricia left her three men alone in the small, 
 candle-lit dining-room. The maid brought coffee. 
 
 Peter produced cigars. Then he edged his chair towards 
 his father-in-law's ; began to talk medicine. 
 
 Peter opened very carefully, feeling his way with each 
 sentence towards the topic which for the moment obsessed 
 him : but it did not take the doctor's astute mind very long 
 to realize that he was being pumped for information. And 
 the information his son-in-law sought was all about one 
 subject tubercle. " At what age were people most liable 
 to consumption ? " " How did it start ? " " Was it heredi- 
 tary ? " " How long did it take to kill a man ? " " Could 
 it be cured ? " . 
 
 ' Now why on earth, ' thought Heron Baynet, ' does a 
 man who is apparently suffering from repressed shell-shock 
 want to know about tubercle ? ' 
 
 3 
 
 Heron Baynet had planned his return to London for Boxing 
 Day ; but he cancelled his appointments by wire, stayed 
 on. 
 
 It was a dull December afternoon ; and as he and Patricia 
 took the footpath across the paddock, picked their way under 
 leafless branches over slippery tree-roots, the woman could 
 not help contrasting this winter sombreness with the splendid 
 springtime when she and Francis had first found Sunflowers. 
 Then, the world had been one great promise : now, the world 
 and her own hope seemed withered, never to blossom again. 
 
 " I wanted to talk to you about Peter." Her father's voice
 
 334 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 interrupted reverie. " Does he ever fire that gun he carries 
 about all the time ? " 
 
 She looked up astonished. " No, I don't think he ever 
 does. Why do you ask, pater ? " 
 
 But Heron Baynet only muttered, " H'm, I thought not," 
 and walked on in silence. " You're worried about him, 
 aren't you ? " he said at last. 
 
 " A little," loyalty restrained her from giving the correct 
 reasons " he doesn't seem really well yet." 
 
 " He isn't. He's very far from well. He's about as ill 
 as anyone can be." 
 
 " Pater 1 " she stopped in her walk, and they stood facing 
 each other. " Not his lungs? " 
 
 " No " the man spoke very gently " not his lungs but 
 his mind. You've often heard me talk about shell-shock, 
 Pat ; and I've often bored you with my jargon of neuras- 
 thenia. Well, now you'll have to listen to it all over again. 
 Only this time, it's got a personal application." 
 
 He took her arm, and they resumed their walk, pacing 
 slowly among the trees. 
 
 " Peter," began Heron Baynet, " is suffering from acute 
 neurasthenia brought on partly by actual shell-shock and 
 partly by the general strain of war. In a weaker character 
 the symptoms would be perfectly plain shaky hand, general 
 jumpiness, irritability, forgetfulness. Peter is controlling 
 all these symptoms and heaven knows what impulses with 
 the result that, sooner or later, unless we can find some means 
 to save him, his mind will give way altogether." 
 
 " You don't mean that he'll go mad, pater? " Love and 
 horror mingled in Patricia's voice. 
 
 " Nothing of the sort," said her father angrily. " Neuras- 
 thenia isn't madness, any more than a sprained ankle is 
 madness. Neurasthenia is a mind-sprain ; and like all sprains 
 its primary treatment must be rest. Do you think Peter's 
 soul ever gives his mind a rest ? Not a bit of it ! Peter's 
 mind is afraid of going out by itself that's why he always 
 carries that gun but Peter's soul says to it, ' Afraid, are you ? 
 I'll teach you to be afraid ' ; and off he goes for a walk. 
 Result : he comes back with his mind a little more sprained 
 than when he started. Peter's mind wants his fingers to 
 shake, his body to start when it hears some sudden noise. 
 Peter's soul says to his mind, ' You let those fingers shake 
 and there'll be trouble.' Result : more mind-sprain." 
 
 Heron Baynet elaborated his theory of the ' soul and the 
 mind ' known also in the patter of neurologists as the ' mind
 
 The New Science 335 
 
 and the brain,' or the ' conscious and the subconscious ' 
 till he succeeded in making clear to Patricia that the thing 
 to be feared in Peter's case was not madness, a wrong-func- 
 tioning of the brain, but breakdown, a non-functioning of it. 
 
 " But surely, pater," she said at last, " if he's as bad as 
 you think, he'd have consulted you about it ? " 
 
 " My dear, he's afraid to." 
 
 "Afraid?" Patricia laughed incredulously: in spite 
 of all she had just heard, she could not yet bring herself to 
 believe Peter afraid of anything. " Afraid to consult you ? " 
 
 " Yes, afraid to consult me. Scared to death ! Don't 
 you see, Pat, that the whole trouble lies in that one word, 
 ' Fear.' Do you think that your so-called ' heroes ' aren't 
 afraid ? Of course they are otherwise they wouldn't be 
 heroes. The hero is the man who controls fear not the man 
 who doesn't feel it. But the process of controlling fear can't 
 go on indefinitely. Every man has his limit ..." 
 
 " But Peter I " she interrupted, still unbelieving. " Peter ! " 
 
 " Peter's gone beyond his limit and his fear-controlling 
 apparatus is out of order." Heron Baynet broke off for a 
 minute, resumed : "I felt, when he came home on leave in 
 April, that the strain was telling on him. Remember, Peter's 
 over thirty and he's had responsibilities all his life. What's 
 happened to him since he got rid of his last responsibility 
 Jackson's ? He tells us that he had a ' cushy time ' at Neuve 
 Eglise, that he had ' rather a rotten tune ' on the Somme. At 
 the end of the ' rather rotten time ' he comes home with a crack 
 on the head which keeps him unconscious for the best 
 part of three days, a wound in the fleshy part of the arm, and 
 bronchial pneumonia. How did he get bronchial pneumonia ? " 
 
 " Exposure," said Patricia. 
 
 " Exposure be sugared. He was picked up the same day. 
 By the way, has he ever spoken to you about consumption." 
 
 " Yes. Twice. He said the children ought to sleep in the 
 open air." 
 
 " Consumption is one of the particular fears he can't quite 
 control. That, I'm certain of. I wonder what his other 
 fears are or aren't." 
 
 For all her anxiety, Patricia could not restrain a feeling 
 of relief. One thing at least, her father's explanation had 
 taught her : that she might still win her husband's love 
 " Even if he is a coward," she said aloud. 
 
 " A coward ! " Heron Baynet snapped at the word as 
 he had snapped at the suggestion of madness. " A coward ! 
 Were you afraid before Primula was born ? "
 
 336 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " A little," she confessed. 
 
 " Well, multiply that fear by infinity and you will have 
 some idea of what Peter is going through. And remember, 
 you knew \ he knows nothing, except that he is afraid, and 
 that to be afraid is to be "Heron Baynet hesitated over the 
 word " caddish." 
 
 Silently, they began to retrace their steps. Already light 
 was failing among the trees. It seemed to Patricia that 
 she walked in cold shadows helpless. 
 
 " Can nothing be done ? " she said at last. 
 
 " Without his willingness to be treated nothing. 
 
 " Will he have to go back to the front in March ? " 
 
 For the first time that afternoon, her father laughed. 
 " Not if I know anything about Medical Boards, Pat. He 
 wouldn't last ten days with those lungs." The doctor grew 
 serious; " But that doesn't help us much. The damage 
 to his mind has got to be repaired somehow. You might 
 start the process ; I can't." 
 
 " I ? " The monosyllable carried infinite query. 
 
 " Yes. You, and you only. Get his confidence ; make 
 him tell you under pledge of secrecy why he carries that 
 gun, why he's afraid of consumption for the children. . ." 
 
 " Can't you talk to him, pater. He never opens his mouth 
 about intimate things to me. I," her voice faltered 
 " we're not such good friends as we used to be, pater." 
 
 Heron Baynet's voice did not falter. " I know you're 
 not, Pat. But you've got to be. These repressions are killing 
 Peter. Unless somebody can break them down, I won't be 
 answerable for the consequences. It's no use my talking to 
 him, he'd freeze up at once. Whereas you, you're his 
 wife. . . ." 
 
 " But, pater " 
 
 " Dash it, girl," the doctor's voice rose to fury " can't 
 you see that this is a matter of life or death ? You must make 
 him talk. Make him drunk if you like get drunk yourself 
 make love to him as if you were his mistress : but for God's 
 sake, make him talk." 
 
 Patricia blushed scarlet ; quickened her pace. 
 
 " And then ? " she asked. 
 
 " Persuade him somehow that he's got shell-shock, and 
 to consult me about it." For a moment the doctor forgot 
 his son-in-law ; neurasthenia and its treatment lay very near 
 his professional heart, and that heart was being steadily 
 broken by War Office neglect. " Two years I've been at 
 them," he burst out, " two years ! And they're only Just
 
 The New Science 337 
 
 beginning to nealize that a wound in the mind can be as fataJ 
 as a wound in the body." 
 
 By now, they had reached the paddock-gate, stood gazing 
 down on Sunflowers. The mellow house behind the leafless 
 walnut-tree looked a veritable English home of peace : smoke 
 spired lazily from its tall chimneys; its square windows 
 glinted welcome. They heard the children's voices shouting, 
 " Daddy ! Daddy ! " saw Peter striding, gun over shoulder, 
 to the front door. 
 
 " He's been to see Francis again," said Patricia. 
 
 ' Agoraphobia,' thought Heron Baynet, ' the Fear of Open 
 Spaces. I wonder what particular kind of horror he sees 
 every time he goes down across that little bit of meadow- 
 land.' 
 
 But Patricia's mind had suddenly remembered Francis ; 
 Francis, alone, night after night, in that quaint up-and-down 
 cottage, firelight glowing sombrely on panelled walls, Prout 
 and his ' female ' pottering about in the red-tiled kitchen. 
 
 " Pater," she said suddenly, " supposing you're wrong in 
 your diagnosis ? " 
 
 "I'm never wrong about these things," he answered, pur- 
 posely boastful. 
 
 "Then tell me what's the matter with Francis. Even 
 I can see he's not normal." 
 
 " Normal ! " Heron Baynet pulled a cigarette-case from 
 his overcoat pocket, extracted and lit a Gianaclis " of course 
 he's normal. That's his trouble. A normal man trying to 
 live an abnormal life." 
 
 "It isn't abnormal to live in the country." 
 
 " No, it isn't abnormal to live in the country, but," for 
 the second time that afternoon,, Heron Baynet laughed and 
 his daughter blushed " but it is abnormal, especially for a 
 man of Francis Gordon's temperament, to live there like a 
 monk." 
 
 " But he doesn't even work," protested Patricia. 
 
 " Why should he ? " said her father. " He hasn't got any- 
 body to work for." IJj 
 
 Thoughtfully, they passed into the house.
 
 PART XXXII 
 WOMANCRAFT 
 
 AFTER Heron Baynet's departure, the influence of 
 his disclosures became infinitely disturbing to his 
 daughter's mind. 
 Inheriting all the prejudices of ignorant genera- 
 tions the generations who regarded nervous disorders as 
 akin to lunacy, and made torture-chambers of our asylums 
 Patricia found it almost impossible to realize Peter's con- 
 dition. It needed all her reasoning power, all her affection, to 
 conquer those prejudices, to stifle her instinct of revulsion 
 from the abnormal. 
 
 She felt immensely sorry for him. She understood, and 
 vowed to save him from, the fears which now that her mind 
 had been opened she saw behind his eyes. But she could 
 not, at the outset, quite keep the word ' madness ' out of 
 her thoughts. 
 
 Nor, in her heart of hearts, could she quite help despising 
 him for his fears even as she despised Francis Gordon for 
 his idleness. Peter was no longer a Man, her husband, some- 
 one to be looked up to, leaned on, consulted in emergencies 
 but a weakling, a creature to be protected. 
 
 For these thoughts she hated herself ; they shamed her, 
 as his fears shamed Peter : and she set herself to conquer 
 them, fearlessly, resolutely. So that, by the end of two days, 
 she had almost accustomed herself to the idea of illness. Peter 
 was ill she said the word over and over again ill, not mad, 
 ill with a sickness that she alone could cure. 
 
 This idea of illness satisfied the motherhood in her and 
 of the matehood she was not even yet fully unaware. 
 
 2 
 
 If Patricia had been a religious woman, especially if she 
 had been a Roman Catholic, her natural refuge in such a crisis 
 would have been the priest. But Patricia though she paid
 
 Womancraft 339 
 
 the customary lip-service of her caste in Arlsfield church 
 regarded her God as she regarded her King. Both were sym- 
 bols : the one a symbol of conduct, the other a symbol of 
 country. As symbols one owed loyalty to both : but individu- 
 ally neither could be of the slightest assistance. Every human 
 being, argued Patricia, must fight his or her way through the 
 world unaided. 
 
 Hitherto, her own battles had been comparatively easy : 
 the fights of reason (a sensible general) against the instincts 
 (a horde of hare-brained savages) : so far, except for occasional 
 lapses her love, fqr instance reason had always triumphed. 
 Well, reason must triumph again. 
 
 Having thus persuaded herself, as the drunkard persuades 
 himself of his perfect sobriety, that her passion for Peter was 
 a thing of the past, Patricia took a lonely walk, tried to sum 
 up her problems. 
 
 First and foremost of these was to carry out her father's 
 instructions : to make Peter confess ; break down the wall 
 of reticent commonplaces which he had built up against her. 
 How ? She remembered her father's words, ' Make love to 
 him as if you were his mistress.' The words themselves 
 conveyed nothing whatever to a woman utterly unversed in 
 the wiles of sex : but they filled her with a delicious f eeling of 
 fright. For a moment, the idea of being Peter's ' mistress ' 
 completely routed that calculating general, reason. . . . 
 
 This ' bedroom thought/ as Patricia phrased it, was so 
 disturbing that reason took refuge among its minor problems. 
 Peter's leave had still ten weeks to run : long before it ended, 
 she would find some way of gaining his confidence. 
 
 Meanwhile, the home, Peter's home, demanded immediate 
 attention. She really must get rid of Fry. Fry came later and 
 later of a morning, left earlier and earlier of an evening. 
 Fry overfed the animals. Fry . . . Thought became glori- 
 ously inconsecutive . . . One oughtn't to keep three servants. 
 The children would have to go to school. The Lowndes 
 Square purchase-money wouldn't last for ever. It was very 
 good of Peter to have given her the Lowndes Square money. 
 Peter always had been very good to her. . . . 
 
 By this time, she had circled Arlsfield village, was beyond 
 the Post Office. In front of her, the boundary road of 
 Arlsfield Hall serpentined under leafless chestnuts. Still 
 lost in thought, Patricia wandered on. 
 
 Peter's mistress 1 Why mistress ? What did a mistress 
 give that a wife couldn't ? Ridiculous 1 She smiled to her- 
 self. Give 1 What couldn't she give to her man if only . . .
 
 340 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 There are certain moments in the life of every woman 
 when the sex-antagonism disappears and she realizes the sex- 
 necessity. Such a moment came to Patricia as she tramped 
 sturdily along the leaf -sodden road that late December after- 
 noon of nineteen hundred-and-sixteen. 
 
 Hitherto, she had been content to regard the sex-intim- 
 acies as rather shameful necessities of married life. The man 
 desired ; the woman gave way to his desires her own 
 desires, the secret pleasure she sometimes experienced in 
 giving way to him, being of those savage hordes, the instincts, 
 which reason very reasonably did its utmost to suppress. 
 Bedroom thoughts, in fact. 
 
 Bedroom thoughts ! Suddenly Patricia saw the absurdity 
 of the phrase. If love meant anything at all, it meant 
 mutuality ; and mutuality could not exclude sex-instinct. 
 Why should woman be ashamed of her desires ? Bedroom 
 thoughts, indeed. Absurd mock-modesty ! . Rubbish 1 
 Stuff and nonsense 1 Early Victorianism at its soppiest 
 extreme ! . . . 
 
 And the woman of thirty tramped on. It was her moment 
 of matehood : in that moment, she forgot her two children, 
 her reduced income, her husband's illness ; realized nothing 
 except this new and to-her-amazing truth. . . . 
 
 There came over her a sharp mood of clairvoyance. The 
 word ' mistress ' no longer puzzled, no longer frightened. 
 By her love, she interpreted the meaning of it : by her love, 
 she saw the sex-thing whole. It sufficed not that a wife sur- 
 rendered her body grudgingly, even though she became her 
 husband's pal, his childbearer, the manager of his home. 
 Marriage, to be perfect, required more than these. They 
 twain must be one flesh, one in mutual desire as they were 
 one in mutual interest. And in clean desire, love sanctifying, 
 could be no shame. . . . 
 
 Matehood-moment still on her, Patricia rounded the last 
 bend of the road ; sighted the mellow straggling roof of Francis 
 Gordon's cottage above the leafless elder-hedges. 
 
 Francis ! In the light of her new vision, the man no 
 longer seemed despicable. Broken, foolishly ashamed of 
 physical infirmity, irresolute, unwilling or unable to work 
 one thing, at least, he kept sacred. ' Living like a monk 1 ' 
 Her father's words held the semblance of a sneer : but she, 
 Patricia, understood. 
 
 ' I And for the first time, understanding him, she respected 
 this man. Intuition gave her the sure clue to his mind. As 
 to her, so to Francis Gordon, Love had vouchsafed the inner
 
 Womancraft 341 
 
 meanings : and now, he could accept no substitute for Love. 
 Either the one woman pal and childbearer, partner and mis- 
 tress : or this, the lonely cottage among the lonely woods. . . . 
 
 But intuition gave Patricia no clue to the heart of the 
 problem, to the man's renunciation. Blind to everything 
 except her own immediate feelings, she Saw only this 
 straggling cottage which might have been a home this house 
 without its woman. A girl in America ! In her ignorance, 
 Patricia hated 'that girl.' 'That girl' must know Francis 
 loved her. She corresponded with him ; sent him postcards 
 when he didn't write regularly. Then why didn't she marry 
 him? Obviously, because 'that girl' was a flirt, a light 
 woman, unworthy of love. . . . 
 
 By the time she reached the low flint wall which divided 
 Glen Cottage from the main road, Patricia had worked her 
 self up into a fine fury of resolution. She would talk to 
 Francis ; warn him against ' that girl ' who was ruining his 
 life, warn him against himself. 
 
 But, unfortunately for resolution, Francis Gordon was 
 out. 
 
 Prout, standing in the gabled doorway, told her that 
 " Mister Peter had come for Mister Francis, and they'd gone 
 up to Sunflowers." 
 
 Patricia paused for one irresolute moment. Then she 
 said, " Do you think you could get me a cup of tea, Prout ? 
 I'm feeling rather tired." 
 
 " Certainly, madam. Where will you have it, madam ? 
 In the writing-room ? " 
 
 " Yes, Prout. That will do nicely." 
 
 She laid down stick and gauntlets ; passed through the 
 sombre oak-panelled hallway, up the broad, shallow stair- 
 case, into the long room above. ' Here,' thought Patricia, 
 ' he ought to be writing.' She looked at the great desk under 
 the window, across it to the swelling turf of Arlsfield Park : 
 she looked at the cushioned settle by the writing-desk, at the 
 fire in the Morgan-tiled grate, at the black-lacquer chairs, 
 at the low bookshelves against the cream-distempered walls, 
 at the 6cru velvet curtains, the Persian rugs on the floor. 
 Then she walked deliberately to the desk; picked up 
 Beatrice's photograph. 
 
 ' A fine face,' thought Patricia, ' a good face.' 
 
 Prout, entering with the tea-tray, caught her in the act. 
 She stood there, guiltily, frame in her hand : and the little 
 gray-haired valet in the scrupulously-brushed blue clothes 
 stared at her over the rim of his high white collar. He,
 
 342 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 too, had fingered that photograph frame ; peered not once 
 but a hundred times into those clear, thoughtful eyes. . . . 
 
 Prout drew a little table from its corner by the fireplace, 
 set down his tea-tray, arranged a chair. Patricia put back 
 the photograph. 
 
 " Your tea, madam," said Prout ; but he made no move 
 to go. 
 
 " Prout," began Patricia and stopped as though she had 
 accosted a stranger by mistake. 
 
 "Yes, madam? " There was invitation in the valet's 
 voice. 
 
 Still Patricia hesitated. 
 
 " You were going to ask, madam ? " 
 
 She plunged in headlong, " Prout, who is that girl ? " 
 
 " That, madam, is Miss Cochrane's photograph," the old 
 man spoke slowly "and, if I may be allowed to say so, madam, 
 it's a great pity Mister Francis ever met her." 
 
 " Why ? " Patricia hated herself for asking the question : 
 it meant the breaking-down of barriers, made her the old man's 
 accomplice. But Prout seemed to take no notice ; his voice 
 lost no accent of respect. 
 
 " Because, madam, if it hadn't been for Miss Cochrane, 
 he might have had a chance. What chance has he got now ? " 
 The respectful voice rose. " No chance, madam. " 
 
 There fell a silence between these two : rules of conduct, 
 honoured since birth, kept both tongue-tied. Patricia looked 
 at her tea-cup, but made no attempt to drink from it : the 
 valet stood stock still, as though awaiting an order. In 
 the game of etiquette, it was the woman's move. 
 
 " Tell me more about her," said Patricia at last. 
 
 Etiquette went by the board ; the valet turned suddenly 
 man, an old man who spoke broken-heartedly about a boy he 
 loved. 
 
 " Mrs. Jackson, she was the woman for him. I knew it 
 the moment they met. We were on board a steamer, travelling 
 from the Argentine to the West Indies. And I thought, I 
 thought ..." 
 
 " Yes, Prout. You thought . . . ? " 
 
 " I thought she was going to make him happy. . . . Look 
 at him now, Mrs. Jackson. A broken man ! Look at his 
 life. Is it life ? It isn't life, Mrs. Jackson. It's just death. 
 And all," he shook his hand at the photograph on the writing- 
 table " all because of one wretched woman who isn't fit to 
 polish his boots. / polish his boots, Mrs. Jackson ; / run this 
 house for him ; 7 do my best to make him happy. I'd work
 
 Womancraft 343 
 
 my fingers to the bone for him. Why ? Not for the few 
 shillings a week he gives me I haven't been in service forty 
 years for nothing, Mrs. Jackson but because . . . because 
 I'm fond of him. Is she fond of him ? Would she let him eat 
 out his heart for her if she was fond of him ? If she was fond 
 of him, why didn't she marry him then ? Why doesn't she 
 marry him now ? Write, write, write 1 Three years she's 
 been writing to him. And every time one of her letters comes, 
 it makes him worse. Why doesn't she stop writing to him ? 
 If she doesn't want him, why can't she leave him alone ? 
 Why can't she leave him alone, Mrs. Jackson ? " 
 
 The man stopped speaking : the valet went on. " Many's 
 the time I've thought of writing to her myself, madam. But 
 I've served the Gordons father and son for over twenty 
 years. And I know my place, madam." 
 
 " And what would you have said in your letter, Prout ? " 
 Patricia asked the question almost automatically. 
 
 " I should have told Miss Cochrane the truth, madam." 
 The door closed silently. Patricia found herself alone. 
 
 A moment, she hesitated. The whole business seemed 
 suddenly fantastic, out of its century. Men no longer died 
 for love of one woman. Francis would get over this infatua- 
 tion, recover his vitality, his joy of life. She could not do 
 this thing. She, like Prout, ' knew her place.' 
 
 Then, for the mood of matehood was still strong in her, 
 Patricia rose slowly from her chair ; walked towards the desk. 
 Again, she picked up the photograph, gazed into the eyes of 
 it. The eyes seemed to ask a question, a matehood question. 
 ' Tell me,' the eyes seemed to say, ' tell me. I, too, can 
 give . . .' 
 
 ' What harm can it do ? ' thought Patricia. Her free hand, 
 resting on a mass of papers, encountered something hard, 
 something hard and flat. She put down the photograph, 
 turned over the papers. . . . The Browning pistol lay at 
 full cock, blue-black on the black wood of the desk : and she 
 knew instinctively that Francis, disturbed at Peter's entrance, 
 must have turned the papers to hide it. 
 
 Now, Patricia hesitated no longer. His pen, the pen she 
 had given him, was lying in a little lacquer pen-tray her gift, 
 too. She picked it out ; unscrewed the mechanism ; sat 
 down to the desk ; drew a sheet of notepaper from its rack ; 
 and wrote, wrote for the life of a man. 
 
 Her quick movements shook the desk-top till the pistol 
 beside her quivered. It quivered to her hand as she wrote. 
 She could not keep her eyes away from the pistol.
 
 344 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " Francis has probably told you about me. I am his 
 cousin's wife his cousin Peter's wife. He does not know I 
 am writing to you he has never told me or anyone about you. 
 I am writing this in his house he is not here. I don't quite 
 know what to say to you. I can only tell you that he needs you 
 very desperately. If you love him you ought to come to Mm. 
 I don't know if you love him or if you can come to him but 
 I do know that it is a question of life or death for 
 Francis. . . ." 
 
 She signed her name and address legibly at foot of the 
 letter ; rose with it in her hand ; walked to the fireplace ; 
 dried the single sheet at the flame. Again, the whole affair 
 seemed fantastic. She wanted to throw the letter on the 
 fire ; till, looking over her shoulder, she saw the pistol, black 
 and menacing on the desk-top. 
 
 She rang the bell ; walked back to the writing-desk ; 
 found an envelope ; folded the sheet ; sealed it up. 
 
 " You rang for me, madam," said Prout, appearing 
 silently in the doorway. 
 
 " I must be going now." She handed him the closed 
 envelope. " You know Miss Cochrane's address, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Yes, madam," obviously the valet wanted to thank 
 her, to ask questions. He began to stammer something ; but 
 Patricia cut him short. 
 
 " Have it registered, please ; and, Prout," her eyes 
 flickered towards the pistol on the writing-desk " I thought 
 you said you were fond of him ! " 
 
 She wa.s out of the room and down the stairs before the old 
 man could answer. He heard the rattle of her stick, the 
 clang of front door closing, as he stood by the window, pistol 
 grasped gingerly in one hand, unaddressed letter in the other. 
 ' I ought to have seen her out,' thought the valet. ' I ought 
 to have seen her out.' 
 
 3 
 
 Twice, as she climbed the meadow-path, Patricia wanted 
 to turn back. She had behaved like a lunatic. She had done 
 two unpardonable things : gossiped with a servant, interfered 
 between a man and a woman. The letter must not be sent 
 the letter must be destroyed. But Patricia did not turn 
 back. . . . 
 
 Among the haystacks in the field behind his cow-yard, old 
 man Tebbits was feeding his chickens. Patricia heard his 
 quaint treble : " Come birds come birds come birds " ;
 
 Womancraft 545 
 
 came upon him suddenly as she rounded the first rick. He 
 plucked cap from head, said : 
 
 " Good evening, missis." 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Tebbits." She could see that old man 
 Tebbits was ripe for a gossip. He began to talk as he scat- 
 tered the corn, and she stood listening to him for a full five 
 minutes. " Toppings was up again and bad. He never 
 remembered them so bad. And the bran. You couldn't really 
 call it bran. That gilt of hers would make a fine sow. Store- 
 pigs didn't pay like they used to. Ten-week pigs didn't pay 
 so bad. He always killed ' brokes.' ' Brokes ' was no 
 good." 
 
 Patricia had not yet learned the meaning of a ' broke ' : 
 but she found Tebbits' gossip comforting. Here, at least, was 
 somebody normal, somebody of the old, kindly world, the 
 world that had gone to smash in August 1914. 
 
 Reluctantly, she made her excuses, bade him good night ; 
 picked her way through the cow-yard, out on to the road : 
 reluctantly, she swung the gate of Sunflowers, passed to her 
 home. 
 
 It was nearly five o'clock, dusk deepening to darkness. 
 In the paddock, she could see Fry's burly figure, locking up 
 the chicken -houses. But no lamp yet glowed from the hall 
 windows. Perhaps Francis and Peter had gone upstairs to 
 the children. . . . 
 
 She turned the knob of the front -door, heard Francis' 
 voice through the velvet curtains. "Well, anyway it's a 
 gentleman's death." She entered quietly, stood still for a 
 moment. Pet er's voice answered : " Oh, of course a man's got 
 a right to kill himself if he wants to. No one asked us into 
 this rotten world." 
 
 Patricia slipped out again, closing the door gently behind 
 her ; walked round to the back of the house. Fry was just 
 locking up the stable-door. She called out, " Good night, 
 Fry." He answered surlily, " Good night, mum." In the 
 red-tiled kitchen, Fanny a fat, slovenly, fair -haired girl was 
 preparing tea. Both lamps were lit ; the kitchen glowed 
 hospitably. Patricia scraped her boots ; strode in. 
 
 ' Have the children had their tea, Fanny ? " 
 
 ' Yes, mum. Elizabeth's upstairs with them now, mum." 
 
 ' Why isn't the lamp in the hall lit ? " 
 
 ' I'm sorry, mum. I forgot it, mum." 
 
 ' Go and light it, please." 
 
 The girl rattled a box of matches in her apron pocket ; 
 went out. Patricia leaned her stick against the wall ; drew
 
 346 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 off her gauntlets ; rearranged the tea-tray. Through the 
 door, which Fanny had left open, she heard Peter's, " Mrs. 
 Jackson not come in yet, Fanny ? " and the girl's answer, 
 " Yes. She's just come in." . . . 
 
 The two cousins were sitting in armchairs by the fireplace. 
 They rose as Patricia entered. Francis said, " Good evening, 
 Pat " ; Peter, " Hallo, old thing." 
 
 " Why didn't you ask for the lamp ? " asked Patricia. 
 
 " Forgot all about it," said Peter. 
 
 " And the room smells like a public-house." 
 
 " You always say that, Pat." Francis plopped back into 
 his chair. " It's Peter's fault, not mine. He ought to give 
 up cigars now he's out of the business. Besides, hell ruin 
 his lungs. . . ." 
 
 Patricia saw Peter wince ; turned away to draw the brown 
 window-curtains. Fanny clattered in with the tea-tray ; put 
 it down on a stool by the fireplace. 
 
 " Where are you going to sit, Pat ? " Peter was still on 
 his feet, back to the fire. 
 
 " In your chair, I think," she smiled at him. He walked 
 gingerly round the tea-tray ; drew himself up a third chair. 
 She poured out ; handed them their cups, plates, cakes and 
 bread-and-butter. Talk languished. " What have you two 
 been discussing all the afternoon ? " she asked. 
 
 " Suicide, "grinned Francis, " nice cheery topic 1 "and he 
 went on, Peter approving, to elaborate his theory. 
 
 " Suicide's the last act of a coward," decided Patricia. 
 
 " Or an altruist," interrupted Francis. 
 
 " What the deuce is an altruist ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " An altruist " Patricia rose from the tea-table" is a 
 woman who leaves a nice comfortable fire to see that Elizabeth 
 doesn't drown Evelyn and Primula in their baths." 
 
 But she went upstairs heavy-hearted ; found no joy in the 
 laughter of her children, in their bath-games, their quaint 
 prayers, their snuggling ' good nights.' 
 
 4 
 
 Francis stayed for dinner ; stayed endlessly. After 
 coffee, he and Peter drew sofa to the fireplace in the hall ; 
 began to discuss the war. Patricia, making pretence of 
 reading the newspapers, watched them covertly from her 
 armchair. 
 
 Both the cousins were in day-clothes : Peter still wore 
 breeches and gaiters, his rough homespun shooting-coat ;
 
 Womancraft 347 
 
 Francis, a loose gray-green suit of Lovat tweed. Her own 
 black evening-dress, high-throated, lawn at wrist, seemed to 
 isolate her from their bodies, as thought isolated her from 
 their conversation. 
 
 They talked quietly, but with the bitter unreasoned 
 conviction of the fighting-man . Patricia could never accustom 
 herself to that bitterness. In their eyes, only the fighting-man 
 existed : they could not see the non-combatant. To them, 
 non-combatants were traitors, shirkers, 'conchies', self -ad- 
 vertisers, money-grubbers : always ready to betray the 
 fighting-man, to cheat him and rob him, to preach to him first 
 and leave him in the lurch afterwards. 
 
 " Patriotism ! " sneered Peter. " Why, the Huns are ten 
 times more patriotic than we are. There aren't any con- 
 scientious objectors in Germany." 
 
 Francis sneered back, " Never mind, old boy. ' We shall 
 never sheathe the sword ' till every munition-worker has got 
 his own motor-car." 
 
 " Don't you believe it, Francis. Our blinking politicians 
 would sheathe the sword to-morrow if they saw the chance. 
 Take it from me, they'll do us in the eye before it's over." 
 
 Patricia flung down her newspaper. " You're perfectly 
 impossible, both of you. Can't you see anything good in 
 England? Isn't everybody working ? ..." 
 
 " Isn't everybody getting paid for it ? " Peter's eyes 
 darkled. " Who's paid worst ? The front-line infantryman, 
 of course. That's war all over. The more dangerous the 
 job, the less the pay. And if it wasn't for the infantryman, 
 you'd have had the Huns in England. ..." 
 
 " No, we shouldn't," interrupted Francis. " The Navy's 
 still at sea, isn't it ? " 
 
 " It is," crowed Peter. " And that's the worst paid 
 service of the lot." 
 
 She picked up her paper. It was useless to argue with 
 them : they must talk themselves out. And again the 
 thought of madness overwhelmed Patricia. The whole scene 
 the two lounging men, the cosy lamp-lit room became 
 unreal. She was in a lunatic asylum. Peter and Francis were 
 both dead : their minds, the minds she had once known so 
 well, existed no longer : two ghosts, two utter strangers, 
 occupied those bodies. Two mad ghosts of minds she had 
 known I 
 
 The hallucination passed. She felt mentality strengthen 
 in her, felt resolution rise triumphant over weakness. These 
 were not lunatics, but two sufferers, two sick men. And she,
 
 348 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Patricia, would cure them both. To cure, to heal these 
 were the functions of her womanhood. . . . 
 
 At last, Francis said good night ; lit his final cigarette ; 
 limped towards the door. Patricia helped him on with his 
 coat ; found him his torch ; watched it dancing over the 
 gravel towards the gate. " Take care of yourself," she called 
 after him : and thought of Prout, waiting up in that lonely 
 cottage. She could trust Prout but for how long ? And 
 the girl in America ? What would ' that girl ' do ? ' If I 
 were she,' thought Patricia, ' nothing on earth would keep 
 me from him.' . . . Thought expired : she turned back to her 
 husband. 
 
 Peter had not moved from the sofa. He sat hunched up, 
 peering into the fire. His face shewed thin and drawn in the 
 flame-light. A great throb of pity for him suffused her : she 
 wanted to fling herself at his feet, to ask his pardon. Mad ? 
 Her Peter mad ? How had she dared so much as think it of 
 him ! He was only ill, ill and sad and broken. His life, his 
 hopes, his health everything he valued in the world had 
 gone to smash. He had flung them down, a free gift, in the 
 temple of honour. And now, now he had no more to give. 
 He was spent in honour, exhausted of giving. But she she 
 to whom he had given, all his life, ungrudgingly she the 
 acceptor of his gifts she was not spent ; her giving had not 
 yet begun, the fountain of it gushed in her veins, ungrudging, 
 inexhaustible, a great bright fountain of giving. . . . 
 
 " Peter 1 " Her voice woke him from reverie. He felt 
 her warm arms round his neck ; her warm lips on his cheek. 
 Instinctively, he recoiled from them. The warmth of woman- 
 hood had no place among those cold devils of fear with whom 
 he walked o' nights. . . . But she would not let him go. Her 
 arms clung to him ; her lips explored his face ; her body 
 snuggled against him. 
 
 " Peter! " she was whispering at his ear "make love to 
 me. Make love to me to-night. I can't bear you to be away 
 from me any more. . . . You 're being cruel to me, Peter. . . .1 
 can't go on doing without you, I just can't. . . . Despise me 
 if you like : but don't reject me. I want you so. ... I want 
 you, Peter : I want you as you used to want me. You used 
 to want me once, Peter." . . . He lay in her arms, rigid, 
 speechless. ..." Peter, you must love me to-night. I can't 
 be alone any more. Oh, boy, boy," the old endearment 
 quivered at her Lips " I want you so much. I can't be 
 alone any more, boy. Are you afraid to love me ? " 
 
 He sprang from the sofa with a great shrill cry : " Afraid !
 
 Womancraft 349 
 
 Yes. I am afraid. God forgive me for being a coward. I 
 am afraid." 
 
 She dragged him down to her. " You mustn't be afraid 
 of me, boy. I love you. Do you understand ? I'm your 
 wife, your slave, your mistress. ..." 
 
 He wrenched himself free ; stood up to his full height. She 
 saw him through a sheen of tears, towering above her. His 
 voice carried down to her through immense distances : 
 
 *' You mustn't touch me, Pat. You mustn't degrade 
 yourself by touching me. I am unclean, a leper in the sight 
 of men. The soul inside me has putrefied. Putrefied ! You 
 don't know what that means. I don't want you to know 
 what that means. It stinks. My soul inside me stinks. My 
 brain is full of filthy pictures. They haunt me. And I am 
 afraid. ..." 
 
 She, too, was afraid ; but love in her cast out fear. Brown 
 eyes kindling, she rose to him ; twined her arms about him ; 
 locked hands behind his neck ; clung to him with all her 
 body. She would have kissed him on the lips ; but his lips 
 evaded her. The breath whistled through his lips. His 
 heart pounded against her breasts as she forced him back to 
 the sofa. . . . 
 
 Her hands unlocked from his neck. Her hands fondled 
 him. Lower and lower she sank against him, closer and 
 closer. She could feel all his body quiver to her. He shook 
 under her hands as a ship shakes when she heaves propeller 
 free. . . . 
 
 " What are you frightened of, boy ? Tell me what you're 
 frightened of. I'm your wife, boy. I won't hurt you." 
 
 Suddenly, she felt his arms round her, his lips at her ear. 
 Clinging to her, straining her to him, he spoke ; fiercely, as 
 men speak in fight : 
 
 " You mustn't love a coward, Pat. God knows I want 
 ou. God knows I mustn't take you. ... I am a coward. 
 you know what that means ? ... 111 tell you. . . . 
 Everything frightens me. ... I am afraid to go out alone. 
 ... I am afraid for the children, for you, for myself. ... I 
 am afraid of lif e. ... I am afraid to go on living. . . . And I 
 haven't got the pluck to kill myself. . . . Dear Christ, I 
 haven't even got the pluck to kill myself. ..." 
 
 Clinging to her, straining her to him, he began to cry 
 cruel, dry sobs, deep down in the throat. She could not move : 
 she could not see him. Her breasts were two burning tor- 
 ments : her body burned as with fire. 
 
 " Peter ! "would he hear her ? Oh God I would he hear 
 
 you 
 Do
 
 350 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 her ? " I don't care if you're a coward. I don't care about 
 anything. Only make love to me. Make love to me, 
 boy. . . ." 
 
 5 
 
 All that night, he lay in her arms ; sleepless. All that 
 night she lay listening to him, listening to the horrors in his 
 brain. In the darkness, he told her of dark things, things 
 hidden from sheltered women. For he had walked many 
 nights with Fear, none aiding j till Fear had bitten deep into 
 his soul. 
 
 All that night she lay listening to these things, unafraid, 
 glorying that he should tell her of them, pitying him, loving 
 him, persuading him. 
 
 But when at last, promise given, he fell asleep on her 
 breast when at last dawn peeped at her through the chinks 
 of the window-curtains Fear came to Patricia, and with 
 Fear, fear's kinswoman, Self-reproach. 
 
 Would he hate her when he woke ? Would he retract the 
 promise given ? Had she robbed him of honour, lost him his 
 lonely battle for self-respect ? Had her thoughts been all of 
 him ? Had she given herself all selflessly ? 
 
 Self-reproach whispered to her in the dawning : " Delilah 1 
 Delilah I Delilah 1 "
 
 PART XXXIII 
 THE LIFTING OF SHADOWS 
 
 IT is no use pretending that Patricia was not ashamed of 
 herself. She was desperately so. She felt she had 
 been guilty of immodesty, that she had forfeited her 
 husband's respect. Even when she realized that 
 Peter's damaged memory retained few details of their night 
 except his promise to consult her father about his ' nerves,' 
 shame haunted her. Constantly, she expected him to re- 
 member, to judge, to condemn. . . . Yet actually, she had 
 saved him. 
 
 For Peter's ' case ' was, in the terms of psycho-pathology 
 (which is the science of soul-illnesses), one of ' repressed 
 complexes ' ; in simpler language, of bottling-up his emotions. 
 At their very first interview, Heron Baynet put the matter 
 quite clearly. Heron Baynet said : 
 
 " You have been twice wounded. One wound is in your 
 arm ; the other in your mind. The flesh wound, you let us 
 cure : you understood that it needed antiseptics, drainage, 
 bandages, rest. The wound in your mind, you concealed 
 from us : and it has festered. Now, tell me what you are 
 most afraid of ? " 
 
 " Consumption," admitted Peter. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I'm afraid I've got it." 
 
 " Who put that idea into your head ? " 
 
 Peter told his father-in-law about the gas-attack at Neuve 
 Eglise, about his cough, about Rolleston. Heron Baynet 
 laughed. 
 
 " Well soon settle that. Tubercle's a bacillus. I'll test 
 you for it. Now then, what else are you afraid of ? " 
 
 Peter hesitated. 
 
 " Shall I tell you a few things ? " went on the doctor. 
 " You're afraid of going out by yourself. You're afraid of 
 noise. You're afraid of time."
 
 352 Peter Jacksou, Cigar Merchant 
 
 " How do you know ? " asked Peter wonderingly. 
 
 " My dear boy, how do you know things ? By learning 
 them, don't you ? You were trained in business, you were 
 trained in soldiering. You studied them. Well, I've studied 
 the mind. ..." 
 
 " But damn it," said Peter, " one oughtn't to be afraid of 
 anything. At least, one oughtn't to admit it ? " 
 
 " Oughtn't," the doctor smiled. " There's no 
 ' oughtn't ' in the mind. ' Oughtn't ' is half your trouble. 
 You've corked up all these fears with your ' oughtn'ts ' 
 till they've become obsessions " 
 
 "Well, anyway, I'm a coward," said Peter stubbornly. 
 " You can't get over that, however much you argue about it." 
 
 " Of course you are," countered his father-in-law blandly, 
 " of course you're a coward- So are nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine men out of every thousand Otherwise, you wouldn't 
 have tried to control this wound in your mind. You were 
 afraid to tell anybody about it, weren't you ? " 
 
 " I suppose I was." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Cowardice, I suppose. According to your theory." 
 
 " Exactly. Don't you see, Peter, that cowardice and 
 bravery are ridiculous terms ? " 
 
 " No, I don't," snapped Peter ; " a man either does his 
 job, or he funks it. If he funks it, he's a coward." 
 
 " You mean, if he funks it and doesn't do it. Supposing 
 he funks it, and does it all the same ? " 
 
 " Then," admitted Peter, " he's not a coward." 
 
 " Good. Now let me tell you something. That power 
 which drives the man to do a thing he funks, is not bravery, 
 but the will-to-be-brave. Your will-to-be-brave is damaged ; 
 you've overstrained it. If you go on overstraining it you'll 
 lose it altogether. Give it a rest. Do you understand me ? 
 Give it a rest. All these repressions you've been so proud of 
 don't interrupt, you have been proud of them, subcon- 
 sciously proud all these repressions are hindering your 
 recovery. You've bound the wound up tight instead of allow- 
 ing it to drain. You've been sitting on your mental safety- 
 valves. If you want to jump when you hear a noise, for 
 goodness* sake jump. It's much better for you than the effort 
 to control yourself. If you're afraid of open spaces, avoid 
 'em don't go through them with a loaded gun and pretend 
 you're trying to shoot rabbits. . . ." 
 
 Peter blushed scarlet ; and the lesson went on. One by 
 one, Heron Baynet detailed the Fears Fear of Open Spaces,
 
 The Lifting of Shadows 353 
 
 Fear of Closed Spaces, Fear for Time, Fear of Money, Fear of 
 Pain and Fear of Death. To his listening son-in-law, the 
 catalogue seemed inexhaustible. 
 
 " Is everybody afraid of something, then ? " asked the 
 patient at last. 
 
 " Everybody with any sense," was the answer. " Fear is 
 the beginning of knowledge." 
 
 " Then what are you afraid of ? " 
 
 " I ! " Heron Baynet's quiet eyes held Peter's for a full 
 second. " I'm afraid of not knowing enough." 
 
 . . . ' Afraid of not knowing enough ! ' The phrase 
 lingered in Peter's mind as Heron Baynet had intended it 
 should linger : and with it, came back a scrap of Greek 
 wisdom, yvcutfio-eavTov (' Know thyself '). For the first time 
 in his life, Peter began to think. 
 
 Hitherto, he had lived automatically : actions had 
 contented him. Now, he started in to reason about his 
 actions. Why had he done thus ? Why had he done so ? 
 What was the driving-force behind his actions ? Why had 
 that driving-force suddenly run down ? 
 
 The process study of ' cause ' as opposed to study to 
 ' effect ' fascinated a mind hitherto devoid of introspection ; 
 so that by the time he went up to town for his second ' lesson,' 
 the following question formulated itself. 
 
 " What," asked Peter Jackson, " is the real cause of this 
 neurasthenia ? Is it a mental trouble or a physical one ? 
 I've had the devil's own time since I saw you last. I'm as 
 nervy as fourteen cats. My hands wobble all over the place. 
 I don't seem able to control my memory. I've had three 
 nightmares in four nights ; and woken up screaming my guts 
 out. What's wrong my mind or my body ? " 
 
 " Can you separate 'em ? " said Heron Baynet. " You're 
 not God. Nor am I. I'm only a doctor : but I know more 
 about both your body and your mind than you do. Now 
 listen. . . ." 
 
 So, twice weekly, the educative process went on. And 
 gradually, with the coming of knowledge, fear abated. 
 
 2 
 
 But Patricia's fears did not abate. To her, the days were 
 terror ; the nights, agony. The very love she bore her 
 husband became a scourge. 
 
 For Patricia was not interested in ' cases ' : her interest 
 lay in Peter the man. And Peter the man, as she saw him 
 
 z
 
 354 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 now, seemed utterly broken. She lived too close to his body 
 to be aware of the gradual cure which was being wrought in 
 his mind. She saw only the shaking hands, the glaring eyes 
 of neurasthenia ; heard only its high-pitched quavering voice, 
 its outbursts of uncontrollable rage, its intolerable depressions. 
 Night after night, Peter's screams woke her from tormented 
 sleep : day after day, his temper fretted her almost to breaking- 
 point. 
 
 Yet, out of the very love which scourged her, Patricia 
 fashioned healing for her husband. Calm, clear-eyed, in- 
 finitely tender, mastering herself to save him, she walked by 
 his side through the cold shadows understanding sometimes, 
 pitying always, but faltering never, learning with each 
 painful step Love's ultimate lesson, the lesson of self-sacrifice. 
 
 And always, as she walked beside him, the trivial re- 
 sponsibilities of home-keeping responsibilities she had never 
 known in the sheltered days of their Kensington existence 
 nagged at her mind. (They are not ' literature,' these 
 responsibilities ; they are neither dramatic, nor romantic : 
 but for millions of women they are ' life ' the instant 
 problem of existence, its thousand daily pettinesses which 
 may not be postponed. The average woman, the woman of 
 moderate income who wants not a house but a home, will 
 understand how much these responsibilities added to Patricia's 
 burden.) 
 
 One other burden, too, she carried on her wining shoulders 
 through those dark days of January nineteen-seventeen the 
 burden of her responsibility for Francis Gordon. Her brain 
 was never quite free from the picture of the long writing-room, 
 the fire in the grate, the dark bookshelves against the cream 
 walls, and the big desk under the window the desk and the 
 silver photograph frame and the menacing fully-cocked 
 pistol. 
 
 ' Melodrama 1 ' she used to say to herself. ' Melodrama. 
 People don't kill themselves for love nowadays.' But 
 intuition warned her, every time she saw Francis, that he had 
 determined on suicide. She told herself that such a man was 
 not worth saving, that he was a weakling, a coward . . . but 
 her mind never ceased to make excuses for him. 
 
 ' Supposing,' she used to argue, ' that I had lost Peter 
 and the children supposing that / were a cripple supposing 
 that I saw nothing ahead of me but a dragged-out, sexless 
 existence, wouldn't I think of death kindly, look forward to 
 it as relief ? ' . . . 
 
 Again and again she tackled him about his writing : again
 
 The Lifting of Shadows 355 
 
 and again he gave her the same answer, " It's a futile game, 
 Pat. Futile ! Books are the most useless things in the world. 
 The worst-educated agricultural labourer does more good 
 with his hoe in ten minutes than I can do with my pen in a 
 whole lifetime." "Then why not take a hoe? " Patricia 
 used to say. " Some of us can't," answered Francis Gordon. 
 " We're built to be brain-workers and brain-work doesn't 
 satisfy us. Besides ..." 
 
 Patricia knew too well the meaning of that ' besides,' of 
 the accompanying downward glance at his left leg, at the 
 distorted boot and the crutch-stick. At such times, she was 
 glad that she had written to 'that girl.' Perhaps, 'that 
 girl ' would understand. . . . But January passed ; February 
 opened with threats of unlimited submarine warfare ; threat 
 turned to actuality and still no word arrived from Beatrice. 
 
 ' Why should she answer ? ' thought Patricia. ' Why 
 should she come ? It was a crazy letter to have written. 
 Perfectly crazy ! ' 
 
 3 
 
 February nineteen-seventeen darkled the shadow which 
 had lain so long across the world ; but into those particular 
 shadows which brooded over the life of Patricia Jackson it 
 brought a little ray of light. 
 
 Peter began to get better obviously, perceptibly better. 
 Already rest, freedom from constraint, and above all the 
 ' suggestions ' with which Heron Baynet had been feeding his 
 damaged mind, told their visible tale. There came periods 
 sometimes a bare ten minutes, sometimes an hour, and once a 
 whole wonderful afternoon when he seemed his normal self . 
 There came nights when he slept beside her as a child sleeps 
 motionless, head pillowed on arm. 
 
 At first, she could hardly believe. The sudden changes 
 from ill-tempered gloomy hypochondriac to ordinary human 
 being, bewildered her. It seemed to Patricia as though there 
 were two Peters ; and she never knew, leaving one Peter 
 alone for a minute, whether she would find the other Peter in 
 his place on her return. 
 
 As a matter of psychological fact, there were at this 
 period in the man's career not two Peters but at least five. 
 
 To begin with, there was Peter the neurasthenic a 
 huddled, frightened soul who li ved alone in its black caves of 
 gloom, and still prayed occasionally with whining ingratiation 
 for death. At this creature, the new soul of Peter Jackson- 
 Heron Baynet 's creation used to laugh. '- You're a fraud,'
 
 356 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 the new soul said to it, ' an utter fraud. Call yourself a soul I 
 Absurd ! You're physical. Do you understand ? Purely 
 physical. If my body hadn't got that knock on the head 
 you'd never have existed at all.' 
 
 Then, there was the original soul of Peter which contented 
 itself with the assertion that both its confreres were non- 
 existent, phantoms of the imagination : also the soul of 
 'P. J.,' sometime a Gunner in Kitchener's Army, who cared 
 for nothing in the world except the whereabouts and well- 
 being of the Fourth Southdown Brigade (this soul was par- 
 ticularly active at post-time or when reading the newspapers) ; 
 and lastly, there was the soul of Peter Jackson, worker by 
 instinct, who had begun to want employment. 
 
 This last Peter spent many profitless hours in the garden, 
 watching Fry dawdle through his work, prowling about the 
 stables, annoying himself that they should be horseless, or 
 slipping into the garage to inspect the dust-sheet-shrouded 
 Crossley and a few profitable ones with old man Tebbits and 
 his son Harry, a blond giant of indomitable labour. 
 
 But the Peter of Patricia's dreaming Peter the lover 
 was still fast asleep. 
 
 Still, he grew better obviously, perceptibly better : and 
 for the moment that betterment satisfied his wife's reason. 
 The other Patricia, the unreasonable, love-hungry Patricia, 
 contented herself once more with the thought of palship. 
 
 Towards the end of the month, a blizzard swept the 
 Thames Valley, almost isolating them. Their regular callers 
 Parson Smithers, Doctor and Mrs. Wainwright, the Misses 
 Rapson (who kept prize chows and were always trying to 
 dispose of one : "A sweet doggie, Mrs. Jackson, and such 
 breeding "), and the few other gregarious creatures whom 
 neither Patricia's stand-offishness nor Peter's nerves had 
 defeated left them alone for a whole week. 
 
 Sunflowers, red roof snow-covered, looked like a house on 
 a Christmas card. The road to Arlsfield was just passable ; 
 but the footpath to Glen Cottage lay three feet deep under 
 crumbly drifts. 
 
 " I think I'll go over and see Francis," said Peter, one 
 morning. " Poor old chap, he won't be able to get out much 
 in this." 
 
 " Hadn't you better wait till this afternoon ? " Patricia 
 looked at her husband across the breakfast -table. " Then we 
 can go together." 
 
 His eyes met hers steadily ; there was a positive twinkle 
 in them.
 
 The Lifting of Shadows 357 
 
 " I shan't take the twelve-bore," remarked our Mr. 
 Jackson. 
 
 She postponed the children's lesson-time a good half-hour 
 just for the pleasure of slipping out of the house after him, 
 of concealing herself behind Tebbits' snow-thatched rick to 
 watch his stocky figure toiling downhill. 
 
 He came back in time for lunch, very out of breath but 
 very delighted with his achievement ; announced that, 
 " Agoraphobia had been bloodily repulsed." 
 
 " And how was Francis ? " smiled Patricia, forgetting her 
 usual, ' Language, Peter 1 ' in excitement at this tangible 
 proof of recovery. 
 
 " Francis ! " Peter hesitated a perceptible second. " To 
 tell you the truth, Pat, I've been rather bothered about 
 Francis. He's brooding about something or other. His 
 legs, I suppose. Have you noticed anything ? " 
 
 " No," lied Patricia. " I haven't noticed anything." 
 
 " May be only my imagination," decided Peter. " But 
 I don't like the look of him somehow. He ought to consult 
 that father of yours. However, he seemed better this morn- 
 ing. He's got a new bee in his bonnet America." 
 
 " What about America ? " Patricia pricked up her ears. 
 
 " Well, as far as I could make out, this submarine cam- 
 paign according to Francis is going to bring America in. 
 Once America comes in also according to Francis the war's 
 over ; the English-speaking races are re-united ; and we're 
 in for a hundred years of peace." 
 
 " Oh, is that all ? " said Patricia who was thinking ol 
 Beatrice Cochrane. 
 
 " Yes, that's all." 
 
 Peter did not tell his wife that his ' bother ' about his 
 cousin had not been allayed, but rather accentuated, by the 
 phrase, " If I could just live to see that come off, old boy, 
 I'd die a happy man," with which Francis had closed the 
 topic. 
 
 4 
 
 March cleared the snow from the hills. Already the 
 leafless branches seemed hinting of springtime ; already 
 Patricia's crocuses made an orange carpet under the walnut- 
 tree. 
 
 But Peter Jackson was not thinking of crocuses. As 
 leave-time grew shorter, so thoughts turned more and more
 
 358 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 to the Brigade. Sandiland, now a major, wrote a long 
 gossipy letter. Could Peter get back to Beer Battery? 
 Had Peter heard about the new Army artillery brigades, 
 about six-gun batteries ? Had Peter seen Lodden ? Of 
 course, the show wasn't what it used to be still, some of 
 the old gang were carrying on. Conway would be glad of a 
 sixth for poker. Charlie Henry had got his second pip. 
 Merrilees sent his kind regards. Purves was home Sandi- 
 land didn't think he'd come out again. The ' Brat ' was 
 acting Adjutant. Mr. Black had been given a commission. 
 " And R.," the letter concluded, " is playing up for a brigadier- 
 ship. He'll get it too, him. " 
 
 The war had seemed a thousand miles from Sunflowers, 
 but Sandiland 's blurred handwriting brought it back with a 
 rush. Pictures Heron Baynet had taught his son-in-law 
 all about brain-pictures formed themselves in Peter's mind. 
 He saw war again, the whole nauseating, fascinating panorama 
 of war. Did he want to go back to it ? ' Not much ! ' said 
 our Mr. Jackson. 
 
 But would he go back ? Would he have to go back ? 
 If he went back, would he be able to stick it ? These ques- 
 tions perturbed Peter ; and he began testing himself, over- 
 hauling the machinery of his mind. Deliberately, he con- 
 jured up the worst of his ' out there ' experiences ; saw them 
 clear-pictured at their limit of horror. 
 
 The process strained his new will-power very nearly to 
 breaking-point. Twice after particularly terrible visions 
 he abandoned hope. The old reproach of ' coward ' formu- 
 lated itself in his brain. 
 
 Then he began to make excuses for himself. ' It was 
 absurd to go back. Unpatriotic. Unfair to the men. His 
 nerve might give out in a crisis. He might panic ; make 
 some ghastly mistake, involving not only his own honour but 
 the lives of others.' This last thought nauseated him ; and 
 finally he defeated it. 
 
 His physical condition, curiously enough, the man omitted 
 to consider. 
 
 ' I'll go back,' said P. J., ' be damned if I won't go back. 
 Self-respect demands it of me. What would happen to the 
 country if everybody who had the slightest excuse stopped 
 at home ! ' 
 
 He began to think about the country, not nebulously but 
 as Something Definite. There were only two classes of people 
 in any country Citizens and Parasites. The Citizen lived 
 for the country ; the Parasite lived on the country. In time
 
 The Lifting of Shadows 359 
 
 of war, the able-bodied citizen had one clear duty to fight, 
 And he must fight to his last gasp. Any other argument 
 was pure eyewash. 
 
 Peter figured the problem out in his favourite rowing- 
 terms. You had to pull your own weight in the boat. If you 
 didn't, you became a ' passenger.' Racing-eights couldn't 
 afford ' passengers.' And you had to ' pull your own weight ' 
 from pistol-crack to winning-post. Otherwise, you not the 
 other seven oarsmen and the cox, but you, you yourself lost 
 the race : but you didn't lose it for yourself alone. . . . 
 
 He tried to get round this by arguing : ' But we can't all 
 be in the eight. The eight is a picked body. Besides, some- 
 body has to make the boat, the oars : otherwise one couldn't 
 row at all. ' 
 
 ' Specious ! ' decided our Mr. Jackson, ' very specious. 
 But it doesn't apply to me. I'm in the eight a picked man. 
 I'm trained to row not to make oars. This is my privilege. 
 If I throw it away if I refuse to row . . .' And he thought 
 of Sir Hubert Rawlings, now in the Ministry of National 
 Service, as tricked out in ' colours ' he had not earned, running 
 along the tow-path, megaphoning encouragement to the 
 rowers. 
 
 " Swine ! " said Peter and this time he spoke aloud. 
 
 His mind was made up ; he would finish the course. 
 
 5 
 
 . . . And the doctors laughed at him. They laughed very 
 kindly ; but all the same, they laughed. 
 
 Heron Baynet began the disillusionment when he signed 
 the ' opinion ' demanded by the Medical Board. 
 
 " You haven't got a dog's chance," said his father-in-law. 
 " Not a dog's chance. Look at yourself in the glass ; and be 
 reasonable. I'll certify you cured of shell-shock, if you insist. 
 But what about your physical condition ? You've lost three 
 stone in weight : you admit you sweat at the slightest exer- 
 tion : and your lungs wouldn't pass a medical student if you 
 made him three-parts tight before he tested 'em." 
 
 "All the same," said Peter stubbornly, " I'm going to have 
 a shot for it." 
 
 Heron Baynet worded that opinion very carefully. Neither 
 as doctor nor as father-in-law did he wish his patient to fall 
 into the clutches of bureaucratic medicine. For although, 
 after two years of agitation, the War Office had at last con- 
 sented to admit the existence of neurasthenia, although
 
 360 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 neurasthenia was to have its own medical staff, its special 
 ' clinics ' for treatment, its special recovery hospitals so far, 
 very little had been accomplished. Heron Baynet knew that 
 there were at least thirty thousand cases to be treated and 
 recovery accommodation for about three thousand. The 
 remainder . . . Heron Baynet did not like to think about 
 the remainder : he had heard their screams too often, walked 
 too many nights among the wards where they lay each 
 man's distracted mind poisoning his neighbour's. There- 
 fore, Heron Baynet did not write the word ' neurasthenia ' 
 on the opinion he gave about his son-in-law : instead he 
 wrote . . . "is still suffering, in my opinion, from slight 
 debility." 
 
 " Is that the best you can do ? " asked Peter. 
 
 " Yes," the doctor dried his crabbed handwriting with a 
 vicious blow of the tortoiseshell blotting-pad, " and I've 
 perjured my medical soul by writing the word ' slight.' " 
 
 Two days later, as he waited his turn for examination in 
 a long, draughty corridor, Peter drew the opinion from his 
 tunic-pocket ; re-read it with great care and tore the paper 
 to shreds. 
 
 He might just as well have produced the document. 
 Nothing he could say to the three over-kind men in khaki 
 made the slightest difference. They entered up papers ; they 
 examined papers ; they made him take off his tunic ; they 
 made him put it on again. Then, with great politeness, they 
 turned him out of the room. 
 
 " Well ? " asked the President, a white-haired gentleman 
 with three medal-ribbons and gold-rimmed eye-glasses. 
 
 The two younger members of the Board looked at him 
 doubtfully, " What do you think, sir ? " 
 
 " Done in," said the president laconically. 
 
 They sent for Peter and put the position to him. " Go 
 into a nursing-home for a year or resign your commission. 
 Either way, you'll never be fit for active service again." 
 
 Peter thought the matter over for fifteen seconds ; then 
 he said, " Very good, sir. I'll chuck it." 
 
 They entered up more papers ; certified him for a temporary 
 pension. They advised him to live in the country ; and forgot 
 to acknowledge his meticulous salute. " Next officer, please," 
 Peter heard behind him, as his spur-chains clanked down the 
 corridor. 
 
 Once in the open air, he found himself trembling all over. 
 He let himself tremble. He could tremble till Kingdom Come
 
 The Lifting of Shadows 361 
 
 if it amused him. Trembling passed. He lit a cigar ; hailed 
 a taxi. 
 
 " Where to, sir ? " asked the driver. 
 
 Peter was conscious of three distinct impulses : to have a 
 drink by himself, to stand somebody else a drink, and to be 
 stood a drink by somebody. 
 
 " Savoy Hotel," said the man who had finished the 
 course.
 
 PART XXXIV 
 COMMENCEMENT OF DREAMS 
 
 i 
 
 PETER JACKSON was no ' hero,' only an average 
 decent human being who had gone out to fight the 
 two-legged Beasts which threatened his country, 
 very much as his ancestors might have gone out to 
 wage war against the four-legged beasts which threatened 
 their caves. And being an average human being, his feelings 
 as the taxi whirled him Savoywards expressed themselves 
 in crude song. " And another little drink wouldn't do us 
 any harm," sang Peter Jackson. . . It must be admitted that 
 he sang execrably. 
 
 He overpaid the driver ; swung through the revolving 
 door ; turned left along the grill-room ; and made for the 
 bar. It was just one o'clock, and the place hummed with 
 drinking men. 
 
 " Good God," said a voice, " here's old P. J.I " 
 
 Peter looked up and recognised Major Conway. The big 
 black-haired sportsman stood, riding-crop in one hand, sherry- 
 cobbler in the other, among a little knot of subalterns. 
 
 " What 11 you have ? " he asked. 
 
 Peter decided on a Martini ; swigged it down ; stood a 
 surreptitious round to the party. 
 
 " When are you coming out again ? " said the Major ; and, 
 being told the news, " Lucky devil. Wish I were out of it. 
 Wish I were lyin' on a long chair in the Tanglin Club at Singa- 
 pore, with an ejao at my elbow and a Manila cheroot stuck 
 in my face. You ought to try the F.M.S., P. J. This 
 country's no good for a white man. Too many sanguinary 
 restrictions." 
 
 The subalterns melted away, and the two friends sat down 
 at one of the little round marble-topped tables. " 'Nother 
 drink ? " suggested Conway. " Champagne cocktail ? " 
 
 " All right," Peter nodded to the waiter " but you'll 
 lunch with me."
 
 Commencement of Dreams 363 
 
 " Sorry, old thing ; but I've got a bird meeting me at 
 Romano's. Can't afford to waste time on leave. All very 
 well for you you lucky devil you're out of it. " He finished 
 his cocktail, strode off. 
 
 1 Lucky devil ? ' mused Peter. ' I wonder if I am.' The 
 first fine exhilaration of freedom had worn off already. He 
 was ' out of it ' 1 He looked down at his cord breeches, his 
 high boots, his chained spurs. ' Out of it,' thought Peter. 
 ' Cast ! like some rotten hairy. . . .' 
 
 Lunch, alone at a pillar-table in the crammed restaurant, 
 proved an expensive fiasco. The music annoyed, the waiter 
 fidgeted. Half-way through, he got an attack of nerves ; his 
 left hand shook so that he could hardly hold his fork. Coffee 
 arrived ten minutes after the sweets stone-cold. Peter 
 paid his bill disgustedly ; retrieved cap and cane from the 
 cloak-room ; looked up his train ; and passed out into the 
 courtyard. 
 
 The usual baggage stood piled on the pavement a mis- 
 cellaneous collection, ' Saratogas,' ' Innovations,' flat cabin- 
 trunks and dome-topped portmanteaux. 
 
 " People still travelling, I see," said Peter to the com- 
 missionaire. 
 
 " Yes, sir. The George Washington arrived yesterday. 
 Taxi, sir ? " 
 
 "Thanks. No. I'll walk for a bit." 
 
 Half-way down the Strand another attack of nerves came 
 on. He would be late for his train he would miss his train. . . . 
 ' Undoubtedly,' thought Peter, ' those chaps were right when 
 they told me to live in the country.' 
 
 2 
 
 Once at Paddington (he had taken another taxi and was 
 twenty-five minutes too early) Peter felt perfectly calm 
 again. Twenty-five minutes seemed an enormous time : 
 he inspected each of the three bookstalls ; bought Land and 
 Water, John Bull and The Taller : lounged into the refreshment 
 bar for a last drink ; was told he couldn't be served after 
 two-thirty ; expostulated vainly and made number four 
 platform just in time to swing the door of a first-class carriage 
 as the train got under way. 
 
 In his excitement, Peter had not noticed that the com- 
 partment was a non-smoker. Now, seeing a girl seated in the 
 far corner of it, he flung his cigar-butt out of the window, put 
 his cane on the rack, and settled himself down with his papers.
 
 364 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 The train glided out of the station ; started worming its way 
 between smoky houses towards the country. 
 
 For a few minutes, Peter busied himself with John Bull 
 Bottomley was rather amusing, Bottomley had just been to 
 the front, Bottomley had been telling Douglas Haig how to 
 run the Army. ' Good old Horatio ! ' thought Peter. . . . 
 Then he became aware that the girl was watching him. He 
 looked up, and her eyes turned away. 
 
 The face seemed somehow familiar. Peter forgot all about 
 Horatio ; began to study his companion. At first, she did 
 not strike him as pretty : her colouring was too pale, much 
 paler than Patricia's ; her eyes, from his transient glimpse 
 of them, he imagined to be gray, a pale gray ; the hair, as far 
 as hat revealed it, held the colour of ripe barley palest gold ; 
 curved cheek, lobe of close-set ear, dimpled but resolute chin, 
 moulded nostrils, all made the same impression of paleness. 
 But dark eyebrows, long lashes, and red bow of mouth re- 
 deemed her pallor ; heightened it to significance. 
 
 ' A very pretty girl,' thought Peter at second glance. 
 
 She was dressed with extreme simplicity : dark blue coat 
 and skirt, coat rather long, skirt pleated ; blouse of pale silk, 
 high at neck ; gray doeskin gloves on slender hands. Patent- 
 leather shoes and black silk stockings seemed moulded to the 
 attractive feet and ankles. Peter judged her of medium 
 height ; put her age at twenty-three. 
 
 The certainty that he knew her face grew to conviction. 
 He continued to study her over the top of his paper. She had 
 nothing to read ; seemed quite content to watch the outskirts 
 of London factories, fields, canal-banks, a church among 
 greenery, an empty golf-course as they slid past the carriage 
 windows. Peter noticed, in the rack above her head, a suit- 
 case of dark purple leather : but neither label nor monogram 
 on the suit-case gave any clue to the girl's identity. 
 
 Passing West Drayton, she turned round Suddenly ; and 
 their eyes met again. 
 
 " Would you care to look at one of my papers ? " asked 
 Peter, tentatively proffering The Tatler. 
 
 " Thank you so much," said the girl. Her voice, low and 
 perfectly accented, betrayed no hint of shyness. " It was 
 nice of you to throw away your cigar. But I don't mind 
 in the very least if you want to light another." 
 
 " Oh, I don't want to smoke. Really, I don't. I say," 
 Peter, no ladies' man, felt thoroughly uncomfortable, and bit 
 off the question. 
 
 " Yes " began the girl.
 
 Commencement of Dreams 365 
 
 He plunged in. "It's frightfully stupid of me, of course 
 I mean, the question sounds perfectly idiotic but I'm cer- 
 tain I've seen you before somewhere or other." 
 
 The girl laughed. " And I've been thinking the same 
 about you ever since you opened that carriage door. You," 
 she hesitated " you're terribly like somebody I used to 
 know very well. Only we can't have met before, because I 
 only landed in England for the first time yesterday evening. 
 Unless ..." 
 
 She stared at him, positively stared ; dumb with excite- 
 ment. 
 
 " Unless what . . . ? "asked Peter. He, too, felt himself 
 on the verge of some startling disclosure. 
 
 " Unless you're Mr. Gordon's cousin Peter." His look 
 alone told the girl all she wanted to know ; and she rushed on, 
 tripping over her words. " You are. I felt certain of it. 
 You're Patricia's husband, and you live at a house called 
 Sunflowers, and you've got two children, and you're in the 
 tobacco business, at least you were in the tobacco business, 
 and you've been wounded, and, and, and is Mr. Gordon 
 quite well ? " 
 
 " He was yesterday. I didn't see him before I came up 
 this morning. And," Peter's mind leaped to the only 
 possible conclusion " your photograph's still on his writing- 
 table." 
 
 " Oh ! " She did not blush ; but a faint rose tinged the 
 pallor of her cheeks. " Is it ? " 
 
 For a moment, neither spoke. Then Beatrice said : " But 
 weren't you expecting me ? " 
 
 " Expecting you ! Why, I haven't heard him mention 
 your name. Except once a long time ago. But that's just 
 like Francis I mean like he is now never tells anybody 
 anything." 
 
 The train rattled through Slough station. 
 
 " Mr. Gordon doesn't even know I'm in England. It was 
 Mrs. Jackson who wrote to me ; and I cabled her ten days 
 ago. They wouldn't let me cable the port of arrival or the 
 sailing date." 
 
 " Pat wrote to you 1 " Incredulity drove Peter's voice 
 up into his head. 
 
 " Yes. I I thought she'd have told you. Perhaps I 
 oughtn't to have said anything about it. And I sent her a 
 telegram from the boat as soon as we got in." 
 
 " Well," said Peter, " I don't know about the telegram. 
 That may have come some time to-day. But we've had no
 
 366 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 cable delivered. It couldn't have come without my knowing 
 
 it. Besides " 
 
 Arrival at Maidenhead Junction interrupted further con- 
 versation. 
 
 3 
 
 Arlsfield Post Office does not function after lunch on 
 Tuesdays. Telegrams are telephoned from Henley to Little 
 Arlsfield ; and if ' Little Arlsfield ' (which happens to be a 
 grocery store) is not too busy, the grocer's boy delivers them 
 some time or other on a rickety push-bike. 
 
 All afternoon it was a wonderful sunlit day of late March 
 Patricia, children at her heels, had been pottering about 
 the garden of Sunflowers. Prudence the pig had been 
 duly scratched till she grunted with delight ; they had 
 watched Fry sowing his peas ; inspected and re-inspected 
 the three broodies lying close under their coops in the paddock ; 
 made the tour of the outhouses and the orchard ; played 
 hide-and-seek round the walnut-tree, and tested the new lawn- 
 mower on the sunk lawn. 
 
 " Mummy's got something on her mind," observed 
 Evelyn. " She hasn't said anything for ages." 
 
 Patricia smiled down on the two furry hats : " Time for 
 tea, kids," she said. " Run along indoors. Mummy wants 
 to be alone." 
 
 She watched them dart into the house ; ringlets tossing, 
 bare legs twinkling under their short red skirts. Yes ! She 
 had got ' something on her mind. '. . . And the children were 
 getting altogether too observant : they ought to go to school. 
 Supposing Peter had got his own way supposing 'those 
 doctors ' had passed him fit for service how stupid men were 
 stupid as if Peter were fit for anything except to be taken 
 care of in his own house by his own wife. . . . 
 
 She heard the ring of a bicycle-bell ; heard the gate creak 
 on its hinges ; ran up the lawn on to the gravel drive. The 
 podgy grocer's boy plucked at his cap, handed her two tele- 
 grams. 
 
 " Any answer, mum ? " 
 
 " No. There's no answer." She stood there, opened 
 envelopes in one hand, message-forms in the other. For 
 the fraction of a second she forgot her anxiety about Peter. 
 Beatrice Cochrane had not failed. Beatrice was in England. 
 Beatrice might be at Sunflowers any moment. The first 
 telegram, ' Coming George Washington,' had been held up 
 by the censor ; the second . . .
 
 Commencement of Dreams 367 
 
 ' Oh, bother the telegrams,' thought Patricia. ' I must 
 get the spare room ready at once I ought to fetch her from 
 the station it's too late now she'll probably get a taxi 
 I hope to goodness Francis doesn't turn up for tea.' 
 
 All the time she was supervising Elizabeth's bed-making, 
 fire-making, papering of drawers and turning-out of ward- 
 robe, Patricia's imagination played about Beatrice Cochrane. 
 What on earth was she going to say to her ; how explain ? 
 What would Beatrice do ? Would she go to Francis at once ? 
 ' Of course she will,' said Patricia. ' I should. I wouldn't 
 wait a moment.' 
 
 Neither then, nor for many days, did Patricia stop to 
 consider the miraculousness of Beatrice's war-time journey. 
 The romance of the girl's coming sufficed its hour. 
 
 Yet the journey's self was a romance ; a romance of one 
 girl's persistence. There had been so many difficulties her 
 parents, the U.S. passport office, British Admiralty regula- 
 tions ; but Beatrice, smile in her eyes and fear at her heart, 
 surmounted them one by one. The call came ; and she must 
 answer the call. Nothing else mattered. . . . 
 
 Beatrice was thinking of these things as the taxi circled 
 away from Henley station ; took the Harpsden road. So 
 much lay behind her : so much she had yet to face. Of the 
 past, nothing remained except the big trunk clumsily roped 
 beside the driver, the suit-case at her feet. 
 
 This England amazed her. She had expected to find at 
 least some semblance to her own country ; but, except for 
 the language, everything seemed foreign foreign and rather 
 hostile. Also, nobody cared. Personalities didn't exist. 
 She was Beatrice Cochrane : she told herself this several times, 
 as though she might forget it and for all England cared she 
 might have been Sally Smith. England had welcomed her 
 gruffly in the pitch darkness of a choppy sea pitch darkness 
 out of which men from low decks had shouted to men on high. 
 England had decanted her as an ' alien ' ; fussed over her 
 passport ; shoved her into a train ; told her to pull down the 
 blinds in case of air-raids and left her to her own devices. 
 The rest of her journey seemed to Beatrice's fantasy a thread- 
 ing of her way through millions of soldiers. She had never 
 seen so many soldiers. And nobody cared ! 
 
 Even the soldier at her side the thin, careworn man who 
 looked so like Francis didn't seem particularly interested. 
 After his first spasm of surprise, he had subsided into English- 
 ness. Apparently, he took it for granted that she was going 
 to stay with him, to marry his cousin. Obviously, he neither
 
 368 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 knew nor wanted to know what his wife had written to her, 
 or why. 
 
 " Jolly, isn't it ? " said Peter. " The country, I mean." 
 
 " Yes. Very jolly-" She didn't really think it ' jolly ' ; 
 she thought it rather disappointing. And they were going 
 too fast to see much more than hedges and fields switching 
 by. The fields looked very small ; the roadside cottages they 
 passed, very modern. 
 
 " Is Sunflowers far from Henley ? " she asked. 
 
 " About another five miles." 
 
 A golf-course flashed past : more hedges : a tumble-down- 
 looking farm-house. She began to think, shyly, about 
 Francis. What would he say to her, she to him ? Had she 
 done right in dashing half across the world at a letter from an 
 unknown Englishwoman ? 
 
 Peter leaned forward, said to the driver : " Take the 
 Arlsfield road when you come to it. Straight on through 
 the village, and then up to Tebbits' Farm." 
 
 The man merely nodded. They came to a village green ; 
 shot across it. More hedges a red-brick townlet. Now 
 the road rose straight ahead of them ; looking forward over her 
 bobbing trunk, Beatrice saw a tree-crowned ridge. 
 
 " Oh," she said suddenly, " what a lovely house ! " 
 
 "That's Sunflowers." He did not seem particularly 
 proud of the place ; but he jumped out of the car politely 
 enough ; swung the gate for it to enter ; ran to the front door. 
 The door was open ; and Beatrice saw a woman standing in 
 the doorway a tall, golden-haired woman. 
 
 " Pat," ejaculated Peter, " there's a girl " 
 
 " I know," said Patricia ; " I've been expecting her." 
 
 The next moment, Beatrice found herself being helped 
 out of the car ; shaken hands with ; asked if she would like to 
 wash before tea. 
 
 " I must ask Peter one question first ; you don't mind, do 
 you ? He's just been up for his Board, and I want to know 
 what they've done to him. Peter ! " 
 
 " Yes, dear. ..." 
 
 Beatrice tried not to listen ; but she couldn't help hearing 
 the brief colloquy : " What happened ? " " Oh, they fired 
 me out. Napoo. Fini." Then Patricia took her by the 
 arm ; rushed her through a brightly-furnished hall, up some 
 blue-carpeted stairs to a chintz-curtained room and there, 
 without any warning at all, her hostess burst into tears. 
 
 The American girl put a tentative hand on the English- 
 woman's arm. " What is it ? Oh, do tell me what it is ?
 
 Commencement of Dreams 369 
 
 Has anything happened to Mr. Jackson anything bad, I 
 mean ? " 
 
 " No, nothing bad. Just something rather wonderful," 
 Patricia smiled through her tears. " Excuse me for welcom- 
 ing you so stupidly. But it's been such a strain nearly 
 three years of it and now that it's really over, I," she 
 dabbed viciously at her eyes " I'm a little upset, that's all. 
 Do please forgive me, Miss Cochrane." 
 
 " Forgive ? " Beatrice's gray eyes smiled up into her new 
 friend's face. " It's I who ought to be forgiven. You 
 wanted to talk to each other and I was in the way. Do go 
 down to him. I can manage quite well by myself. ..." 
 
 For answer, Patricia kissed the girl's cheek. " My dear, 
 I wouldn't have him see me cry for anything in the world. 
 That was why I ran you up the stairs so quickly." She stepped 
 to a bell-push by the fireplace ; rang. A servant appeared. 
 " Bring up Miss Cochrane 's bag, please, and tell Mr. Jackson 
 we'll be down for tea in twenty minutes." 
 
 Beatrice, unpinning her hat at the mirror on the oak 
 toilet-table, thought to herself, " Well, some of them care, 
 anyway." 
 
 " And now, my dear," her hostess's voice interrupted 
 reverie " let's talk sensibly. ..." 
 
 When the two women at last came arm-in-arm down the 
 staircase, it seemed to Peter Jackson as though it were Beatrice 
 who had been crying ; but she talked happily enough through 
 tea-time and refused his escort beyond the ricks of Tebbits' 
 Farm. 
 
 Peter, watching the slight figure dwindling down the 
 meadow-path into the mist of a March twilight, could not 
 help thinking to himself, ' A girl like that is much too good 
 for poor old Francis.' Then, remembering that he had a 
 bone to pick with Patricia,he strode rapidly baok to Sunflowers. 
 
 4 
 
 Francis Gordon sat at his great desk by the open window. 
 All day he had been conscious of springtime, of a stir in his 
 veins, a longing, a dissatisfaction. What did springtime or 
 any time matter to him to Francis Gordon ? All his real 
 springtimes lay behind : in front, stretched nothing but a 
 gray void of seasons hopeless and lonely. His brave days 
 had gone down in dust. He was a cripple a drag on the 
 swift wheels of humanity clog in a bright machine. 
 
 He looked out across Arlsfield Park. Sun, just dipping 
 
 AA
 
 370 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 behind crest-line, irradiated the broad avenue of close-bitten 
 turf. Feeding bunnies made sable dots all about the green : 
 a herd of deer, antlered shadows, moved in and out among 
 the chestnut trees. At avenue's end the hills swelled 
 blue-purple to a rosewash of sky. 
 
 But sunset's beauty made no appeal to the heart of Francis 
 Gordon. It felt cold, the heart within him, heavy with the 
 sorrows of the world. Sunsettings and sunrisings beauties 
 of inanimate senseless things God's mockeries at humanity ! 
 God ? . . . The man laughed. 
 
 As if there were a god ! He whoever he might be was 
 no god, but a devil, a torturer. Yet men tricked themselves 
 into this idea of godhead. Every cruelty in the world had 
 been perpetrated in the name of some deity. The very Beasts 
 in Gray wore his name for device. And he, Francis Gordon, 
 in the pride of his brain, had submitted to such trickery. 
 For the sake of this fool-god he had renounced the one 
 woman. 
 
 In return for that renunciation, the fool-god had promised 
 him the power of words. He was to write, to spend his life 
 at this stupid desk. . . . 
 
 Meanwhile, men fought. . . . 
 
 He began to think of his own tiny share in that great right- 
 ing. Even there, he had not played a man's part. Better 
 to be one of those tortured men he had seen in the prison- 
 camps of the Beast, than a spy. Yes, a spy it came down 
 to that in the end. If only he had killed one Beast, killed it 
 with his own hands, squeezed the life-blood from its foul 
 throat. . . . 
 
 Now, thought of the Beast obsessed him. The horrors he 
 had seen in the Land of the Beast danced uncleanly sara- 
 bands in his brain. And god, the gentle Jesus black-coated 
 priests still whined about on Sundays, god permitted these 
 horrors. . . . Better then the old gods, Thor and Odin, 
 whose priests dipped hands in blood and slew. . . . 
 
 A vast wave of hatred surged over the man's soul. There 
 could be no happiness on earth until the Beast was extermin- 
 ated ; male and cub and female the Beast must perish. There 
 must be one great killing. With fire and sword, men must 
 traverse the country of the Beast : not only the Beast, but 
 all his works his handiwork and his mind-work, the corrupt- 
 ing thought and the corrupted accomplishment all these 
 must be wiped out, the very memory of them be obliterated. . . 
 And after that, there should be no more gods, neither Jesus 
 nor Jehovah, neither Thor nor Odin only Men, men and
 
 Commencement of Dreams 371 
 
 women, walking a new clean earth, unafraid of any beast or 
 any god. . . . 
 
 In his hatred it seemed to Francis Gordon as though power 
 had come back to him. In this great killing, words too might 
 play their part. Not the words of any fool-god, but the words 
 of a cripple a cripple who knew that there was neither god 
 nor devil, but only Man, man and the Beast. . . . 
 
 And suddenly a Voice spoke to Francis Gordon, a stern, 
 clear Voice from the heart of the sunset : " Thou fool," cried 
 the Voice, "Thou blind fool! If the Beast perish, man also 
 perishes. For this is God's Purpose." 
 
 But the mind of the man answered the Voice out of the 
 sunset : " There is no god. I, a cripple, am greater than 
 any god. In mine own brain have I renounced thee. Thou 
 art the Liar of the World. There is no god save Man." 
 
 And God said : " Dost thou deny Me ? " 
 
 " Aye," answered the mind of the man, " by the existence 
 of the Beast, I deny thee. By my own courage, I deny 
 thee. By the power which is mine, I deny thee. By every 
 tortured body in this world, and by my own tortured body, 
 I deny thee." 
 
 " Yet thou hearest Me," said God. 
 
 Now, it was Francis Gordon who spoke. His twisted 
 body rose from its seat by the desk ; his eyes looked unafraid 
 into the heart of the darkling sunset. " There is no god. 
 God's purpose is a fraud and a lie. This voice which I hear 
 is the lying voice of my own mind." 
 
 Very faintly came the answer out of the sunset : " I am 
 in thy mind as I am in thy body. Both by thy mind and by 
 thy body, I send thee a sign." 
 
 Then, looking into his own mind, it seemed to Francis as 
 though some veil had been drawn back from across the world ; 
 as though, for the first time, he saw God's Purpose plain. 
 Never while Earth endured would the Beast utterly perish : 
 for God had created the Beast even as he created Man to sub- 
 due the Beast. Without this menace of the Beast, man's 
 finest attribute the very manhood of him would atrophy. 
 He would become flabby, emasculate : and in his flabbiness 
 he would perish. 
 
 A coal, dropping in the grate, roused him. It had grown 
 almost dark. Trees and turf and hills beyond were all 
 veiled in misty shadows things of the twilight, ghosts of a 
 world. And with the glory of the sunset, the glory of his 
 visioning departed.
 
 372 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Doubt tore him as with pincers. Once again, this voice 
 he called God had lied to him. There was no God. . . . 
 
 Voices ! He must get away from voices. Always, he 
 heard voices. A second ago it had been God's voice : now, 
 it was the voice of a girl, her voice. He could have sworn 
 he heard her voice. Someone was coming upstairs. Someone 
 was opening the door. . . . 
 
 " Francis ! " More voices ; would he never be done with 
 voices ? " Francis ! " 
 
 His eyes, jerked suddenly from dreaming, saw a shadow 
 glide across the room towards him. He felt his heart give a 
 great leap as though he were dying. 
 
 " Beatrice," he stammered, " Beatrice ! " 
 
 Words went from them. They stood speechless. Their 
 hands met in the twilight. Lips faltered to lips. Then she 
 was in his arms, and God grew real at last.
 
 PART XXXV 
 OUT OF IT 
 
 i 
 
 BEATRICE COCHRANE stayed at Sunflowers while 
 the formalities of her marriage were being arranged. 
 Patricia found her very difficult to understand. 
 She combined, bewilderingly, idealism and common- 
 sense, a feeling for poetry with unfailing judgment of practical 
 values. Educationally, the Englishwoman found herself 
 quite overmastered : the comprehensiveness of Beatrice's 
 college-training made British standards seem entirely out 
 of date. And yet, in a way, Beatrice was old-fashioned ; 
 she lacked, Patricia thought, adaptability ; inclined to let 
 ' ought to be ' dominate ' is.' Sometimes this lack of adapt- 
 ability irritated Patricia. 
 
 Beatrice, on her part, was equally puzzled. She had, as 
 yet, no key to the English mentality. England, regarded 
 from the Sunflowers viewpoint, appeared to her a country 
 of postponement and acceptance. Rightly or wrongly, a thing 
 was thus and so. If right, why seek to improve ? If wrong 
 extraordinary, she thought, how easily the English admitted 
 a thing could be wrong put up with it. Sometimes, this 
 putting-up-with-things made Beatrice perfectly furious. 
 
 But in spite of these fundamental Anglo-American differ- 
 ences Patricia loved Beatrice, and Beatrice frankly 
 adored Patricia. At the end of three days, not only ' Mrs. 
 Jackson,' but ' Mr. Jackson ' and ' Mr. Gordon ' dis- 
 appeared from the American girl's vocabulary : and on the 
 evening of April the fifth when the last remnants of Peter's 
 wine-cellar celebrated her country's declaration of war it 
 was Beatrice who proposed : " Pat ! Because, just for once, 
 she forgot to behave like an Englishwoman." 
 
 At which reference to forbidden topics, Peter's wife 
 blushed perfectly scarlet, and looked appealingly to Francis 
 for protection. But Francis Gordon only laughed, " It's 
 the least you deserve for interfering." 
 
 " And I think," went on Beatrice, " that while drinking
 
 374 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Pat's health we ought not to forget another person whose 
 name also begins with P. . . ." 
 
 " Meaning me ? " interrupted Peter. 
 
 " No, sir." Her eyes twinkled with fun. " Meaning my 
 future " she laughed outright " butler. Prout ! " 
 
 " Lord," said Francis Gordon. " This is what comes of 
 getting engaged to a Democrat." 
 
 " Republican," corrected Beatrice. " And I don't be- 
 lieve you know the difference yet." 
 
 Her nanc6 subsided into adoring silence. For already 
 even the unobservant Peter saw quite clearly who would 
 rule the roost at Glen Cottage ! 
 
 And apparently this tender ' bossing ' was just the one 
 thing needful to Francis Gordon's temperament. He ex- 
 panded under it ; became positively human. His very 
 physique seemed to improve : the hopeless shuffle became a 
 mere limp : he carried his head erect, his shoulders unbowed. 
 She forbade him to use the word ' cripple ' : and for two 
 pins would have taken away his stick. " But it makes me 
 so interesting," he protested laughingly. " My dear man," 
 Beatrice drawled the words in imitation " there's only 
 one thing really interesting about anybody." " And that ? " 
 he queried. " Is the work they mean to do in the world." 
 
 On this question of work, the girl brooked no doubting. 
 She believed in his work ; and for her sake if for nobody else's 
 (" There is nobody else," he remonstrated : " There's every- 
 body else in the world," she told him) he must succeed. 
 " You've got to count," she said. " You've got to be some- 
 body." She did not desire money for him she had so much 
 money that Francis, when he first heard of it, almost wanted 
 to cry off the marriage : but she did desire success. Until 
 he won that 'success,' neither he nor she would move from 
 Glen Cottage. 
 
 But as this is only indirectly the tale of Francis and 
 Beatrice, we must not analyse them too deeply. It suffices 
 that they are utterly happy in each other ; that love, which is 
 finer than reason, does not blind but rather gives them clear 
 vision ; that they know, as they tolerate, each other's faults : 
 and that although fame has not yet quite come to Glen 
 Cottage, they already feel they can hear the beating of his 
 wings. 
 
 2 
 
 All through his cousin's wedding in the little church at 
 Arlsfield, Peter who gave away the bride felt conscious of
 
 Out of It 375 
 
 a reasonless but ever-growing depression. It seemed to him 
 as though Francis married his last man-friend would 
 vanish. Almost, he grudged the veiled girl her obvious 
 happiness. 
 
 And this feeling of depression did not wear off as the easy 
 April days slipped by. Rather, it increased. All the man 
 in Peter resented ill-health ; resented the lack of male com- 
 panionship ; resented idleness. And idleness, Heron Baynet 
 assured him, was imperative. 
 
 He began to worry about the future. His pension, thirty 
 shillings a week subject to revision, barely paid a third of his 
 insurance premiums. The children must be sent to school. 
 The expenses of Sunflowers rose hourly with the tide of 
 war-extravagance which had swept over England. ' Things 
 can't go on like this,' exactly represents Peter's attitude. 
 
 He decided to go back into the tobacco business and 
 reversed decision as soon as reached. Somehow, he could 
 no longer imagine himself at a desk. . . . Patricia, consulted 
 on this point, agreed so strenuously that Peter became sus- 
 picious. " Why shouldn't I go back ? " he remonstrated. 
 "It's the only trade I know. The Imperial would give me 
 a job to-morrow. ..." Nevertheless, he discarded the idea. 
 
 The tobacco business, like the Army, lay behind him. He 
 was out of the one as he was out of the other. But memories 
 of both still haunted his mind. Of the two lives he had lived, 
 he missed the military one most. Maurice Beresford, Elkins, 
 Schornstein and the Bramsons seemed petty figures compared 
 with the Weasel and General Blacklock, Conway and Sandi- 
 land and Charlie Henry. But correspondence from the 
 Brigade dwindled and dwindled, soon ceased altogether ; 
 till only an occasional poem by Purves, who continued his 
 conquering campaign in the Press, and Jacky Baynet's or 
 Alice Stark's letters to Patricia, reminded of khaki. 
 
 For the world, war went on ; but for Peter it had stopped. 
 He saw it from afar : spectator and not participant. His lack 
 of interest in it amazed him almost as much as the glorious 
 credulity of the civilians with whom he occasionally discussed 
 its official versions perversions. Finally, in a fit of un- 
 governable annoyance over a picture of ' cheery wounded ' 
 after the battle of Messines, he barred the topic altogether. 
 Patricia, who had been harrowed by more than one personal 
 reminiscence, made no objection ; but the children demurred 
 furiously. 
 
 " If daddy isn't going to tell us about killing Germans," 
 threatened Primula one evening, " I shall refuse to go to sleep."
 
 376 Peter Jackson, Gigar Merchant 
 
 " You bloodthirsty little wretch," began Peter : and till 
 their mother intervened, ' bloodthirsty ' became the school- 
 room adjective. 
 
 However, Evelyn and Primula's passion for the word 
 ' bloodthirsty ' paled into insignificance at the coming of 
 Peter's brother Arthur. Arthur had ' got a job ' at the 
 Godstone flying-school ; and you never knew, as you sat at 
 lessons or romped in the garden, what particular moment 
 might not bring the drone of Arthur's engine, high up in the 
 air, like an enormous bee. He used to come swooping across 
 country from behind the trees at the back of the paddock ; 
 and you could always tell if it were Uncle Arthur because his 
 engine made a funny noise buzz, stop, buzz, stop, buzz 
 when he meant to land in Tebbits' pasture. Once, too, Uncle 
 Arthur stunted, really ' stunted,' for nearly twenty minutes, 
 miles up, right over the roof. . . . But Arthur never repeated 
 that blissful performance : his ' falling leaf ' proving too 
 much for Peter's nerves. 
 
 " You neurasthenic old idiot," growled the flying man, 
 " there's no danger at all. One just shuts off the engine ..." 
 
 " I know all about that," said Peter-, " but to see you 
 turning over and over sideways frightens me out of my wits. 
 Besides, if anything happened, you'd be court -martialled." 
 
 " By the Archangel Gabriel, I suppose," grinned Arthur ; 
 and soared off into the blue. 
 
 " Now that," thought Peter, " is a man's life. Whereas 
 mine ..." And again depression gripped him. 
 
 3 
 
 May came gloriously. Hawthorn hedges donned their 
 ruddiest coral : orchard foamed below the gravel terrace : 
 wild cherry spangled blossom against the greenery of new- 
 leaved beech woods beyond the paddock. Peter didn't care. 
 Frankly, he was bored to tears. He wanted something to do. 
 He missed his horses. If you couldn't hunt in May, at least 
 you could ride. What did one do with oneself in the country 
 during that rotten month, May ? Fish, perhaps ? He dallied 
 a day with his trout -rod, unearthed some rather dingy flies ; 
 hired a push-bike in Arlsfield, and cycled to Henley. The 
 May-fly was on the water ; not a fish would bite. Fish on the 
 lower Thames rarely do bite. Still, that day re-introduced 
 him to the river. 
 
 Next time, he left the trout-rod and took Patricia. 
 Tebbits lent them his trap for the day ; and they enjoyed
 
 Out of It 377 
 
 themselves. He punted her up to Wargrave ; she paddled 
 him home down the backwater. 
 
 " Good pals, you and I, aren't we, Pat ? " he said to her, as 
 they drove back through the twilight. 
 
 " Yes, dear." She had abandoned her love-dreams. 
 Love, as she saw love in the eyes of Francis and Beatrice, was 
 not for her. She must satisfy herself with palship, be content 
 among the ranks and files of matrimony. 
 
 " I have been a fool," she thought, " a sentimental fool. 
 Love is not for me. I am just an average woman, an average 
 middle-class woman. And, like all women, I have expected too 
 much of life. Life has been very kind to me. I mustn't 
 grumble. Life has given him back to me. Isn't that 
 enough ? " 
 
 She looked at the man by her side. He drove steadily, 
 wrist giving to horse's mouth. A loose dust-coat hid the lines 
 of his figure : under it, legs, feet and ankles shewed white in 
 boating-attire. Soft hat, brim down-turned, shadowed the 
 thin face, the serious eyes. 
 
 Again she thought, ' I have been a fool. Life holds 
 nothing better than this : to be one's husband's friend. Love 
 is only for the very young. We are old married people. We 
 have been married over ten years. I will be reasonable. I 
 will content myself with the much that is mine. He has 
 always been good to me. He has always been faithful to me. 
 I have the children.' 
 
 The mare trotted on, steadily, soberly, resigned to loose 
 bit, to ungalling collar and easy load. Even so, Patricia 
 resigned herself to matrimony. . . . 
 
 Peter set down his wife at Sunflowers, drove on to Tebbits' 
 alone. " Back in half an hour," he called over his shoulder ; 
 "I'll just help the old man unharness Kitty." But old man 
 Tebbits would never unharness the brown mare again. He 
 had died an hour back ; painlessly ; asleep in the vast 
 wooden chair Charlie had made for him. 
 
 " He always slept his few minutes after his dish of tea," 
 explained Miss Tebbits. " And when I tried to wake him, I 
 found I couldn't." 
 
 There was no uproar at the farm, no confusion ; but none 
 of the labourers had gone home. " He was a good father to 
 us all," said Harry, unbuckling the traces with firm fingers; 
 "I'm making no complaint about him." Sid Dyson, the 
 carter a heavy-footed, shaggy man with grizzled beard led 
 the mare to her stable. William, a big, bent fellow who lived 
 with his mother at Little Arlsfield, came wheeling his mud-
 
 378 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 encrusted bike from the cowhouse. " Good night, Mr. 
 Harry," called William. The ' boy ' (" Never keeps 
 more than one boy two talks," had been one of old 
 man Tebbits' aphorisms) stood about, now on one leg, 
 now on the other, uncertain of his duty. 
 
 " You'd better be off," ordered Harry. The blond giant 
 turned to Peter. " Would you care to see him, sir ? " 
 
 They had carried the old man as far as the kitchen sofa ; 
 spread a patchwork quilt over his limbs. In the scullery, 
 Miss Tebbits was washing up : Peter could hear the trickle of 
 water, the clink of crockery, as he stood gazing down on the 
 gnarled, happy face. ' Thus, men should die,' thought Peter, 
 'not . . .' Old pictures came crowding on his mind ; he saw 
 other faces, dreadful faces, faces of young men who should 
 have been alive. . . . 
 
 Charlie Tebbits, summoned from Arlsfield, stalked hatless 
 into the room. " He was a good father," said Charlie ; " I've 
 no complaint to make about him." 
 
 Peter wanted to get away, to leave these two alone with 
 their dead. He held out his hand to Charlie. " I'm sorry." 
 The man gripped it. "He always liked you, sir." Harry 
 followed him out of the kitchen. They walked slowly down 
 the flag-path to the gate. 
 
 Peter held out his hand again. " See you to-morrow, 
 Harry." The giant fidgeted for a moment ; his blue eyes 
 under the golden brows gazed straight into Peter's. 
 
 " Father said," began Harry, " that if anything happened 
 to him we was to tell you about that lease." 
 
 " What about it ? " asked Peter wonderingly. 
 
 " Father didn't like signing that lease," went on Harry. 
 " He didn't ought to have signed it neither. That Henley 
 solicitor fellow, he was altogether too sharp. And father got 
 angry with him. ..." 
 
 It took half an hour before Peter got to the bottom of 
 matters. Apparently, the trouble lay not in the house itself, 
 but in the paddock. House and orchard stood on a little 
 patch of freehold ground Tebbits' property : but the 
 paddock, like most of Tebbits' land, was leasehold and 
 Tebbits' lease (an old-fashioned contract) expired with old 
 man Tebbits. 
 
 " Well, I don't see it matters," said Peter finally. " You'll 
 keep the farm on, I suppose ? " 
 
 " If we can," said Harry, pulling at his great mouostche. 
 " If we can, sir." He clumped heavily back to the house.
 
 PART XXXVI 
 END OR BEGINNING? 
 
 i 
 
 RIGHTLY to understand what follows which is the 
 end (or the beginning, according to standpoint) of 
 romance you must recall to memory that Peter 
 the First, grandfather of our Mr. Jackson, who left 
 the country for the town at the commencement of the great 
 English manufacturing era, about eighteen hundred and forty, 
 tried his luck in the City, and ended his days on the tobacco- 
 farm in Guanabacoa, Cuba ; also Peter the Second, father of 
 our Mr. Jackson, and founder of Jackson & Co., Lime Street. 
 Nor must you quite forget Captain ' Chips ' Bradley, Tessa 
 Bradley, and the exotic Hebraic strain of the Miraflores. For 
 all these played their ghostly parts in the mind of their 
 descendant as he walked that debatable paddock in the warm 
 sunshine of a late May morning, ten days after the death of 
 old man Tebbits. 
 
 Fry had dug up half an acre of that paddock ; and already 
 the mauve potato-flower was in bloom above its dark leaves. 
 ' Confound it,' thought Peter, ' I'm not going to be done out 
 of this paddock. I paid to have it dug up, didn't I ? ' 
 
 He looked at the two chicken-houses. They would have 
 to be moved. It would take Fry half a day to move them. 
 Half a day at thirty shillings a week. ..." 
 
 And immediately the word ' business ' formed itself in 
 Peter's brain. He had never before considered the country 
 in the light of business : the country had been for him a place 
 where town people made holiday ; a rather jolly, picturesque 
 kind of place scenery among which one rode, or killed 
 pheasants, or drove golf-balls. Now, he saw the country as 
 the peasant sees it but the peasant in Peter had been 
 sharpened by a half a generation among townsfolk. 
 
 f It isn't just a business,' he thought. ' It's the business. 
 The greatest business in the world. And I've been living right 
 in the middle of it for six months without grasping that simple 
 fact/
 
 380 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Then the Jew in Peter said, quite distinctly, ' My boy, 
 there's money in this.' 
 
 Prudence the pig grunted a hint of feeding-time. But to 
 Peter she was Prudence the pig no longer : she was Prudence 
 the breeding sow, and the sooner she went to the boar the 
 better. Pigs ! ' Little pigs pays all right ' he seemed to hear 
 old man Tebbits speaking. Then imagination outran Teb- 
 bits : if little pigs paid to sell, big hogs paid to rear. ' Ques- 
 tion of feeding cost,' remarked the ghost of Peter the First 
 
 The man in the white flannel trousers, with the belted 
 shooting-coat and the old Etonian tie, looked at the woods 
 beyond the paddock. Beeches ! There were beeches in 
 those woods beech-mast, roots, all sorts of pig fodder. He 
 saw an endless procession of hogs, running through the 
 paddock to feed in those woods. 
 
 Said Peter, " I've got to have the paddock. ..." 
 
 Three hens fluttered up on to the wire-netting round the 
 potato-patch ; swayed there a moment ; dropped over among 
 the potato-plants. Patricia couldn't make hens pay. Of 
 course she couldn't. They were bad hens. And chicken 
 food was too dear. But if one grew one's own corn . . . 
 
 ' Self-supporting,' thought Peter suddenly. ' Cut the 
 middleman's profit.' 
 
 A cow lowed from across the road. Thought process went 
 on. Peasant, soldier, Jew and business man met round the 
 board-room table of Peter's brain. First the land ; then the 
 men to work the land. ' Don't pay rent. Buy outright,' 
 said Business. ' Keep 'em in order,' rasped the soldier. 
 ' Crops and stock,' said the peasant, ' crops and stock, stock 
 and crops.' ' And your markets,' whispered the Jew, 
 ' never forget your markets. Work to your markets 
 supply and demand, demand and supply.' ... All of which 
 counsels the old Etonian crystallised into the words, ' Why 
 not become a gentleman-farmer ? ' 
 
 " Snobbish idea ! " this time Peter spoke aloud. " Gentle- 
 man farmer gentleman business man discharged officer 
 would like to sell wine and cigars on commission. Rubbish ! 
 A job's a job. The man who does his job is a gentleman : the 
 man who plays with his job is ..." The Expeditionary 
 Force epithet sailed bluely into the country air. 
 
 From abstract ideas, thought switched to Tebbits' Farm. 
 The position, as far as he could gather from Harry, was this : 
 the Colonel (' Damn that colonel,' thought Peter, ' why 
 hasn't his wife called on Pat ? ') did not want to renew old 
 man Tebbits' lease : the Colonel wanted to sell his land :
 
 End or Beginning ? 381 
 
 Harry Tebbits couldn't afford to buy it. But he, Peter, could 
 afford to buy it, and if he didn't here the peasant in Peter 
 grew very angry somebody else might do him out of this 
 very paddock. ' Then sue Tebbits' estate for damage,' 
 counselled the Jew. ' You don't know anything about 
 farming. You'll make a hash of it, like your brother Arthur. 
 Farming's a difficult business, my boy. Why not lend Harry 
 the money ? Six per cent, and no risk. If he can't make it 
 pay, you foreclose. . . .' 
 
 Peter walked slowly back to the house. But the next 
 morning, and the next, and the morning after that, he spent 
 in the paddock. The more he considered this business of 
 farming, the wider its scope appeared. It embraced every- 
 thing he needed : plenty of work, limitless opportunities, a 
 bit of a fight, a bit of a gamble, men to boss, horses to ride. 
 And if one could learn to be a gunner in six months, surely 
 one could learn to be a farmer. . . . ' In how long ? ' asked 
 reason : and Peter realized for the first time his utter prac- 
 tical ignorance. 
 
 For two days he abandoned the scheme. Then a milking- 
 time visit to Tebbits' brought the whole business back. He 
 might not know much about farming but any ass could see 
 this wasn't right. ' Filthy,' said the soldier in Peter, ' filthy 1 
 Flies and cobwebs and a dung-heap round the corner. That 
 milk would poison a regiment.' 
 
 Finally, he decided to talk the whole thing out with Harry. 
 If Harry would come into partnership ; if Harry would listen 
 to reason. . . . For already the business man in Peter had 
 realized that farming on ' Tebbits ' lines was a thing of the 
 past, a picturesque anachronism. 
 
 ' Farming ' Peter must have said this to himself at 
 least a hundred times during those few days ' isn't just a 
 business. It's the business. And like ah* businesses it's got 
 to be big. All this talk about small holdings is blather. 
 The smallholder works himself to death for less wages than a 
 dock labourer. . . .' 
 
 It must be admitted that Peter's first talk with Harry 
 Tebbits frightened that worthy almost as much as ' our Mr. 
 Jackson ' had frightened Turkovitch in Nirvana days. Still, 
 Harry listened. " Yes, I know we don't produce as cheap as 
 we might, nor sell as dear as we could," admitted Harry. 
 " 'Tis the Government's fault, I'm thinking." 
 
 Peter laughed. " They don't grow much hay in West- 
 minster, Harry. No English Government ever helped a 
 farmer yet. We've got to help ourselves. Now about the
 
 382 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 milk. Sealed bottles and our own deliveries, ' guaranteed 
 pure,' ' from the cow to the kid.' Ford cars to Reading and 
 Henley. Eggs, too, and vegetables. Bacon . . ." 
 
 " Bacon ! " ejaculated Harry. 
 
 " Of course. If little pigs pay, big hogs pay ; if it pays 
 people to buy big hogs, it will pay us to kill, cure, smoke and 
 retail 'em." " 
 
 " We can't do anything this side of Michaelmas. Lease 
 isn't up till then," said Harry, hardly convinced. 
 
 " No ; but we can do an awful lot of thinking." . . . 
 
 . . . And, thinking, thought expanded. With fourteen 
 thousand pounds of capital, and the key-industry of life 
 what couldn't a man accomplish ? Peter sent for books, 
 pamphlets ; buried himself in statistics. And the more he 
 read the more he convinced himself that the secret of farming 
 was no secret at all. Farming was just like any other business ; 
 it depended on two questions ' How cheaply can I produce ? 
 How dearly can I sell ? ' 
 
 ' Machinery and marketing,' said Peter. ' Same old 
 problem.' 
 
 The spectre of ' labour ' did not frighten him. Eliminate 
 the middleman, and there would be enough surplus profits, in 
 the particular business of farming, to give ' labour ' all it 
 wanted. Besides, the Tebbits- Jackson farm would be run on 
 co-partnership lines as the Nirvana factory was to have been. 
 ' Share and share,' said our Mr. Jackson ; ' I'll do my job 
 if they'll do theirs.' 
 
 At which exact point in his schemes for the future, Peter 
 Jackson fell head over ears in love with his own wife ! 
 
 How the thing happened : whether he had always been 
 ' in love ' with her and only just discovered the fact ; whether 
 the example of Francis and Beatrice, emerging from the 
 seclusion of honeymoon, influenced him ; whether leisure, 
 returning health, heredity, or his growing affection for Sun- 
 flowers first started the wheels of passion it is impossible to 
 say. Remains the fact that he did fall in love with her, head 
 over heels, madly, crazily and unreasonably in love. To 
 elaborate a slang expression much in vogue at the time, ' he 
 dived in at the deep end.' 
 
 2 
 
 Peter ' dived in ' at exactly five o'clock on a gorgeous 
 afternoon in earliest June. They were having tea on the sunk
 
 End or Beginning ? 383 
 
 lawn she, he, Francis, Beatrice, and the two children. And 
 quite suddenly, watching her as she bent over the table, he 
 knew an insane impulse. He wanted to cuddle his own wife, 
 in full sunshine, shamelessly ; he wanted ' those people ' out 
 of the way. Instead, he asked her for another cup of tea ! 
 
 But this ' insane impulse ' (so he phrased it to himself) 
 refused to be suppressed. It recurred constantly, that day, 
 the next day, and the day after. It became an obsession. He 
 argued with it : ' Don't be a fool, P. J. She'll think you've 
 gone crazy. You have gone crazy. . . .' 
 
 Then, he began to think about her, as Heron Baynet had 
 taught him to think, in pictures. He saw her kneeling at the 
 altar, on their honeymoon, in Lowndes Square, at Brighton, in 
 Harley Street. Always, she had been his pal. Damn it, he 
 didn't want her for his pal he wanted to cuddle her. She 
 became of a sudden so attractive that he could hardly sit 
 opposite to her at the dinner-table. . . . 
 
 He said to himself : ' But what more do you want of her ? 
 She's yours, isn't she ?' ... 
 
 Followed self-reproach. What a wife she'd been to him ! 
 What a wife ! 1 But had he ever appreciated her ? No, he 
 had not. He'd been a perfect cad to her. . . . What a wife ! 
 Had she ever grumbled ? No, she had not. Had he ever 
 grumbled ? Yes, he had. When he lost his money, did she 
 complain ? No, she didn't. Did he ? Yes, he did. . . . 
 Et csetera, et csetera. . . . 
 
 But the most amazing incident of those most amazing days 
 was the simultaneous recurrence of two mind-pictures. In 
 one picture, he lay on a bed, screens round it, and she looked 
 down on him, love unmistakable in her eyes. In the other 
 but the other was incredible. He refused to believe that 
 other. ' I have gone crazy,' he repeated, ' perfectly 
 crazy . . .' 
 
 He decided himself the victim of hallucinations ; and went 
 on with his farming plans. . . . But farming plans could not 
 exorcise the desire to embrace Patricia, to hold her hand, to 
 tell her that she was the only woman in the world, that he 
 loved her madly. . . . 
 
 Finally, he determined to risk it. At the worst, she would 
 only laugh. He realized that if she laughed he would hit her. 
 Courage braced to the sticking-point, he waited his op- 
 portunity. . . . 
 
 And no opportunity came 1 They were never alone 
 except late at night, and ' late at night ' wouldn't do. It 
 wasn't a ' late at night ' mood. It wasn't a married mood at
 
 384 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 all. ' Dash it all,' said Peter Jackson, ' can't a man make 
 love to his own wife if he wants to ? ' 
 
 But he couldn't ! Something or somebody always in- 
 terfered : servants, children, visitors, Fry, the house. He 
 began to hate ' the house.' ' The house ' spoiled everything. 
 He must get her away from the house, from Fanny and 
 Elizabeth, from the children, from Fry and ' those infernal 
 chickens ' and Prudence the pig. . . . 
 
 At last, the great idea came. To himself, he called it their 
 ' second honeymoon ' : to her, he said he wanted a ' holiday.' 
 The river in June and July was ' top-hole ' ; he'd always 
 wanted to punt nothing but a punt seemed adequate from 
 Goring to Oxford well not exactly Oxford, beyond Oxford, 
 say Godstone. They might punt to Godstone and see Arthur. 
 They might go further up-Thames. It depended how he 
 felt : he'd not been feeling very well lately. He wanted a 
 change. 
 
 She demurred : one couldn't leave the children. He 
 sulked cannily. Then he went to see Beatrice. 
 
 " You'll keep an eye on things for her, won't you ? " said 
 our Mr. Jackson. 
 
 " But why do you want to go ? " asked Francis' wife. She 
 had installed herself in the oak-panelled morning-room ; 
 looked like a blonde cendree lily in the mellow gloom of its 
 beeswaxed walls. 
 
 " Just for a holiday," prevaricated Peter ; but he blushed 
 faintly as he spoke. 
 
 " Don't English people ever tell the truth ? " she said 
 understandingly. 
 
 He hesitated the fraction of a second before answering : 
 " Very rarely about that sort of thing." 
 
 Two days later, perfectly unconscious of the web which 
 had been woven round her, Patricia yielded ; and they started 
 on the twelfth of June : two very ordinary people with two 
 very ordinary suit -cases and a large tiffin-basket : he in white 
 blazer, silk shirt, white trousers, brogued buckskin boots ; 
 she in shantung coat and skirt, remnant of Lodden Lodge 
 holidays ecru velours hat, Beatrice's gift, shading her 
 slumbrous eyes. 
 
 3 
 
 If you take punt at Hobbs' Wharf, which banks the mill- 
 creek beside Goring Lock, and glide out through some great 
 morning of river-sunshine under the white willo ws of ' Nun's
 
 End or Beginning ? 385 
 
 Acre,' past Cleeve Lock ablaze with roses, into that long reach 
 which runs lockless between oak and elm as far as Walling- 
 ford (you will find at Moulsford Ferry a pleasant hostelry 
 yclept ' The Beetle and Wedge,' set a-purpose to hearten weary 
 punters ere they pass under the almost ugliness of a red-brick 
 railroad-causeway) and if, having rested at Wallingford, you 
 pole on by the narrow cleft of Benson's Lock ; and on, over 
 the broad river-highway, through Shillingford ; you will 
 come in the fulness of even-time, past over-arching woods, to 
 the vaulted spans of Clifton Hampden's bridge. 
 
 Clifton Hampden's self is a village of honeysuckled 
 cottages and quiet lost housen of quiet lost gentlefolk who 
 climb o' Sundays to the belled church which looks down on 
 Clifton Hampden's bridge and Clifton Hampden's ' Barley 
 Mow.' . . . 
 
 But if you love our Thames, who is the father of England 
 even as the sea is England's great mother (and these twain 
 mate in London Pool for all the world to see), you will not rest 
 overlong at the ' Barley Mow.' Father Thames will draw you 
 on, against his own current, past Sutton Courtney's foaming 
 weirs and Wittenham's ' Plough,' and the mouth of the Thame 
 (which is not the Thames, though it serpentines cunningly 
 through flat fields to Dorchester, where, in an Abbey of olden 
 stone, rest the bones of many a saint and many a Norman 
 knight and dame) and on past Dorchester to Abingdon. 
 
 At Abingdon, rest you one night even as Peter and 
 Patricia rested yet rest not over-late. For beyond Abingdon 
 (and this is a glory of wood and waterland you shall scarce 
 believe) Radley's flag flaunts, bright as colours at a girl's 
 bosom, among the bosoming downs of English oak. Yet 
 even this glory, Father Thames if he loves you will bid you 
 leave behind. It shall dwindle astern as the steady pole dives 
 from your hand and the taut body presses you onwards. 
 
 Thus, ere river-afternoon is river-evening, shall you raise 
 the plumed smoke-stack of Sandford Mills ; and, lingering 
 not, make Iffley, and the meadow-banks beyond Iffley, and 
 Magdalen Tower, and the mellow dome of the Bodleian 
 Library. And haply because of the simple things our 
 Peters and Patricias did in days that are no more you shall 
 see the old-time Oxford of dreaming spires and leisured youth, 
 not Patricia's khaki-haunted, headstrong, hurrying town. 
 
 Oxford passed (and this passing is a sadness, for sloven 
 houses creep down to Thames bank, and Victorian factories 
 blacken the clear stream, and children such as should not be 
 in England dabble thin legs in the mud), Father Thames
 
 386 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 hesitates among meadow-flats even as you will hesitate 
 between the ' Perch ' and the ' Trout,' neither of which will 
 allure you, for the one is of the beanfeaster and the other 
 (though it was a guest-house in days when Fair Rosamond 
 languished a bow-shot away at Godstone) resounds all day 
 to the drone of the circling 'plane. . . . Wherefore, pole up 
 beyond Godstone : and there, where Father Thames runs 
 young between flag-flower-stems and faded meadowsweet and 
 sharpening bulrush-spears, may his river-nymphs be as 
 benign for you as they were for Peter and his Patricia on that 
 windless evening of an English June-time long and long ago. 
 
 It seemed to them that they had scarce left Sunflowers 
 behind ; and yet it seemed to them as though not only Sun- 
 flowers but all their known life lay so far behind them as to be 
 almost out of memory. They had glided out of life, over 
 endless rippleless water, through endless sunshine, into love's 
 own land. But no word of love had these two yet spoken. 
 
 The fog of the years still hid them, each from each : only 
 now the fog was ah 1 irradiated, a mist of sun-motes ; and 
 through the shimmering radiance of that clearing mist their 
 souls, not yet full-visioned, came peering and afraid. 
 
 Many times in those days of river-sunshine their souls had 
 caught glimpses of each other ; touched, even as their bodies 
 touched, in the fragrance of the river-nights. But fulfilment 
 and full-visioning had not yet been given. A strange, shy 
 tenderness separated them ; locking Peter's lips. 
 
 But already, Patricia knew ! The knowledge lay deep 
 down in her heart maiden-knowledge. Her womanhood, 
 her experience, the reasoning powers on which she had prided 
 herself so long, played no part in this secret awareness of love. 
 It seemed to her that she had never been his wife ; never borne 
 him children nor tended his house ; that she would come to 
 him virgin. And as virgins are aware, so she knew that she 
 would be aware of the time and place appointed for her 
 bridal. 
 
 4 
 
 " I say, Pat, what about tea ? " 
 
 Peter ran the loaded punt skilfully to the slip-stage of 
 Eynsham Weir ; stood balanced on slanting pole. 
 
 She looked up from the cushions. " If you like, dear. 
 Are you feeling tired ? " 
 
 " A little," he admitted. 
 
 The weir-man (there are few locks on the upper Thames) 
 strolled down to help them out ; took the tiffin-basket. 
 
 " Have to take those bags out before we run her over, I'm
 
 End or Beginning? 387 
 
 afraid, sir. She'll be liable to break her back if we don't." 
 " Tie her up where she is for a bit. We're not in any 
 hurry." Peter, blazer over arm, followed his wife up the 
 slipway. 
 
 " Nice," he said, eyes on the river. 
 
 To her it was more than ' nice.' Thames flowed down to 
 them, circling willow-fringed through lush meadowlands, 
 spanned in near distance by a humped bridge of mellow 
 stone. At bridge-end, below toll-house, a farm nestled red 
 among scant trees. Left of them, twin hillocks crested-to blue 
 of sky. At their feet, Thames plunged in gurgling gold to 
 the weir-pool, foam-flecked under deep banks. Hitherside 
 the stream, dyked pasturage glowed in the sun. 
 
 And not thirty yards from the weir-pool flies rolled up, 
 flap open stood a tent : a perfectly good, apparently un- 
 occupied tent ! 
 
 All the time they were having tea the weir-man indicated 
 a tiny arbour, boiled them hot water on the stove in his 
 one-roomed cabin thought of that tent obsessed their 
 minds. To whom did that tent belong? Why shouldn't 
 they use that tent ? Hotels were hot, stuffy places, whereas 
 a tent . . . 
 
 Peter, dandling his third cup of tea on white-flannelled 
 leg, approached the subject diffidently. " I Say, Pat," he 
 began, " have you ever thought of camping-out ? Rather 
 jolly camping-out. That tent reminded me. . . ." 
 
 " Oh, but we couldn't possibly use that tent," Patricia 
 started packing-up the tea-things " it's sure to belong to 
 somebody." 
 
 " One might as well find out." He rose from the rough 
 bench of the tiny arbour ; lounged away ; came back in a 
 few minutes, face a little flushed, eyes twinkling. 
 
 " The weir-man says that we can use it if we like. ' The 
 gentleman isn't coming down till to-morrow evening.' " 
 
 " What gentleman ? " asked Patricia. 
 
 " The gentleman who owns the tent, I suppose. I say, 
 Pat, do let's ! It 'd be a fearful lark. We could go into the 
 town and buy our rations. ..." 
 
 There and then, they settled the matter. The weir-mao 
 produced mattresses, blankets, a rug ; unpacked the punt ; 
 directed them across the dyked pasturage towards Eynsham. 
 And at Eynsham which is the least interesting, ugliest 
 village between Gravesend and Cricklade they bought them 
 eggs, and tinned foods, and a loaf of bread, and butter, and 
 candles, and a huge basket of strawberries which Peter 
 discovered hidden away in the dark of a greengrocer's shop.
 
 388 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Evening began as they dawdled back, parcel-laden, along 
 the high road ; turned off from high road across the dyked 
 pasturage. Now, willows screened the ugly village behind. 
 They could see only the bridge, and the two hillocks beyond, 
 and their tent their very own tent marking the river-bank. 
 
 " It'll be a frightful lark," said Peter. 
 
 " Won't it ? " she answered. 
 
 Of the thing each had at heart, neither dared speech. . . . 
 
 5 
 
 Twilight had come in gold and gone in crimson : only 
 faintest hints of greens and lilacs still lingered low down on the 
 horizon. Eynsham Bridge was a humped black shadow across 
 the dulled silver of the stream : Eynsham hills stood out in 
 clear sepia against a turquoise sky. 
 
 " Good night," called the weir-man. 
 
 " Good night," they called back to him. 
 
 Now, they were utterly alone. The weir plunged and 
 gurgled ; a fish leaped in the pool. Darker it grew, and 
 darker. They could hardly see each other across the rug 
 which had served them for dinner-table. 
 
 " Shall I light the candles in the tent ? " he asked. 
 
 " If you like, dear." 
 
 He rose slowly to his feet ; and she watched his flannelled 
 figure disappear in the gloom. Light winked from the tent- 
 flap : the tent glowed suddenly, a cone of saffron radiance. 
 
 He came back to her, picking his way quietly across the 
 grass ; saw that she had not moved. She was aware of him, 
 dropping down beside her in the gloom. 
 
 "Pat darling," his voice held a new tenderness; his 
 hand, as it sought hers, seemed to tremble " I've been 
 wanting to tell you something ever since we started." 
 
 Their ringers trembled together, met and twined. His 
 left arm slipped round her shoulders. 
 
 " What have you wanted to tell me ? " 
 
 He drew her close to him. His heart throbbed against her. 
 
 " I don't quite know how to say it." She could feel him 
 blush in the darkness. " It it isn't the sort of thing one 
 says to one's wife. ..." 
 
 He couldn't go on : he was afraid she would laugh at him. 
 
 " What isn't, Peter ? " The whisper hardly reached him. 
 
 " I mean," words came stumblingly " I mean the 
 thing I wanted to tell you. . . . Pat darling, it isn't very 
 much. It's it's just that I love you. And you mustn't 
 laugh at me for it. "
 
 End or Beginning ? 389 
 
 " Why should I laugh at you, boy ? " she whispered. 
 
 " I don't know. Why shouldn't you laugh at me ? Don't 
 you remember before we got married you said that being 
 in love was all nonsense ; that husband and wife ought to 
 be ..." 
 
 " Don't, Peter, don't ! " he knew, though in all his life he 
 had never heard her cry, that she was crying " you make me 
 so ashamed. It's been my own fault every bit of it has been 
 my own fault," he couldn't understand he knew only that 
 suddenly happiness had come to them both as she crept into 
 his arms " Peter ? " 
 
 " Yes, darling." 
 
 " Am I the only woman you've ever tried to make love 
 to? . . ." 
 
 Was she laughing now ? or crying ? He couldn't under- 
 stand he couldn't understand at all. 
 
 " Do answer me, boy ? " 
 
 " Of course you are. I've never loved anybody but you 
 in my life." 
 
 " Honestly ? " she asked. 
 
 " On my dying oath, Pat ! " 
 
 Suddenly, he felt her hand on his shoulder ; heard her say : 
 " Oh, boy, boy, I believe you. . . . You're such a rotten 
 lover, boy. . . . You haven't even asked me whether I love 
 you. ..." 
 
 " I " he began. 
 
 " Don't. I'm I'm rather glad you're such a rotten 
 lover, boy. I I love you for it. " 
 
 Very tenderly, their lips met in the darkness. 
 
 Tent on the river-bank glowed saffron among the shadows. 
 . . . Light vanished from the tent. . . . Moon, riding over 
 Eynsham Bridge, saw it, a gray ghost by the gurgling weir. 
 . . . Moon dipped behind the willows. . . . Sky lightened. 
 . . . Stars faded. . . . Dyked pastures silvered to the dawn- 
 gleams. . . . Sun-rim peeped over Eynsham Hills. . . . The 
 tent -flap parted. 
 
 And out of the tent, stepping quietly lest she waken her 
 sleeping mate, came a woman, golden hair unbound, white 
 feet bare to the dew. . . . Very quietly she came, like a 
 nymph in the dawn. . . . Very quietly, she sank to her knees, 
 alone on the river-bank by the gurgling, plunging weir. . . . 
 Very quietly, she raised her white hands to the rising day. 
 
 " God," prayed Patricia, " dear God, let me give him a 
 son ! "
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 i 
 
 IX-THIRTY ack emma, sir. Time to get up, sir." 
 
 James Garton, sometime driver in the Royal 
 Field Artillery, now convalescing on the Tebbits- 
 Jackson farm, tapped his sleeping master on the 
 le ft shoulder. Peter, waking with a start, looked round his 
 comfortable dressing-room, at the mauve eiderdown on his 
 bed, the bow-fronted wardrobe, the hunting-prints on the 
 walls. 
 
 " Lord, Garton ! What on earth are you playing at ? 
 We aren't on active service now." 
 
 "No, sir." The Yorkshireman grinned. " I don't think 
 there'll be much active service after to-day, sir. Not if the 
 Ger-boys sign this armistice," he pronounced the word 
 armistice " the newspapers are talking about." 
 
 " Thought I'd like to wake you for the last morning of the 
 war, sir," Garton went on, producing a cup of tea and some 
 biscuits. " Should I put out your riding-kit, sir ? " 
 
 " No, Garton, you should not," laughed Peter, falling in 
 with the spirit of the game, " you should put out the blue 
 suit of mufti you'll find in that wardrobe. Also, you should 
 prepare my bath." 
 
 Said the Yorkshireman, hanging serge slacks carefully over 
 the back of a chair, " Mister Harry says that you and Mrs. 
 Jackson are sure to get taken up for joy-riding, sir." 
 
 " That be blowed for a tale. " Peter, tea finished, tumbled 
 out of bed ; stuck his feet into a pair of red morocco slippers ; 
 drew dressing-gown over pyjamas. 
 
 They had been speaking very quietly for fear of waking 
 the pair in the next room : but now a voice, Patricia's voice, 
 called through the doorway : 
 
 " Time to get up, Peter. Are you awake, Peter ? " 
 
 " Of course I'm awake. Been awake for hours. How's 
 Peter the Fourth ? " 
 
 " Slept like a top." The door opened, revealing Patricia, 
 slipperless, golden hair falling about her white shoulders. 
 " What on earth . , . ? "
 
 Epilogue 391 
 
 Garton, blushing furiously, fled : they heard him busy in 
 the bathroom as they kissed good morning. 
 
 " Funny fellow, isn't he ? " Peter explained his quondam 
 servant's presence. " And now let's have a look at the heir." 
 
 Arms linked, they passed into the curtained bedroom. 
 Mauve-shaded candles burned on the white overmantel, on 
 the table by the lace-canopied cot. Blinking at the light, still 
 only half awake, lay Peter the Fourth. The newly-weaned 
 baby smiled happily at its parents. Peter the Fourth, they 
 thought, would have his mother's hair, his father's eyes : 
 Peter the Fourth, they thought . . . but what these two 
 thought about their eight-months' old son would fill a pro- 
 logue, an epilogue, and a hundred chapters in between. 
 
 As Evelyn confided, early in the summer, to Primula : 
 " I don't believe a word of that gooseberry-bush story, Prim. 
 I believe mummy and the pater made that child themselves. 
 They couldn't be so gone on it," (' gone on,' acquired from 
 Garton, was the schoolroom word of the moment) " if they'd 
 just found it." 
 
 Said Primula, sternly practical, " It must be frightfully 
 difficult to make a baby. Think of its ears. ..." 
 
 The two little girls came running, fully dressed, into 
 Patricia's room just as Peter slipped off for his bath ; stood 
 chattering till Patricia shooed them away and rang for 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 The Peter Jackson who breakfasted with his wife at a 
 quarter to eight on Armistice morning was a very different 
 creature from the our Mr. Jackson whose taxi had driven up 
 to 22A, Lowndes Square, four and a half years previously. 
 Grayed hair and lined face still betrayed the after-effects of 
 war : but his eyes, his voice, the whole atmosphere of happi- 
 ness he exuded, testified a change in the man's mentality. 
 
 His essential creed had not altered : he still believed in 
 work, and in successful work : he still loathed inefficiency, 
 slackness, the never-mind-to-morrow attitude. But love, 
 impersonated in Patricia, had softened the harshness of his 
 youth ; taught him the grand lesson of tolerance. Love had 
 nearly bridged that vast, bitter gulf between fighting-man and 
 stay-at-home : almost, he saw England whole not a country 
 divided against itself, but a People working hand-in-hand for 
 the common cause. Love, too, had opened Peter Jackson's 
 eyes, so that they saw not only profits but beauty in the new 
 work to which he had dedicated himself.
 
 392 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 This new work prospered slowly, as the land should 
 prosper. Already, Capital had begun its revivifying influence. 
 Old man Tebbits' tumbledown milking-sheds existed no 
 longer : instead, were clean stables of brick and tile, spotless 
 pails and sterilised pans. Useless wooden structures, har- 
 bourage of rats, had been pulled down. The ricks stood, 
 stone-based, two feet above ground. Charlie Tebbits had 
 rebuilt and enlarged old man Tebbits' insanitary pigsties. A 
 tractor-plough phutted in the fields. 
 
 Also Peter's first coup Tebbits- Jackson, Ltd., had 
 bought out the Arlsfield ' carrier,' a rickety old man with a 
 rickety old horse ; replaced his creaking equipage by a petrol 
 delivery- van ; and made themselves masters of the transport 
 situation. This van, as Peter saw it, was to be the forerunner 
 of a fleet which should carry passengers, market produce, sell 
 and buy eggs and milk, fruit and honey and vegetables across 
 half a county. Plans for bacon factory, cheese factory, jam 
 factory (and tracings of a sugar-beet plant which Peter had 
 not yet dared shew Harry Tebbits) all lay locked away till 
 peace-time in the drawers of Peter's walnut -wood writing-desk. 
 
 Sunflowers, run as a separate establishment, was already 
 unrecognisable. The paddock silent, original founder of 
 'T.-J.'s, Ltd.' existed no longer. Only the pig-path, 
 fenced from sties to wood's edge, still shewed a band of 
 narrowing green ribbon across the brown of plough. All 
 autumn, the ' paddock ' had been a mellow-gold riot of 
 Russian sunflowers : two acres of high bloom whose produce, 
 bushel upon bushel of the finest chicken-food, filled a dozen 
 zinc bins in the new poultry store-room. Roger Fry had gone 
 to the war ; Roger Fry's hybrids to the stock-pot. In their 
 place, came a marvel of a man from St. Dunstan's, the cheeriest 
 soul for all his blinded eyes that ever took good wages of a 
 Saturday, and two hundred black Leghorns who clucked 
 about orchard and stubbles from sunrise to sun-downing. 
 
 ' And it's only in its infancy,' thought Peter, helping 
 himself to another rasher of Miss Tebbits' black-treacle curing, 
 1 only in its infancy. Scrap the " State-control " fallacy. Give 
 every man his chance. Let Capital and Labour co-operate as 
 we're co-operating and the Lord knows where we won't get 
 to in a dozen years of peace.' 
 
 " We ought to be off in about ten minutes," he said to his 
 wife. " You know what Dilly and Dally are at this time in 
 the morning." 
 
 ' Dilly and Dally,' at Sunflowers, meant the inhabitants 
 of Glen Cottage, who kept a mystic time-table of their own
 
 Epilogue 393 
 
 officially supposed to depend on Francis' working hours, but 
 actually adjusted with meticulous accuracy to weather 
 conditions. " When it's fine," Beatrice once condescended 
 to explain, " Prout thinks we ought to rise with the sun. 
 When it's wet, he doesn't think we ought to get up at all." 
 
 " I told them to be ready by half-past eight," Patricia 
 glanced at the clock on the wall-bracket " we don't want to 
 scorch." 
 
 Francis Gordon's idea of motoring up to London for 
 Armistice Day a pastime forbidden by the anti-joyriding 
 provisions of the Defence of the Realm Act had entirely 
 upset the Sunflowers-Tebbits routine. Usually, by breakfast- 
 time, our Mr. Jackson had made his first inspection of the 
 poultry-houses ; visited the milking-sheds ; sped Sid Dyson 
 on his way to Arlsfield Park (Peter, after endless finesse, had 
 secured a timber-felling contract from the Colonel) ; discussed 
 his round with ex-Corporal Hankins, who had one artificial 
 leg, two merry blue eyes, and a mechanic's passion for the 
 delivery- van ; and argued out at least one abstruse farming 
 problem with Harry Tebbits. On this particular morning, 
 however, it was Harry Tebbits, pipe in mouth, who strode 
 over to see Peter ; found him, cap on head, coat over arm, 
 standing under the beaten walnut tree. 
 
 The blond giant opined that if Peter really meant to go up 
 to London, the least Peter could do would be to bring back 
 some whisky. 
 
 " Well," said Peter, " I'll do the best I can, Harry. But 
 if the armistice is signed, I expect London'll be drunk dry by 
 half-past two. Don't suppose you'll get much work out of 
 the folk to-day, Harry." 
 
 The giant smiled. " Not much use telling cows about 
 armistices. Still, I don't expect we'll kill ourselves. Not 
 to-day at aD events. Old Tiger's been after the skim again. 
 Never saw such a dog for the milk." 
 
 ' Tiger o' Sunflowers,' an enormous silver- brindled Dane, 
 lounged up the drive ; gave his master dignified greeting. 
 Patricia, furred and gauntleted, came hurrying out of the 
 house. 
 
 " Well, I may as well see you safe off the premises," 
 smiled Harry Tebbits. 
 
 The three made their way to the ' garrige.' Passing the 
 stables, they heard Driver Carton's " Now then, you " ; 
 Evelyn and Primula's raised voices ; the stamp of hooves
 
 394 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 on tile. Wilhelmina, the bay filly who had succeeded Little 
 Willie in Peter's horse-affections, was protesting as usual 
 about her morning toilet. 
 
 Peter and Corporal Hankins had spent all Sunday tinkering 
 with the Crossley, rubbing away the grease of two years' 
 idleness, fitting new sparking-plugs, testing brake-shoes and 
 magneto, filling her petrol-tank and polishing her brass-work. 
 Still, the car looked her age. 
 
 " Charlie 11 have to give her a coat of varnish one of these 
 days," hazarded Charlie's brother, tapping strong fingers on 
 the bonnet. But the engine started sweetly enough ; and 
 Peter, running her out for Patricia to mount, felt conscious of 
 the old driving-thrill. 
 
 " Shan't be at Dilly-Dally's till nine," he said, as she 
 climbed up beside him. Harry ran to open the gate ; Tiger 
 o' Sunflowers smelt at the Klaxon, bounded away barking at 
 the bark of it ; Evelyn and Primula waved good-bye from the 
 stable-door. They were off. 
 
 4 
 
 By the meadow-path it is a bare mile from Sunflowers to 
 Glen Cottage : but the shortest road takes you half-way to 
 Arlsfield ; circles a fair portion of the Tebbits- Jackson land 
 before it dives towards the chestnut trees of Arlsfield Park. 
 
 It was a goodly November day ; soft gray clouds, sun 
 a-tween, hinting of rain to come. 
 
 They passed the eight-acre vegetable field inter-cropped, 
 potatoes (already dug) with winter greenstuff, fat white- 
 hearted savoys, in-turned broccoli, curly-leaved kale and hip- 
 high Brussel sprouts ; they passed the ' warren ' fenced 
 dip of chalk-pitted land on which Peter had turned down half 
 a hundred Belgian-hare does to mate with the ' original 
 inhabitants ' ; they skirted two stubbles and a new-sown 
 patch of pedigree wheat ; hummed through the browning 
 spinney and made Glen Cottage by five minutes to nine. 
 
 The home of Francis and Beatrice shewed no signs of 
 intensive cultivation ; meadow-land, over which Peter's 
 merinos and Peter's Jerseys browsed and grazed at will, ran 
 down to its very walls. Three times the indomitable Beatrice 
 had engaged a gardener, but each time Peter, hungry for men, 
 enticed him away. 
 
 " Private gardens," said our Mr. Jackson, " are out of date. 
 Besides, as your landlord, your greengrocer, your carrier, your 
 poulterer and your dairyman I forbid it."
 
 Epilogue 395 
 
 Beatrice christened him the ' Octopus of Arlsfield ' ; but 
 eventually submitted. She was standing at the cottage gate 
 as the Octopus and his wife drove up. Fifteen months of 
 matrimony had not altered Beatrice's essential girlishness : 
 but the face under the close-fitting toque of ermine seemed 
 less pale than the day she and Peter first met ; the gray eyes, 
 though still thoughtful, held more of laughter. 
 
 " Dally won't be a minute," she smiled at them. 
 
 Peter, with a jest about not wasting ' gasoline,' throttled 
 down his engine ; gave glance at clock on dashboard as the 
 two women kissed good-morning. 
 
 " Confound Dally," he said after a while, " it's nearly ten 
 past already." 
 
 Francis, followed by Prout, who carried an enormous 
 basket and a long thin parcel wrapped in brown paper, limped 
 out of the house. He wore his usual brown overcoat, his usual 
 cream buckskin gloves, his inevitable old Etonian tie. 
 
 " What on earth have you got there ? " demanded his cousin. 
 
 " Food, fizz and flags," chuckled Francis. " Shove 'em 
 in the tonneau, Prout. If I know London, we'll have about 
 as much chance of getting anything to eat ..." He super- 
 intended the disposal of these treasures ; handed Beatrice 
 into the car and remembered he had forgotten her muff. 
 By the time Prout had retrieved this, tucked in the young 
 couple, and closed the door on them, it was twenty past nine. 
 
 " Shall we do it ? " asked Patricia. 
 
 " Do it ? " Peter chuckled scornfully " you watch." He 
 opened throttle as he spoke ; fingered lever gently from 
 neutral to first, first to second, second to top. Horse- 
 chestnuts popped from tyre-covers as the Crossley gathered 
 way. Arisfield Park, a blur of tree-trunks at side and 
 interlaced branches overhead, spun behind them. They 
 missed Sid Dyson's timber-tug by an ant's breadth ; hooted 
 past the Colonel's crested gate-pillars ; switchbacked downhill 
 towards Henley. 
 
 Dilly and Dally, feet tight-propped against the provision 
 basket, looked at each other in mock alarm. " It wasn't our 
 fault," stammered Francis through chattering teeth ; " why 
 wasn't the Octopus on time ? He said half -past eight." 
 
 Beatrice, craning forward a moment, eyed the speedometer. 
 " What are we doing, Beatrice ? " " Forty-five and a bit." 
 " Lord 1 " 
 
 The car shot on, purring Peter, nearly recumbent, 
 notched wheel gripped easily in gloved hands Patricia bolt 
 upright, eyes on the speeding hedgerows.
 
 396 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 They made the six miles to Henley in a fraction over 
 twelve minutes ; swirled righthanded at the railway-station ; 
 took the water-front at a bound ; skidded the bridge corner 
 on two wheels. Church, bridge and river vanished like mad 
 movies. 
 
 " Going well," muttered Peter through set teeth. White 
 Hill rose up like a roof ahead. " Open that cut-out for me." 
 Exhaust roaring, cylinders throbbing, the Crossley hurtled up 
 between the trees ; slowed to twenty ; felt herself flung back 
 into second ; topped the rise ; raced engine the fraction of an 
 instant ; took top gear again ; shot on. 
 
 Houses, trees, a crawling dray, flashed astern. Gray 
 tarmac zipped under. Ahead, the road rose ; dropped ; rose 
 again. Now, they were in open country. Peter took one 
 deep breath ; fidgeted throttle-lever full open ; jammed foot 
 on accelerator. Couple behind felt the car gather herself as if 
 for a great leap ; saw passing hedgerows fade out to a con- 
 tinuous blur. Speedometer-needle clicked to sixty ; held 
 there for three and a half ecstatic minutes. . . . 
 
 " Right, isn't it ? " shouted Peter suddenly. " Yes." 
 Patricia, map on knee, watched Hurley Bottom skim by. He 
 slowed ; climbed a hairpin turn warily ; nipped across the 
 Thicket ; veered left for Maidenhead. 
 
 The clock at Nicholson's Brewery shewed five minutes past 
 ten as they crawled carefully down into the town ; opened out 
 again for the bridge ; swished over it past Skindle's. 
 
 " Shall we do it ? " asked Pat. 
 
 "Question of luck." He opened the cut-out again; 
 roared under Taplow Railway- viaduct. So far, road had been 
 almost empty. Now, other cars appeared ahead. The 
 Crossley raced them down the Bath Road, passed them one 
 by one. Slough vanished. Something honked behind them, 
 honked again. Peter, tyres almost on turf, was aware of a 
 Rolls-Royce bonnet, of a dark-blue car sweeping by ; caught 
 a glimpse of Arthur, in sky-blue Air Service uniform, sitting 
 rigid at the wheel. 
 
 Crossley gathered way ; Klaxon barked furiously ; Rolls- 
 Royce swerved ; Peter, grin on set face, shot past. Beatrice, 
 peering over the back of the cabriolet, saw Arthur's eyes 
 light ; saw his hand move slowly on the wheel. Then the 
 Rolls-Royce was on them ; creeping up, effortless, silent. . . . 
 Honk ! honk ! honk ! " Drat the fellow," muttered Peter. 
 For a mile, he refused way ; then Arthur, with two inches to 
 spare, purred calmly by ; recognised Peter with a wave of the 
 hand and disappeared in dust.
 
 Epilogue 397 
 
 Still, they made Hounslow by half-past ten ; edged warily 
 over tram-lines ; pulled up for a second to avoid disaster. 
 
 " Hope you're not joy-riding, sir," grinned a blue-helmeted 
 constable. 
 
 " Joy-riding ! " Peter, hand on gear lever, grinned back 
 scornfully " do we look as if we were joy-riding ? " Francis, 
 peeping overside, was understood to mutter something about, 
 " bringing the good news from Aix to Ghent." 
 
 None of the four quite remembers how they made the last 
 lap to London. It comes back to them as a jerking, fidgety 
 dream houses, tram-lines, motor-omnibuses ; a scrap of 
 clear, straight road here ; turns there ; people staring, people 
 cursing ; shop-windows in which they saw themselves skidding 
 past ; dogs diving for cover ; scream of Klaxon, jar of gear- 
 lever, throb of engine. ..." Time ? " Peter kept asking. 
 "Time, Pat? " . . . "Ten thirty-five." . . . "Ten-forty." 
 ..." Quarter to, all but ten seconds." ..." Damn it, we 
 must make Piccadilly by eleven o'clock." . . . More houses. 
 ... A pub. . . . Francis, head down in the tonneau, groping 
 for his flags, hitting his head against the back of the driving- 
 seat. . . . "Twelve minutes to eleven." . . . Beatrice, eyes 
 on Peter's cap, muttering to herself. " He'll never do it. 
 I'll never forgive him if he doesn't do it. ..." 
 
 " Five to ! " called Patricia and Fulham Road streaked 
 behind as they zig-zagged in and out among sparse traffic. . . . 
 
 "Three minutes." . . . What was that ? Oh yes, Har- 
 rods : good old Harrods. . . . "Two minutes more." . . . 
 The Hyde Park Hotel whizzed by. ... Railings. ... A 
 clear road. . . . Hyde Park Corner ahead . . . and : 
 
 " Done it, I think," remarked our Mr. Jackson, as a motor- 
 bus, swaying out of Park Lane, missed their rear mud-guards 
 by the grace of God and two inches. 
 
 Thut of cylinders dropped to steady purr. Clubland on 
 their left, railings on their right, slackened speed ; grew 
 steady and perceptible. Traffic, through which the Crossley 
 threaded easy way, appeared all round them. They were 
 in Piccadilly ! 
 
 Clarges Street Half Moon Street Bolton Street known 
 names, black-lettered on gray stone Apsley House The 
 Ritz corner of Bond Street. . . . 
 
 And suddenly, they heard a voice. "P. J. ! " bawled the 
 voice. " Hi ! P. J. ! Hi ! Halt, will you ! Halt, I say ! " 
 
 Peter, jamming brakes hard on, felt the car skid under 
 him ; felt wheels jar against pavement ; was aware of Francis, 
 shouting in his ear, " Bravo, well-driven, old thing " ; of
 
 398 Peter Jackson, Cigar Merchant 
 
 Beatrice and Patricia standing up, of a taxi-back two inches 
 from his radiator, of a motor-bus grinding to standstill and 
 of a little red man, with flat red moustaches on his face and 
 faded red tabs on his uniform, a little red man in a huge cap, 
 who came dashing out of Scott's hat -shop, bawling : " Halt, 
 confound you, P. J. ! Halt! It's eleven o'clock." 
 
 It was the Weasel ; and even as the Weasel darted across 
 the pavement, London went mad and they with London ! 
 
 Pandemonium broke loose a tornado of sound horns, 
 whistles, rowing-rattles, bugles men shouting women 
 screaming. The five in the Crossley couldn't hear pan- 
 demonium. They were of pandemonium crazy. Brigadier- 
 General the Weasel, palms to mouth, straddling the radiator 
 with spurred legs, beating bonnet with his cane, was hallooing 
 like a lunatic : " Forrard away ! " hallooed the Weasel. 
 " Forrard away ! Forrard away ! Hi, tear 'em, tear 'em, 
 tear 'em ! " Francis, scarlet in the face, bolt upright, 
 lameness forgotten, bawled an inarticulate " E-ton ! Well 
 rowed, E-ton ! " Peter, finger pressed home on the hoarsely- 
 shrieking Klaxon, was howling some Indian war-whoop of his 
 own. Patricia, dumb with emotion, imagined herself to be 
 cheering. And Beatrice, the hyper-critical, hyper-sensitive 
 Beatrice, was yelling, yelling at the top of her voice. " Ya, 
 ya, ya, ya, ya ! " yelled Beatrice but somehow or other she 
 couldn't finish the yell ; dropped back, speechless, in the 
 tonneau. . . . 
 
 Pandemonium ! Traffic had stopped. There was no 
 traffic : only motionless vehicles lorries, motor-omnibuses, 
 taxis, a Rolls-Royce, a hansom-cab yes, a veritable hansom- 
 cab ! And every vehicle swarmed with men and women. Men 
 and women swarmed on every vehicle. Swarmed and 
 shrieked and waved flags. . . . 
 
 Pandemonium ! The very houses had gone mad. The 
 houses were alive alive with men and women. The houses 
 were wide open. Men and women poured out of the houses 
 into the streets. The streets were alive with men and women. 
 They swarmed in the streets ; swarmed and danced and 
 cheered and shouted and waved flags. . . . 
 
 Pandemonium ! The flags had gone mad. There were a 
 million flags Union Jacks and Stars-and-Stripes, Tricolour 
 flags and Belgian flags and Japanese flags ; It ah' an flags and 
 Portuguese flags, Commonwealth flags and Dominion flags, 
 Royal Standards and White Ensigns. . . . 
 
 Pandemonium ! Everybody was moving vehicles were 
 moving people were moving flags were moving. Their
 
 Epilogue 399 
 
 own flags Union Jack with Old Glory were moving. The 
 Crossley was moving. . . . 
 
 " Forrard away ! " hallooed Brigadier-General the Weasel, 
 still astride the radiator. " Forrard away, sir ! " Peter howled 
 back from the driving seat. . . . 
 
 Pandemonium ! Everybody was dancing. The flags 
 were dancing. Men and women were dancing. Soldiers were 
 dancing English soldiers and American soldiers, French 
 soldiers and Belgian soldiers, Portuguese and Japanese and 
 Italian soldiers lame soldiers and legless soldiers and armless 
 soldiers ill soldiers and well soldiers. Sailors were dancing 
 English sailors and American sailors, French sailors and 
 Italian sailors and Japanese sailors. The very houses were 
 dancing : floods of white paper came dancing down out of the 
 dancing houses. Their own car was dancing : her cushions 
 were dancing : they could feel her engine dancing. They 
 themselves were dancing: they could feel their hearts dancing 
 inside them : the blood was dancing in their veins, dancing 
 and dancing. . . . 
 
 But late that Armistice Day afternoon, when the five sat 
 knee-to-knee in the closed and motionless car Hyde Park 
 trees at its windows, rain tapping on its taut roof ; when they 
 poured the dancing wine of Francis' forethought from gold- 
 foiled bottle-neck and clinked brimmed glasses in token of 
 civilisation's triumph over the Beast ; when the Weasel, 
 speaking solemnly as though he were proposing the King's 
 Health on guest-night, gave them : " Our men, God bless 
 them, our splendid, splendid men ! " then Beatrice and Patricia 
 could have sworn that they saw the tears of their own hearts 
 reflected not only in their lovers' eyes, but in the hard blue 
 eyes of Brigadier-General Douglas Stark, Royal Field Artillery. 
 
 THE END
 
 The characters of Peter Jackson, his cousin Francis and his 
 wife Patricia were originally conceived at Stockholm, Sweden, 
 in June 1912. First scenario of this book dictated August 
 1912. Complete book, dictated July-August, 1917, was 
 accidentally burnt. Re-written November 1918 March 1919. 
 Serial version published in ' Land and Water,' August 1919. 
 Finally revised and passed for Press December the fifth, 1919. 
 
 PBESS LTD. TIPTHEK, ESSEX, EN'C-LA -.D
 
 Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. 
 
 are pleased to give the following particulars of many important 
 New Books for the Spring, 1920, and also a splendid liat 
 of ew Novels, which, as will be seen by the undermentioned 
 names, are almost all by the Leading Authors. 
 
 W. B. MAXWELL 
 
 E. F. BENSON 
 
 KATHLYN RHODES 
 
 JEROME K. JEROME 
 
 GILBERT FRANKAU 
 
 RAFAEL SABATINI 
 
 UNA L. SILBERRAD 
 
 DOROTHEA CONYERS 
 
 ELINOR MORDAUNT 
 
 PIERRE BENOIT 
 
 Q. B. BURQIN 
 
 DOROTA FLATAU 
 
 ISABEL C. CLARKE 
 
 MRS. HORACE TREMLETT 
 
 HAROLD BEOBIE 
 
 STACY AUMONIER 
 
 W. E. NORRIS 
 
 DIANA PATRICK 
 
 MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS 
 
 E. M. DELAFIELD 
 
 MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES and 
 
 REBECCA WEST
 
 Hutchinson's New Novels. 7/6 Net. 
 Peter Jackson. Cigar Merchant 
 
 By GILBERT FRANKAU 
 
 Author of " One of Them," etc. 
 
 Peter and his delightful wife, Patricia, are a typically 
 English couple, whose marriage was merely the ordinary 
 conventional and superficial tie of Society, and who realized 
 too late the passionate depths and needs of their own natures. 
 
 It is the truth about a man's soul and a woman's love 
 that Mr. Frankau gives us in this extraordinarily intimate 
 book, and it will find an echo in the hearts of all who have 
 struggled through the desperate years of war to realize that 
 Peace is only a little less difficult. 
 
 Count Philip By PIERRE BENOIT 
 
 Author of "L'Atlantide," etc. 
 
 The publishers blieve that they can congratulate both 
 the public and themselves on the appearance of this most 
 remarkable novel, which has already taken France by storm. 
 At heart the reading public still demands a good plot, and the 
 plot of Count Philip will be readily recognized as the work of 
 genius. But the novel is far more than a most enthralling 
 story. It introduces characters which, for truth and per- 
 sonality, stand out in a different class from the usual puppets of 
 fiction, and, above all, the book is distinguished by that human 
 touch, that all-pervading sense of humour and charm of style 
 which cannot fail to make a. deep and permanent impression. 
 
 Julian By ISABEL C. CLARKE 
 
 Author of " The Children of Eve," " The Elstones," etc. 
 
 A new novel by the author of "The Elstones," and one written 
 with all the power and insight displayed in that story. The 
 heroine, Eunice Dampier, has a strange and eventful career ; the 
 development of her character under the care of the Parmeters is 
 sketched with an able pen. Eunice is a real person with human 
 faults and failings, as well as human charm and attraction. 
 
 Scaramouche By RAFAEL SABATINI 
 
 Author of "The Trampling of the Lilies," etc. 
 Mr. Sabatini has the unusual gift of writing history with 
 the aid of a powerful imagination ; he inspires the dry bones 
 with new life and takes us back into the romantic past as few 
 of our present-day writers can do. His latest novel, dealing 
 with the ever-fascinating period of the French Revolution, 
 is a thrilling and dramatic story, vivid with the picturesque 
 adventure of those troubled days. 
 
 2
 
 Hutchinson's New Novels. 7/6 Net. 
 A Remedy against Sin 
 
 By W. B. MAXWELL 
 
 Author of " The Devil's Garden," etc. 
 Few writers understand the art of marriage and all that 
 it entails better than Mr. Maxwell, who in his latest novel 
 gives us an extremely able interpretation of a question of 
 which most people have, sooner or later, to find the solution. 
 This is an original and deeply thoughtful story, written with 
 the practised ease of the master-craftsman, and dealing with 
 the unfairness of the divorce laws one of the most vital 
 problems of the day in a spirit of truly practical philosophy. 
 
 The Latest Thing By HAROLD BEGBIE 
 
 Author of "An English Family," "Broken Earthenware," eto. 
 John Dendy, Esq., of Barleyholm, in East Anglia, 
 returns from the war to discover that a number of fussy 
 people among his neighbours are in some sort of conspiracy 
 to rob the land for which he fought of just those very jovial 
 qualities which make it most lovable in his honest eyes. 
 This is a racy novel, full of typically English humour. It is 
 a chronicle of laughter, not noisy laughter, but rich, gentle 
 and kindly laughter, like the land of its birth. 
 
 One After Another 
 
 By STACY AUMONIER 
 
 Author of "Just Outside," etc* 
 
 Written in the form of an intimate autobiography, this 
 brilliant novel reveals the life of a man who was the son of a 
 London publican. How he rose in the world through his own 
 exertions, and the various social experiences through which 
 he passed, are cleverly described by Mr. Aumonier with that 
 vivid and illuminating touch which has made him one of the 
 most popular of short-story writers in two continents. 
 
 Pilgrims of Circumstance 
 
 By G. B. BURGIN 
 
 Author of "The Shutters of Silence," etc. 
 
 There are few living authors who can claim the amazing 
 
 productivity of Mr. Burgin, whose fifty-ninth novel this is. 
 
 The Athenatim says : " He does everything with equal ease. 
 
 Incident, dialogue, humour, pathos, description the whole 
 
 art of the successful novelist is at his fingers' ends." It is 
 
 certain that everyone who reads his latest novel will heartily 
 
 agree with the Irish Times that " his charm does not grow 
 
 less in spite of a record-breaking output." 
 
 3
 
 Hutchinson's New Novels 7/6 Net. 
 The Lonely House 
 
 By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDE8 
 
 Author of "Good Old Anna," etc. 
 
 A sensational and intriguing story of modern life, in 
 which Mrs. Belloc Lowndes brings into full play her well- 
 known powers of description and characterization. With a 
 deft sympathy she shows us the undercurrents of human 
 nature, those mainsprings of action which only a writer of 
 psychological insight can detect, and her delightful sense of 
 humour carries the reader happily along until the very last 
 page. An extraordinarily good story which will add con- 
 siderably to Mrs. Lowndes' already excellent reputation. 
 
 Jim Robinson By UNA L. SILBERRAD 
 
 Author of "The Inheritance," etCj 
 
 Miss Silberrad writes with a very practised pen, a vivid 
 imagination and a profound insight into psychology. In her 
 latest novel she has brought her well-known gifts to bear upon 
 a curious situation of great interest, and gives us a story that 
 will please her numerous friends and make her many new 
 ones. 
 
 The Westminster Gazette says : " Miss Silberrad has a fine 
 sense for character, and a delicate humour that she allows to 
 play freely over her heroes and villains alike with the happiest 
 effect." 
 
 The Field says : " She has an eye for character, an ear for 
 dialogue, and a nose to smell the woodbine and the meadow- 
 sweet and roses of country places." 
 
 The Wider Way By DIANA PATRICK 
 
 A STRIKING FIRST NOVEL 
 
 The story of Veronica Quening, a whole-hearted, pas- 
 sionate girl, who lived every moment of her adventurous 
 life and loved with an abandon that brought her almost to 
 the brink of disaster. 
 
 Diana Patrick, whose first novel this is, has an excep- 
 tionally powerful grip of the emotions and a vivid, poetical 
 style of expressing herself that puts her at once in the front 
 rank of our new writers. Her artistic handling of the some- 
 what delicate situations in her story shows her to be n$t only 
 a shrewd observer of life, but a woman with a deep under- 
 standing of human nature. Her book will certainly make 
 her a large circle of readers. 
 
 4
 
 Hutchinson's New Novels. 7/6 Net. 
 The Golden Apple 
 
 By KATHLYN RHODES 
 
 Author of 
 " The Lure of the Desert," " The Desert Dreamers," etc. 
 
 A thrilling new story by this famous writer, whose mar- 
 vellous interpretation of the fire and passion of the East has 
 made her one of the most widely read of all living authors. 
 
 The intrigues of the beautiful Lady Lucia Holland, the 
 struggles of Victor Romney, co-respondent in her husband's 
 divorce suit, to escape her toils, the delicious love-story of 
 pretty Valerie Rivers, and the machinations of the vile 
 Count Paolo Rossi, all combine to make a novel of striking 
 power and originality. 
 
 Over half a million copies of Kathlyn Rhodes' novels 
 have already been sold. 
 
 Seven Journeys By DOROTA FLATAU 
 
 Author of " Yellow English." (33rd Thousand) 
 
 A remarkably powerful novel dealing in an entirely 
 original manner with the development of the soul from the 
 moment of its leaving Infinity until the present day. Each 
 of its seven reincarnations is a complete story, set in novel 
 surroundings, and the whole forms a particularly clever study 
 of the emotional experiences through which we all must pass 
 in the course of our evolution. 
 
 " Seven Journeys " is written with all the fire and 
 dramatic force which has made " Yellow English " one of the 
 most popular books of the day, and its deep, psychological 
 significance will appeal to all who are interested in the great 
 problems of our past and future existence. 
 
 The Triumphs of Sara 
 
 By W. E. MORRIS 
 
 Author of "The Obstinate Lady," etc. 
 It is over forty years since Mr. Norris published his first 
 novel, but his imagination is as lively as ever, and his latest 
 book has all the qualities which have made him so popular. 
 Punch says : " We all know Mr. W. E. Norris as a novelist who 
 can be trusted not only to tell an intriguing story, but also to 
 construct it irreproachably." The Lady's Field says : " One of 
 the charms of Mr. Norris's novels which never fails is that his 
 characters fit so exactly into their places in the society to 
 which they belong. They are not studio figures. They live," 
 
 S
 
 Hutchinson's New Novels. 7/6 Net. 
 Tension By E. M. DELAFIELD 
 
 Author of "Zella Sees Herself," etc. 
 
 A delightful love-story set in the familiar, homely sur- 
 roundings of English county society, of which Miss Delafield 
 gives a very faithful and amusing description. The book is 
 written in a bright and entertaining style, the characters are 
 absolutely true to life, and there is a most intriguing mystery 
 which keeps one agreeably perplexed until the end. Alto- 
 gether a thoroughly pleasing novel with a fresh and whole- 
 some tone which will greatly appeal tc those who like to read 
 of our everyday life as it really is. 
 
 The Little Soul 
 
 By ELINOR MORDAUNT 
 
 Author of 
 
 " The Garden of Contentment," " A Ship of Solace," etc. 
 
 Another novel that will delight all admirers of Miss 
 Mordaunt's great gifts. Charles Hoyland is a remarkable 
 character, drawn with great power and force. Philip McCabe 
 and Diana Clayton, the foils to this driving power, are most 
 charming and attractive people, whose careers will be fol- 
 lowed with intense interest. The story ends on the note 
 of hope, never absent from any picture of real life. 
 
 Also Ran By MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS 
 
 Author of "The Man Who Won," etc. 
 This is another of the delightfully human stories for which 
 Mrs. Baillie Reynolds has such a particular gift. She writes 
 of society as she herself sees it, of people whom we ourselves 
 know and understand : their intrigues and their difficulties, 
 their tragedies and their joys, are those which we experience 
 or see around us day by day. Her circle of readers is already 
 a large one, and will be considerably increased by her latest 
 novel, which is one of the best she has yet done. 
 
 Irish Stew By DOROTHEA CONYERS 
 
 Author of "The Straying* of Sandy." 
 
 Miss Conyers has made a great name for herself with her delightful 
 pictures of Irish life; her racy, amusing descriptions of Irish hunting 
 society and the reckless fun of the hunting field, together with the whole- 
 some, sporting spirit in which she always writes, have made her one of the 
 most popular authors of the day. "Irish Stew," as its name implies, 
 will be found to contain all the usual favourite ingredients of a thoroughly 
 typical Irish tale, and will rival in popularity that wonderfully successful 
 novel, " Th Strayiagi of Sandy." 
 I
 
 Hutchinson's New Novels. 7/6 Net. 
 The Judge By REBECCA WEST 
 
 Author of "The Return of the Soldier." 
 Miss West is one of our clever modern novelists who aim 
 at reality in art. With her vivid, dramatic style and her 
 passion for truth she writes of life from an unusual angle, and 
 her work has a curiously distinctive quality of its own which 
 makes an instant appeal to all who appreciate sincerity in 
 human relationships. Her latest novel is a brilliant piece 
 of work emotional, yet taking an original line which breaks 
 down many of the old traditions and ringing with the voice 
 of the new generation. 
 
 The Husband Hunters 
 
 By MRS, HORACE TREMLETT 
 
 Author of "Birds of a Feather," "Platonic Peter," etc. 
 Under this alluring title Mrs. Tremlett gives us another 
 of her sparkling, amusing stories of modern society. The bevy 
 of charming girls who, for reasons of their own, engage in 
 this most ancient sport of husband-hunting are amazingly 
 true to life, and their activities form a merry comedy which 
 will greatly add to Mrs. Tremlett's rapidly increasing reputa- 
 tion. The British Weekly says : " Her touch is very light 
 and very sure. In her own particular department she is not 
 excelled by any living writer." 
 
 Queen Lucia By E. F. BENSON 
 
 Author of " Up and Down," " Robin Linnet," etc. 
 This is another of Mr. Benson's characteristic sociecy novels, full of 
 entertaining dialogue, stimulating and amusing throughout. He goes 
 this time into a small country town for his .setting, and introduces us to 
 some delightfully well-bred and simple people, who are exploited by a 
 cunning Indian Guru, or teacher. His story is a good-natured satire on 
 the vaiious modern crazes which irom time to time attract the idle rich, 
 and particularly on the type of women to whom they appeal. Queen 
 Lucia, with her enthusiasms and absurdities, is a delightful creation 
 worthy to rank with the immortal Dodo. 
 
 Uncle Simon 
 
 By MR. and MRS. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 In crown Svo, cloth, 61- net. 
 
 A diverting comedy concerning an elderly and very proper gentleman 
 whose mind quite suddenly reverts to the workings of his youth and 
 prompts him to commit the most amazing indiscretions. The frantic 
 efforts of his nephew and his faithful valet to save his reputation un ler 
 very difficult circumstances are extremely entertaining, and the story from 
 beginning to end is full of excellent fun. It is a novel in which the two 
 very different styles of Mr. and Mrs. de Vere Stacpoole are happily com- 
 bined, and which will please equally the admirers uf these popular writers. 
 7
 
 Hutchinson's Important Books 
 
 The Australian Victories 
 in France in 1918 
 
 By General SIR JOHN MONASH, G.C.M.G., K.C B. 
 
 With 9 Folding Maps in colour and 31 Illustrations 
 on art paper 
 
 In out large handsome volume, 24s, net. 
 
 Australian soldiers have captured the popular imagination 
 throughout the whole Empire not only on account of their superb 
 courage as fighters, but also because of their direct, original 
 methods and the unconventional ity of their outlook ; and it is 
 just these qualities which make the book of Sir John Monashone 
 of the most striking of all the war records now appearing in 
 print. Succeeding General Bird wood early in 1918 he gives a 
 vivid account of the final months of the war and the anxious 
 hours preceding the German attack on Amiens, the repulse of 
 which brought the enemy advance to a standstill at one of the 
 most critical periods of the whole war. 
 
 He writes with the utmost candour and in the true sporting 
 spirit of the Colonies, and his book will be read as eagerly for 
 its real human interest as for its undoubted technical and 
 historical value. 
 
 The Grey Wave 
 
 By Major HAMILTON GIBBS 
 With a Preface by PHILIP GIBBS 
 
 In dewy Svo, cloth gilt, 10. 6d. net. 
 
 Mr. Philip Gibbs, the famous war correspondent, in the 
 clever preface he has written for his brother's striking book, 
 says : 
 
 "It is a real book. Here, truthfully, nakedly, vividly, 
 is the experience, not of one soldier in the British Army, but 
 of hundreds of thousands. All our men went through the 
 training he describes were trampled into obedience of soul 
 and body by its heavy discipline. Disillusionment, despair, 
 a tragic rage, filled the hearts of many of our fighting men, 
 who, after all their sacrifices, found themselves unrewarded, 
 unemployed and unsatisfied in their souls. 
 
 " My brother's book reveals something of this at work 
 in Lis own mind . , it is honest and vital,''
 
 Hutcbiason's Important Books 
 German Spies at Bay 
 
 The Secret and Authentic History of the German Spies 
 in Great Britain, compiled from Official sources 
 
 By SIDNEY THEODORE FEL8TEAD 
 In orown Svo. cloth gilt, with Illustrations, Q s. 6d. net 
 
 Judging by the activities of the German Secret Service Agents, it would 
 seem that the Hun is by no means so clever as he would have bad the world 
 believe. Mr. Felstead, who has had access to the official documents, gives us 
 a most dramatic account of their efforts in Great Britain during the war, and 
 of our own organization to cope with espionage ; and his book is full of interesting 
 disclosures and sensational stones of those who, on one side or the other, took 
 part in the silent and hidden war of wits waged behind the actual clash of arms. 
 
 Sniping in Franca 
 
 With Notes on the Scientific Training 
 of Scouts, Observers and Snipers 
 By MAJOR H. HESKETH-PRICHARD, D.S.O., M.C. 
 uthor oi " Whr Black Rules White," Hunting Camps in Wood and Wilderness." 
 
 " Through Trackless Labrador," etc. 
 
 With a Foreward by General LORI) HOR.NE of Stirkoke, K.C.M.G., etc., and with 24 
 Illustrations from drawing by ERNES I BLAIKLEY, Artists' Rifles, late sergeant- 
 instructor at tbe First Army School of T. 0. S. and (rom photographs. 12/6 net. 
 This unique book will make a wide appeal. It tells of the founding 
 of the Sniping School and our Sniping System in France, for which the 
 Author was largely responsible, of the wonderful work done by the 
 Scouts, Observers, and Snipers, who not only recovered from the great 
 feriority with which the enemy started with their telescopic sights, but 
 ultimately gained complete ascendancy. It is a revelation to find how 
 many losses were caused by snipers and how important their woik was, 
 and it makes fascinating reading to follow the deceptions, trickeries and 
 camouflage that were employed to beat the enemy. The author is a, 
 practised writer and his book is throughout admirably clear and undet- 
 standabla to all. The illustrations are also oi exceptional interest. 
 
 Rachel Comforted By MRS. FRED MATURIN 
 
 With an Introduction by the Iste W. T. STEAD and a Preface by 
 SIR A. CON AN DOYLE. 6 - net. 
 
 Mrs. Maturin is one of those highly sensitized people who are in 
 touch with the occult forces we are all trying to understand in these days. 
 For some years she has been in communication by means of Planchette, 
 with her little son who died when a child, and who has not only been 
 able to comfort her in her grief, but also to describe, to some extent, his 
 present surroundings. 
 
 It will be readily understood that this is a subject on which any 
 mother would shrink from publicity, but Mrs. Maturin feels that she 
 should no longer hesitate to share with the many mothers who are still 
 hopelessly mourning their dear ones, the blessed illumination she has her- 
 self received. The late W .T. Stead, who was thoroughly conversant with 
 the whole circumstances, urged her to publish the M.S., writing an intro- 
 duction just before his fatal voyage on the Titanic ; and Sir Arthur Conan 
 Doyle, in his preface adds a further guarantee, if it were needed, that this 
 is in truth an utterly honest and sincere book, written for no other purpose 
 than to give help and courage to those who have sufferred loss. 
 
 It is the most genuine and moving book ever published on tht iuU- 
 which net crea the <.-: I -: Jened tceptic can ignore. 
 9
 
 Hutchlnson's Important Books 
 The Life of Sir Herbert Tree 
 
 Edited by MAX BEERBOHM 
 
 In one handsome volume, 10s. 6d. net. 
 With Illustrations by the Editor 
 
 The authorized biography. A beautiful book, written 
 and illustrated with original drawings by the late Sir Herbert 
 Tree's brother, Max Beerbohm, and with a number of interest- 
 ing photographs, and accounts of many well-known people. 
 With contributions by Lady Tree, Viola Tree, G. Bernard 
 Shaw, and many other celebrities. A book that will interest 
 the reading public all over the world, and especially all 
 members of the theatrical profession and theatre-lovers. 
 
 Industrial Anarchy 
 and the Way Out 
 
 By W. WALTER CROTCH 
 
 In crown Svo, cloth, 2. 6d. net 
 
 At the present time, when the problem of Industrial Unrest occupies 
 all minds, this book should make its appeal to every class. The Author 
 immediately comes to the point in considering the psychology of the 
 worker and his altitude towards increased production. The question is 
 discussed with great lucidity and the argument is based on sound economic 
 reasoning. In advocating a scheme of co-partnership between Capital and 
 Labour, the Author quotes the results achieved by several firms where this 
 has been successfully adopted. 
 
 The be A is sane and convincing throughout, and is particularly 
 free from the visionary exaggeration which render* most works on social 
 reform impracticable. 
 
 The Diary of a "U-" 
 Boat Commander 
 
 In crown Svo, cloth, 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 The M.S. of this amazing diary of a German U-Boat Com- 
 mander lias fallen into our hands under somewhat unusual 
 and mysterious circumstances, the name of the writer being 
 withheld for reasons which will be readily apparent to all who 
 read his astounding experiences. It is, however, a story so 
 thrilling and sensational that we have no hesitation in offering 
 it as it stands to the public, kept so long in ignorance by the 
 necessary evil of a rigid censorship. A particularly human 
 and intriguing touch is given to the book by the Author's 
 very frank account of his mad infatuation for a beautiful girl 
 of his own country who was inextricably involved in his in- 
 credible exploits and adventures on the high seas. This will 
 certainly be one of tht mo*t v.-iiV-iv-rciid and firly cUc*Mtt*<i 
 books oi tUe year.
 
 Hutchinson's Important Books 
 Fleet Street <& Downing Street 
 
 The Growth, Power and Influence 
 of the Daily Newspaper 
 
 By KENNEDY JONES, M.P. 
 
 In one large handsome volume, cloth gilt, 
 with photogravure frontispiece, *\&. net 
 This important work is divided into the following sections : 
 
 I. Growth of the Daily Press, 1695-1885. 
 
 II. The Modern Newspaper, 1885-1912. 
 
 III. The Business and Psychology of Journalism. 
 
 The Author, who spent thirty years of his life in journalism, 
 says : 
 
 " To what degree is the Press a political power ? Can 
 
 its power be measured or gauged ? How can the test be 
 _3lied? These ques ' 
 matter of this book." 
 
 applied ? These questions in the main form the subject 
 
 * A Rendering and an Authority 
 
 By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE 
 
 Half cloth gilt, 3. 6d. net. 
 
 In this delightful volume Mr. Stacpoole has used all the 
 charm of language which marks him as a descriptive writer of 
 such high order. The music of his diction rings in every line of 
 this translation, which is vibrant with the spirit of the original. 
 
 Dryads Trove and Other Poems 
 
 By ELIZABETH MOTT 
 
 Infscap, quarter bound, 4s. net 
 
 A delightful little volume of poems by an author who 
 has already done excellent work as a novelist. 
 
 41st Year of Issue. 
 
 The Year's Art. 1920 
 
 Compiled by A. C. R. CARTER 
 
 A concise epitome of all matters relating to the Arts of 
 Painting, Sculpture, Engraving and Architecture, and to 
 Schools of Design, which have occurred during the year 1919, 
 together with information respecting the events of 1920. 
 
 Over 600 pages with illustrations 
 
 Crown Svo, cloth, 8. Od. ntt.
 
 Hutchlnson *s Important Books 
 Complete Aeronautics 
 
 Edited by CLARENCE WINCHESTER, 
 M.I.Ae.E., with a Foreword by the late 
 Sir JOHN ALCOCK, K.B.E. 
 In 3 handsome volumes, each 1 Is. Od. net. 
 A complete and detailed survey of the whole science of Aeronautics, 
 written by specialists in their various spheres, for pilots, designers, 
 students, engineers, and all in any way interested or concerned in aviation 
 and its allied subjects. The work constitutes a "university of flying." 
 Every conceivable branch of the science is competently dealt with. 
 
 Vol. I. consists of: Foreword by Sir John Alcock, K.B.E. ; 
 Editor's Preface by Clarence Winchester, M.I.Ae.E.; The 
 Principles of Flight and Aeroplane Design, by Sydney Camm, 
 A.F.R.Ae.8. ; The Stability of Aeroplanes, by Capt. W. R. D. 
 Shaw, M.I.Ae.E. ; Aero Engines and their Design and Construc- 
 tion, by an ex-R.A.F. Engineer Officer; The Theory and Con- 
 struction of Airscrews, by E. P. King, B.Sc.Eng.. A.M.I.M.E. 
 Vols. 2 and 3 are also mines of information and deal with such 
 subjects as Rigging and Erecting, Piloting Aircraft, the Airship, Para- 
 chutes, Meteorology, etc. , etc. 
 
 All the volumes are profusely illustrated with drawings and photo- 
 graphs, guiding the reader and elaborating the explanations in the 
 comprehensive text. 
 THE STANDARD WORK ON MODERN AERONAUTICAL PRACTICE. 
 
 A New Book on a New Subject 
 
 Behind the Motion- 
 Picture Screen 
 
 By AUSTEN C. LESCARBOURA 
 
 In Royal 9vo. cloth gilt, with over 300 illustrmtions, 
 on art paper, 211- net 
 
 No subject has at the present time a wider appeal than the Cinema, 
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 FROM CLUE TO CAPTURE 
 
 YELLOW ENGLISH 
 
 Madams Albanesi 
 Madame Albanesi 
 Madame Albanesi 
 Madame Albanesi 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robart Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 Robert Hugh Benson 
 M. E. Braddon 
 J. E. Buckrose 
 J. E. Buckrosa 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Buriand 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 J. B. Harris-Burland 
 Rosa N. Carey 
 R. W. Campbell 
 Dorothea Conyers 
 Dorothea Conyer* 
 Dorothea Conyers 
 Dorothea Conyers 
 Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 Mrs. B. M. Croker 
 Frank Dar.by 
 Dick Donovan 
 Dorota Flatau
 
 Hutchinson's 2 - Novels already published continued. 
 
 MARGUERITE'S WONDERFUL YEAR 
 TWO IN A TENT-AND JANE 
 
 HILARY ON HER OWN 
 
 PATRICIA PLAYS A PART 
 
 CANDYTUFT-I MEAN VERONICA 
 THE THIRD MISS WENDERBY ... 
 
 AN UNDRESSED HEROINE 
 
 THE VACILLATIONS OF HAZEL ... 
 
 HER MAD MONTH 
 
 CHIFFON'S MARRIAGE 
 
 LITTLE BLUE PIGEON 
 
 ADAM'S CLAY 
 
 THE PRINCESS OF NEW YORK ... 
 
 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR 
 
 THE GREEN PATCH 
 
 MAGPIE 
 
 THE LORDSHIP OF LOVE ~ 
 
 MARIA ... 
 
 THE FILIBUSTERS - 
 
 THE LOST CONTINENT 
 
 MADEMOISELLE CELESTE 
 
 'GOOD OLD ANNA* 
 
 BY RIGHT OF SWORD 
 
 A DASH FOR A THRONE 
 
 IN COTTON WOOL 
 
 MRS. THOMPSON 
 
 THE RAGGED MESSENGER 
 
 THE DEVIL'S GARDEN ... 
 THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON 
 
 THE GREAT WHITE HAND 
 
 THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL 
 
 A BRIDE OF THE PLAINS 
 
 PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT 
 
 A TRUE WOMAN 
 
 MEADOWSWEET 
 
 THE LEGION OF HONOUR 
 
 THE THREE BROTHERS 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF A LADIES' MAN 
 
 THE UNDER SECRETARY 
 
 THE GAMBLERS 
 
 A WELSH SINGER 
 
 BY BERWEN BANKS 
 
 TORN SAILS 
 
 THALASSA 
 
 THE MAN WHO WON 
 
 A QUAKER WOOING 
 
 THE WAX IMAGE 
 
 THE STRAIGHT RACE 
 
 THE DESERT DREAMERS 
 
 THE WILL OF ALLAH 
 
 By Mabel Barnes-Grundy 
 Mabel Barnes-Grundy 
 Mabel Barnes-Grund 
 Mabel Barnes-Grand 
 Mabel Barnes-Grund 
 Mabel Barnes-Grund 
 Mabel Barnes-Grund 
 Mabel Barnes-Grundy 
 Mabel Barnes-Grundy 
 "Gyp" 
 A. G. Hales 
 Cosmo Hamilton 
 Cosmo Hamilton 
 Joseph Hattoa 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 Baroness von Hutten 
 C. J. Cutcliffe Hyae 
 C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne 
 A. F. Knight 
 Mrs Belloc Lowndes 
 A. W. Marchmont 
 A. W. Marchmont 
 W. B. Maxwell 
 W. B. Maxwell 
 W. B. Maxwell 
 W. B. Maxwell 
 F. F. Montresor 
 J. E. Muddock 
 Baroness Orezy 
 Baroness Orezy 
 Baroness Orezy 
 Baroness Orezy 
 Baroness Orezy 
 Baroness Orezy 
 Eden Phillpotts 
 William Le Queux 
 William Le Queux 
 William Le Queux 
 Allen Raine 
 Allen Raine 
 Allen Raine 
 Mrs. Baillie Reynolds 
 Mrs. Baillie Reynolds 
 Mrs. Fred Reynolds 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes
 
 Hutchinson's 2/- Novels already published continued. 
 
 SWEET LIFE B 
 
 AFTERWARDS 
 
 THE MAKING OF A SOUL 
 
 THE LURE OF THE DESERT 
 
 SANDS OF GOLD 
 
 HALF A TRUTH 
 
 PEG THE RAKE 
 
 THE BRIDGE OF KISSES 
 
 THE LAD WITH WINGS 
 
 HIS OFFICIAL FIANCEE 
 
 MISS MILLIONS' MAID 
 
 THE GIRLS AT HIS BILLET 
 
 THE COURTSHIP OF ROSAMUND FAYRE 
 
 ANTHONY WILDING 
 
 THE TRAMPLING OF THE LILIES 
 
 THE SHAME OF MOTLEY 
 
 THE BANNER OF THE BULL 
 
 LOVE AT ARMS 
 
 THE SNARE 
 
 LITANY LANE 
 
 THE INHERITANCE 
 
 THE GREAT AGE 
 
 IN BLUE WATERS 
 
 THE PEARL FISHERS 
 
 THE BLUE HORIZON 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE SEA 
 
 CORPORAL JACQUES OF THE FOREIGN 
 
 LEGION 
 
 THE REEF OF STARS 
 
 A KING IN BABYLON 
 
 LITTLE COMRADE 
 
 THE COMBINED MAZE 
 
 VIRGINIA OF THE RHODESIANS 
 
 PERSUASIVE PEGGY 
 
 THE GRANDEST THING IN THE WORLD 
 
 THE WEB OF THE SPIDER 
 
 BOUNDARY HOUSE 
 
 THE EYES OF THE BLIND 
 
 THE WIFE'S TRIALS 
 
 EVELYN'S STORY 
 
 SHE WHO MEANT WELL 
 
 THE LADIES' PARADISE 
 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 K&thlyn Rhodes 
 Kathlyn Rhodes 
 "Rita" 
 "Rita" 
 Berta Ruck 
 Berta Ruck 
 Beria Ruck 
 Berta Ruck 
 Berta Ruck 
 Berta Ruck 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 Rafael Sabatini 
 Margaret Baillie 
 
 Saunders 
 Una L. Silberrad 
 J. C. Snaith 
 H. de Vere Stacpoolo 
 H. de Vere Stacpoole 
 H. de Vere Stacpoole 
 H. de Vere Stacpoola 
 
 H. de Vere Stacpoole 
 H. de Vere Stacpoole 
 Burton E. Stevenson 
 Burton E. Stevenson 
 May Sinclair 
 Cynthia Stockier 
 Maravene Thompson 
 By the Authors of 
 
 " Missing the Tide" 
 H. B. Marriott Watson 
 Peggy Webling 
 M. P. Willcocks 
 Emma Jane Worboise 
 Emma Jane Worboise 
 Curtis Yorke 
 Emile Zola 
 
 Bound in Paper, with Pictorial Cover, 1,6 net. 
 CONFESSIONS OF A LONDON GIRL - By Elizabeth York Miller 
 
 In croii'tt Svo. with Pictorial Cover, 13 net. 
 
 THE STRANGLEHOLD 
 
 MISSING THE TIDE (Paces from the life 
 of Margaret Carson) 
 
 By Coralie Stanton and 
 Heath Hosken 
 
 " One who knew her ' '
 
 .^.^...-.i^aiiilllllll 
 
 11111111 
 
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