PART NINETEENTHE CITY OF FEAR
Had Peter Jameson been an Irishman, a Gaul, or an Italian, his mind—as he taxied to Victoria Station—would have pictured to himself 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 Anglo-Saxon; and his thoughts of Pat, 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!
Three mornings after they had said good-bye, he lit a cigar; pulled tight the belt of his mackintosh; drew on his gauntlets; and set out on his first journey from Poperinghe 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.
It had been snowing. Under-foot the streets were still starred and sodden; and when they came to the great Square, they found men 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.
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 horses’ hoofs, 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, glistening 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 château, forlorn among dank gardens. Along the railway, to the left of the road, showed 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-horse 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 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 approached, 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 herself—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 hisTimesby the light of their one oil lamp (it was just lunch-time) 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. Purves, as acting Adjutant, does not shine. Morency’s at the waggon-lines. 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 show you the battery-positions.”
He indicated them.
Doctor Carson came in, bumping his head on the lintel as usual; said “Hallo, P.J. Jolly spot, isn’t it? Time for lunch, I think.”
Bombardier Michael appeared, carrying plates; followed by Peter’s batman Garton, with food from the tiny cook-house which Gunner Horne had found on a tottery foot-bridge over the creek.
Somehow, in spite of discomforts, Peter was glad to be back. Lunch over, he explored along the creek; was shown the doctor’s dug-out (shared willy-nilly with Purves); clambered 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 months 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 Véry lights, the orange of candle-flames in dug-outs, the crimson flash from a gun-muzzle. . . .
It is 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 the front-line infantry, frozen blue or blown to bits between rotting sandbags, to the drivers in the swamped horse-lines where the dumb beasts stood all day, tail to storm, fetlock-deep in mud, and whence men and beasts 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 headquarters moved to the Ramparts—when unanswered salvos 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-débris on the corpses of the men who had inhabited them.
Still, 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 amusements; 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 christened it,—stiffened endurance, irradiated relaxation.
In the Ramparts, vast catacombe of old brickwork impervious to any artillery, were pianos, gramophones, picture-galleries selected from coloured supplements of theSketchorLa 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—which he calledThe Wipers Times.
In this atmosphere, whatever glamour “active service” once possessed for P.J. soon disappeared. He did his work now, office and telephone duties varied by trips to front-line or batteries, with the meticulous accuracy of an automaton; wrote much to Patricia; and read the daily, weekly and monthly newspapers from cover to cover.
Towards the end of February, however, chance provided him with a new interest. Monsieur Van Woumen, the Belgian who had taken furnished his 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 two months. He had no particular sentiment about either house or chattels. Patricia, consulted in a long business-like letter, approved of the scheme: making only certain reservations—some of her own bedroom furniture, the desk and sideboard in the dining-room, a blue carpet, and various other pieces she thought it inadvisable to dispose of. Monsieur Van Woumen paid his deposit; signed the agreement and completed the purchase-money by the time that—after three months and twenty-seven days which are best left to the imagination—the Southdown Artillery was ordered a week’s rest at Eecke.
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 pavé roads. Men, cleaning harness and equipment or leading teams to water, whistled at their work: the lines which the City had graven on their faces, disappeared. They chaffered merrily with the peasants for eggs or milk; sang songs in theestaminets; 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.
Night after night, Headquarter Mess resounded to, “Raise you fifty, sir,” “All right, P.J., I’ll see you.” Even Lodden caught the infection.
They played high; and they played fast: but they 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-walled in vain; was lured from his caution; heavily mulcted: Lodden, the 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 for 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. Where did you learn the game, P.J.?”
“I, sir.” Peter would smile. “Oh, I’ve sat in some rather hot games in my time. In Havana, with the Tobacco Trust crowd; and when I was in New York.”
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.”
Good days! but they came to an end: and once again the Brigade marched out, polished to the last bandolier-buckle, for Neuve Eglise.
“A mighty good place,” assured the Canadians—serious-minded men—from whom they “took over.” And so indeed, with one or two exceptions, they found it.
Batteries barked from a pleasant valley, under real trees: a valley down which a man might ride in safety. Peasants still lived, close to the firing line, in unshelled farms; crops were reaped within two miles of the trenches. Headquarters, 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 fortify their habitations. During their first week, the Southdown Infantry paid—for this neglect—the price of one hundred men, killed in their rest-billets behind the firing line.
Still, compared with Ypres only a few miles away to northward, the place was—for gunners at any rate—paradise. . . .
They had been at Neuve Eglise a week, were just getting comfortable, when Miss Macpherson’s telegram arrived. The dispatch 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 five minutes before he opened it. Then he tore the envelope; read: “Simpson died yesterday can you get leave macpherson.”
He stood there, flimsy paper in his hands: no longer Lieutenant and Adjutant P. Jameson R.F.A., but Peter Jameson cigar merchant, of P. Jameson & Co., Lime Street, London. 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 Jameson, business man, wrestled with his problem. He must get leave of 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 onto 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 hadmysecond leave yet.”
Peter explained rather curtly, ending up: “If you’ll sign the application, sir, I’ll take it in to Bailleul tonight. . . .”
“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 any one 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 pavé within the hour—he conned over his arguments. “Urgent Private Affairs!” Well, this was urgent enough. . . .
Coolsdon the Staff Captain, busy with papers in a handsomely 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.”
“Hm,” said the General. “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’Armentières, Peter, running up an imposing stair-case, met the very man he sought—a tall, fiery-eyed General with upturned moustaches and an eye-glass.
Peter saluted; and the “Whirligig”—who prided himself on never forgetting a face—growled out, “You’re Jameson of the 4th 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 from his pocket. The General glanced at; noted the signatures at foot; said “Got a pencil?” . . .
“Hope you settle things all right,” he growled out as 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 enjoyment!
PART TWENTYTHE HOME FRONT
All through the thirty-six hours of his journey back to England, business nagged at the mind of Peter Jameson. 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 compartment, 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 restlessness, 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 wind began to reproach itself. Bad luck! Not a bit of it. If he, Peter Jameson, had possessed any common-sense, he might have foreseen this happening. He, Peter Jameson, 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. . . .
But at that, the soul revolted; the dumb patriotism of the man re-asserted itself. For, deep down in Peter’s consciousness, lay the firm conviction that in volunteering for service he had done the one possible thing. . . . Only, it did seem as though Fate were exacting a highish price for his self-respect—first the loss of Nirvana, and now this new complication.
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. Jamesons’ 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.
Had he been free, had there been no War, he could have borrowed the money on the security of the business, taken in another partner, amalgamated with a competitor. But he was not free, would not be free till the War ended. And he had seen enough at first hand to know that the War—unless America came in—could easily go on another five years.
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 Jamesons’. Mallabone, their sole remaining traveller? Mallabone had no brains. Besides—and here the effect of war on Peter’s temperament clearly revealed itself—any such solution contained the element ofrisk. He had lost more than half his capital: and he funked any diminution of the rest.
Funked it! He, Peter Jameson, who had never funked a business gamble in his life. . . .
“The only alternative,” said reason, “is to sell out. You’ll get hardly anything for goodwill: outside the stock and book-debts, your only asset was the Beckmann contract. That’s not worth twopence today. Still, if you could sell the business as a going concern, your capital would, at any rate, besafe. . . .”
So thinking, Peter stepped out of the Pullman on to the platform of Victoria Station.
This time, no Patricia met him. Apparently his wire to her had not arrived. He looked at the clock above the archway; saw it was half-past two; and decided to go 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 Gracechurch 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. Jameson,” she said, rising. The war had altered the Scotswoman: 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! 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 importantto me.”
“I’m afraid itwillhave to be sold, 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—“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 Jameson 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 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 employés. 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, recognizing that this was “business,” a mystery beyond her scope. And with that realization 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 tomorrow? Right. Yes, Mr. Jameson, Mr. Peter Jameson.”
He turned to Miss Macpherson, said “Do you think you can have those figures ready by lunch-time tomorrow?” received her affirmative; 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 to see Mrs. Simpson.”
The drive to Harrow, through traffic and tramlines 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, comfortable 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-clipt lawns gave on to 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; ushered, 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 today.’ But he would go. And the trains are so crowded now—these soldiers. Often, he’d have to stand up the whole way home. Then the raids used to keep him awake.”
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 unsympathetically. “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 tomorrow.”
“It’s very good of you to take so much trouble, Mr. Jameson. 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—with the shrewdness of the English middle-class. Business, taboo in Lowndes Square, had always been the staple topic of conversation 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 Jamesons; 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 Jameson.
Yet she pressed them to have some tea, which they 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. . . .
Instead of swinging the car left for London, Patricia drove straight past the Harrow foot-ball 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 Jamesons—they all go the same way home. Serves me right for gambling, I suppose. But I wish I hadn’t letyoudown, 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 lettingmedown?”
“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 them. Two years ago, we had three thousand a year; today, 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 besides”—her voice grew very gentle—-“lots of people are very happy on six hundred a year.”
“In books,” he sneered.
“Peter”—she looked at him and he saw her eyes suffuse—“thathurts.”
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!”
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. Jamesons 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 for his return, greeted their father uproariously; could hardly be induced to bed. Later Heron Baynet produced Clicquot, a decanter of special brandy. The three of them made semblance of enjoyment. Peter told them how he had wangled his leave; Patricia broached a plan long contemplated—the taking of a little place in the country; her father spoke, as always, of his work.
The little consultant with the lined face and the kind eyes was one of the only three men in England who had made any study of war’s effect on the fighting man’s nerves. Already, in the card-index on the table in his consulting-room, he had tabulated five hundred cases; and from those five hundred cases, a theory had begun to evolve itself—a theory of eminent simplicity. Heron Baynet called it, “The Curve of the Limit of Human Endurance.”
The curve and the limit of each individual varied, were affected by conditions—physical, mental, and sexual, conditions of heredity and conditions of pre-war environment. But of one thing, Heron Baynet already held the absolute certainty:—The superman, as preached by German philosophers, did not exist. Every human individuality possessed its breaking-strain, the point beyond which will-power could not force either the body or the brain. Any attempt to pass that “limit of human endurance” must be foredoomed to failure.
And it seemed to Heron Baynet, sitting alone after the two had gone to bed, that he could already detect from certain tones in his son-in-law’s voice, from the way his conversation ran from one topic to another, from the whole atmosphere his personality exuded, that Peter Jameson had already abandoned the flat level of the normal, begun the slow climb up that curve of endurance which must lead eventually to breaking point. . . .
PART TWENTY-ONETHE DROSS AND THE GOLD
Despite his father-in-law’s diagnosis, 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 istime. One can’t conclude a deal like this in under a week. That’s where I wantyourhelp. 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 damn decent of you,” said Peter, “but all the same, I don’t like accepting favours.”
“Favours be blowed.” 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.”
“Some one could run it while you’re away.”
“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, thatandthe insurance money, at five per cent. . . .”
“Very well,” interrupted Reid. “I follow you. Point two: Who’s your buyer?”
“A firm called Beresford and 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 Beresfords; 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 acquiring Jamesons on the terms Peter now proposed to accept. But things had altered in the cigar-trade; perhaps the arguments he intended using would not be effective.
The whole proposition was very distasteful. He found himself hating the City, almost wishing he were 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 such pictures that morning: comedies, farces, tragedies, all enacted among the cedar-boxes and the mahogany furniture of 28 b. 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 clerks’ room were as strange as the emptiness of the dusty racks.
Yet, for all its apparent deadness, Jameson & 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 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. The selling of goods, under war-conditions, presented no difficulty. What one could import, one could dispose of.
Still doubtful, he went 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 and Beresford.
Maurice, dapper as ever, eye-glassed, patent-booted, but short-jacketed and bowler-hatted in deference to war-conditions, 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 sales-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 dude 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,” said Peter. “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, Maurice on tenterhooks to find out what Peter could be driving at, 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 man 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!”—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 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 Jamesons. 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!” commented 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 so as 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 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 tomorrow. But it’s no good showing 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 on ’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 tomorrow?”
“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, watching, 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: any more thanweshould like to pay you less.”
“Of course not,” smiled Peter. He knew Maurice Beresford 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 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. Jameson. 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 amazed. 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. . . .
The Beresfords lost no time in getting to grips, no opportunity of pointing out the worthlessness of the concern they proposed acquiring.
At his very first interview with George Reid, their intermediary—the dignified portly principal of Messrs. Guthrie, Guthrie, Jellybrand, Sons and Guthrie—made their attitude very clear. He was given to understand, he said, that Jameson & 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 Beresfords had also, prior to the war, traded with Beckmanns, and that they had only abandoned trading with them becausehisclients, Messrs. Jameson & Co., refused to supply further shipments, Mr. Guthrie professed bland ignorance.
The matter—went on Mr. Guthrie—was not of vast importance: still, it undoubtedly affected the question of goodwill. And, while on the subject, he felt it only fair to say that—had Messrs. Beresford takenhisadvice—they would 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.
Followed a long letter, querying the item of “furniture and fixtures,” alluding once again to the debated question of goodwill, suggesting that the book-debts should be guaranteed by the sellers, the stock valued by some independent expert. Followed another interview, a demand to examine the lease of the premises, and—(“I told you so, Reid,” said Peter when he heard of it)—a very tactful request for a copy of the contract with Beckmanns!
Meanwhile Maurice insisted on entertaining Peter and Patricia to dinner at Claridges’: 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,” answered 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.
That sentiment swayed him, that he hated parting with the “old business,” that his weakened resolution needed constant screwing-up to bluffing-point—Patricia did not realize. She knew that he was fighting a losing battle against time, felt dimly that his financial anxieties were more on her behalf and the children’s than his own. And for these things her heart sympathized with him: but her neglected love suffered, suffered impotently.
Reason asked: “Whydoyou love this man?”—and found no sure answer. Reason told her that he was hard, incapable of any but the most casual 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, youdolove him.”
It took many years before Patricia, looking back on that dark week, realized herself one of those women whose love can only walk hand-in-hand with theirrespect; that whatever this man of hers might do or say, instinct, stronger than any reasoning power, gave her the key to his motive: and always, that motive was the same—a desire, voiceless but founded on sure conviction, to do the right thing. . . .
Still, it was a beast of a week! Try as she might, Patricia could not wrest his mind from his business problems to herself. 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 afternoons 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. Maurice Beresford (afraid lest Peter should carry out his latest threat—to liquidate Jameson & Co. altogether) suggested a conference. They met, the two accountants and the three principals, at Guthrie’s offices; sat down in his mahogany board-room to a long session. Talk, as usual at such meetings, coiled away from essentials; wound itself into interminable knots over unimportant minutiæ . . . till Peter’s temper, long held in leash, got the better of him.
“And don’t you think, Mr. Jameson,” began Guthrie blandly, “that the transfer should be made as from the date of the balance-sheet?”
“If you want to know whatIthink,” 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 twinkled; 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 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 paysomethingfor goodwill. Only, it’s a question of how much. Couldn’t we compromise, Peter?”
Our Mr. Jameson sat down again. The outburst had steadied his nerves; his commercial judgment revived. Inwardly, 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 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 Beresford 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. Jameson 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’sonethief less in the cigar-trade anyway, Peter”; and insisted on accompanying him to the corner of Lombard Street. . . .