“It’s a long vai, ter get ter Berlin,Ter pai back all we owe.”
“It’s a long vai, ter get ter Berlin,Ter pai back all we owe.”
“It’s a long vai, ter get ter Berlin,
Ter pai back all we owe.”
PART ELEVENMEN AND HORSES
The Southdown Divisional Artillery, at the time Peter and Bromley were transferred, owned its full complement 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 breechblocks, firing nor sighting apparatuses), a few ammunition 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 juniors during the intervals 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 decentralization, 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 commonsense;” he rode as hard as he drank; protected his juniors from his superiors; 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.
Four subalterns sat over the remnants of their dinner in the dark narrow dining-room of the “Lyndon Hotel.” Outside, 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. C.)—“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 horseman. 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.Youcan’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 3rd Southdown) that afternoon.
“Do you mean to say,” chuckled Pettigrew, “that you’ve never heard of our Mr. Jameson? Our Mr. Jameson,” he cocked his cigarette into the corner of his mouth—a very tolerable imitation of Peter’s mannerism—“the Captain Kettle of the 4th Brigade. Our Mr. Jameson is some gunner, I can assure you.”
“Really.” Merrilees had no sense of humour.
“Also,” went on Pettigrew, “our Mr. Jameson has a car—some car! And a wife—somewife.”
“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. Jameson.”
“Undoubtedly,” pronounced the Oxford man in his best Balliol drawl, “undoubtedly. As you say, Pettigrew, a quaint bird. But efficient. Very 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. Every one 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 Torrington said.”
“Correct, Pettigrew. And then I shall start gingering you all up a bit. Especially ‘B’ Battery.” The Colonel turned to Merrilees. “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 4th Brigade, do we Hutchinson?” 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 promoted 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 Jamesons’. 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.”
“If you young subalterns only knew a quarter as much as Charlie Straker,” remarked the Weasel, as the ex-ranker clattered upstairs, “there’d be second stars on a good many sleeves. . . .”
“Damn good chap, the C.O.,” said Hutchinson, when the four were alone again. “Pretty good seat on a horse too.”
The remainder agreed.
“Who’s my best subaltern, Straker?” asked the Colonel as they strode through the darkness.
The other hesitated. “C-Conway’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.
“Jameson’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 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 riding-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 armchair, glass at his side, talking to Bromley.
“Filthy stuff that new Boche gas,” he was saying. . . . “Hello, Straker. Congratulations on getting your commission. . . .” He got up and the two shook hands. . . . “Lucky devil not to be 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! And for sign of it she, Patricia Jameson, the most reasonable of young women, had fallen in love with her own husband. She wanted to—to surrender herself to him, just once, bodyandsoul, 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. . . .
Imagination got away with her again. Happy? Yes, in a way she was happy. Only. . . . Why didn’t Peter realize things? Why couldn’t Peter work a little less strenuously? He took soldiering as he had taken business. Itabsorbedhim. 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 said 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 wondering 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. ButIdon’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. Then she said 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 “Ishould.” She marched out of the room, gold head high.
“I wonder what’s worrying Pat?” thought Peter as he picked a small cigar from the box on the mantelpiece; took up his “Manual of Field Engineering,” and began to study section 39,Cover for Artillery.
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 Shoreham, the good days continued. Patricia used to motor over in the Crossley, sometimes with Alice (who stayed on alone in Brighton), or the children, sometimes by herself. Gunner Horne 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 Major, knew her too; and Sergeant 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, protesting 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 forgets—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 wagons that stood ranged orderly in the still gunless gun-park. The Ammunition Column, that sink 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 Jameson, 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 unwillingly from the Ammunition Column), type-writers. . . . 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, “Monkeyface”: a jovial Irish doctor, Ted Carson by name: a few undistinguished subalterns whom Stark sent to plague Billy Williams in the Ammunition Column.
Purves, as Orderly Officer to the Colonel, began to pick his Headquarters Staff of Signallers: 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 slid by. The Brigade grew—not even Stark realized exactly how—towards efficiency. If only they could get one—just one—real 18-pounder gun! But that was denied them; so volunteer parties of officers and men would take wagon 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!
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.
“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,MisterLocksley-Jones. No longer ‘Captain and Adjutant,’ you will observe.”
Bromley, just back from the Larkhill training course, 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.
“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 theLusitania—“Oh I dunno,” purred the big Major, “What do you expect ofGermans?” “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 theDaily Chroniclewith 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 tomorrow. 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.
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 acknowledgment that the 10th Chalkshires had a debt to pay, was 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. . . .
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.
“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 evergetout,” 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.”
“I should doubt it.”
Both were destined to remember that conversation, in the very near future, at the Disaster of Loos!
PART TWELVECONCENTRATIONS
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, there came the time when realization 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 whiskey-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.
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. . . .
And on the third evening, the Brigade wound slowly across the bridge, past the lake and under the fir trees, till their 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, those real playthings! But to the two women, the end seemed very near.
Each in her own way; grave, the one—with her white frocked 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!
Very often, through that June and July and August 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 communal lunch-table, to tea, and drinks after tea, to dinner and drinks after dinner: always they were playing bridge, or preparing sandwiches for field-days among the heather, or listening to long talks between man and man. . . .
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 and equipment so crowded on the Brigade that our Mr. Jameson entirely forgot, in his concentration on the immediate job, the job which he had left behind him!
Reminder, a blow straight between the eyes, took the form of an “express” letter, addressed in Simpson’s crabby handwriting 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 Torrington 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-Major; Bromley, newly promoted Captain to command “D” Battery, wanted to know how soon they would be doing their firing practice.
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. Jameson. “Hell!” . . .
The tale, as related by Simpson, resolved itself into a very ordinary swindle. Hartopp, as the naturalized Hun Hagenburg called himself, had placed a big order for Beckmann cigars; shipped the goods to Amsterdam before payment became due . . . and followed them on the next steamer. He had, as he wrote with the sublime 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 Germans! 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 of Whitehall. 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 consecutively.
Simpson gave no figure of loss: but the last time Peter was in Lime Street, Hagenburg’s account stood at five thousand. Simpson had spoken of larger orders pending. Therefore the loss must be more than five thousand. Eight? Ten, perhaps. Jamesons 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 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 tomorrow”—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 important.”
“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.
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 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 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 riding-cane. The offer touched him keenly. It was fine—damn fine—the offer of a white man. But. . . .
“Don’t be such an ass, Tom. I’m just as responsible as you are.” The face above the khaki collar showed 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. Perhaps it serves me right for going on dealing with Beckmanns. 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 theLusitania. 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 Señor Albert Beckmann and/or any member of theCubanfirm of Beckmann yCompaniahad ever adopted a policy hostile to Great Britain and her Allies, and specifically that they had never celebrated in any way the sinking of theLusitania. . . .”
“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 Beckmanns.” 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 some one 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 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 Life Assurance 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 recognized 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 time Patricia could remember, she woke to hear her husband murmuring vaguely in his sleep. . . . Her father could have told her that it was the sub-conscious mind—wastepaper-basket of the brain—striving to eject its suppressed emotions.
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 11 o’clock; to stay there for lunch; and sit about in the ante-room, 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, before going home to his dinner.
In his own way, as a pal, as a partner, Peter “loved” his wife; admired her; felt towards her the protective instinct of average male to average female. Had she been altogether away from him 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 more and more 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 washis, 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 play-mate, she did her duty, laughter on her lips, gold head held high.
And so they came to the last day.
Four fifteenp. 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, lay the Orderly Room. In front, the gun-park showed 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 over-loaded; 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 excitement, perspiration beading lined forehead under gold-rimmed cap-peak.
“No, sir. He’s at home.”
“At home. At home. Good God, on an afternoon like this. 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 4:50p. m.”
“Christ in Heaven! You’ll never be in time. The 3rd Brigade’s not entrained yet. Half the traffic of the South of England’s disorganized. 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 imperturbably. 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 Gunners’ 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-eightp. m.sir.”
Starcross looked at Peter: “What’s your name, young man?”
“Jameson, sir. Peter Jameson.”
“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 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.
Eleven-thirtyp. m.! 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. Upstairs 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 her 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, showed 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 last horseman.
“Yes, Captain Torrington.”
“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,” Peter’s second charger, 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 unutterable.
“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. Jameson. . . .
And so they parted.