PART SIXPLAYING AT SOLDIERS
Except for the newness of his “Cavalry-cord” tunic and a slight lack of suppleness in the carefully-browned belt, nothing about the quiet gray-eyed young man in the otherwise-empty first-class compartment on the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway betrayed the civilian of a day ago. The battered valise and an old-fashioned Army basin, leather-covered—relics of a trip to the East—did not smack of the newly-joined. Close-cut dark hair, clipped moustaches, correctly-wound puttees and dubbined shooting-boots, completed the illusion. But Peter Jameson’s mind had not yet cast off its old allegiances.
Rather, as he whirled Sussexwards, did those discarded problems assume acuter import. One by one he conned over the arrangements made—fortnightly reports from Lime Street, weekly statements and a bi-weekly letter from Bramson, accurate statistics from Reid; wondered if they might have been improved upon. And speculating on these things, Peter began to feel—for the first time—the real pang of parting from Nirvana. It was as though he had cut the main interest out of life; as if the entity of his creating had died. Symbolically, he seemed to see his two flashing signs, as they had been before the new lighting restrictions; “NIRVANA OR NOTHING,” they had blazed. Now, they blazed no more. Nothing!
He pulled his “Infantry Training” from his pocket; began to study Battalion Drill. “A battalion in mass. . . .”
But the subconscious mind would not visualize battalions either in mass or other formations. The mind returned to its old love, refused to be comforted. The mind did not recall the morning’s partings—with Patricia, careful to display no emotion,—with the children, excited at their first vision of “Daddy in khaki.” Instead, it called up figures from balance-sheets, the factory working at full pressure, that dim-lit back-office in the City: till gradually, came recollection of Mr. “Raymond P. Sellers.” . . .
Peter had already posted two of the letters to Prout, visited the Bloomsbury flat as promised, found everything in order. Only a photograph, a girl’s photograph, was missing. And that, Peter had not noticed. But from Francis Gordon himself had come no word. The War seemed to have swallowed him up, utterly, mysteriously.
So Peter sped on, through the bright countryside, thinking of his cousin. . . . And at that very moment thousands of miles away, in a great hotel at Los Angeles, California, a girl said to herself: “Even if he has gone to the war, it’s mean of him not to write and tell me so.” She stood at the window for a moment, looking out onto the sunlit lawn. Till suddenly, the lawn seemed to grow dark. “He can’t have been killed,” she whispered. “He can’t have been killed.”
It is not easy for “agents in enemy countries” to keep up a regular correspondence with the young women whose photographs they carry in their pocket-books!
To get from London to Shoreham, you must change trains at Brighton. Peter used the opportunity to lunch at the Royal York Hotel. Seeing him alone at a table by the window, Harry Preston, most vigilant of proprietors, came over; proffered an old brandy in celebration of the new uniform.
“That’s the Chalkshire badge you’re wearing, isn’t it?” asked Harry Preston.
“Yes, I’m joining them at Shoreham this afternoon.”
The little man whistled.
“What’s the joke?” queried Peter.
“Not for me to say, of course. But I’ve been doing business with your firm for some years; and if you’ll take my advice—don’t play cards with a gentleman named Locksley-Jones.”
“Who’s he?”
“You’ll find out when you get there.”
“Thanks for the hint,” smiled Peter. “Have a cigar, won’t you?”
Colonel Andrews, a diffident, not unkindly man of the pre-Boer-War school, expressionless of face, and stocky of figure, stood talking to his Adjutant in the recently-occupied camp on the flat fields near Shoreham Railway Station. Rattled a taxi down the road; stopped at the gate.
“Another officer, I suppose,” said the Colonel. “Might be a ‘regular’ by his old valise. You’d better go and look after him. I’m off home for tea. Send up to the house if you want me for anything.” He strode back across the parade-ground, through the lines of tents; and disappeared.
Peter acknowledged the salute of a sentry, still in civilian clothes except for a swagger-cane; paid his taxi; gave instructions for his kit to be dumped at the guard-tent till further orders.
“That’s the Adjutant, Sir,” said the sentry, pointing to a bow-legged figure in khaki making his way across the parade-ground towards them. Peter—saluting although the newcomer only wore the two stars of a full lieutenant,—saw a pair of puffy eyes under a thatch of sandy hair, two ears rather full in the lobe, a goodish nose, and a set of bad teeth between thin lips. “And what can I do for you?” said the other, carelessly acknowledging the compliment.
“Are you the Adjutant of the 10th Chalkshires?”
“I’m Lieutenant Locksley-Jones, at present acting in that capacity.”
“The deuce you are,” thought Peter; then aloud, “My name’s Jameson. I’ve been ordered by the War Office to join this battalion.”
“Idon’t know anything about you. The W.O. haven’t sentusany instructions.” Locksley-Jones fingered scraggy moustache doubtfully; scrutinized the telegram Peter produced.
“All right,” he said. “You’ll have to share a tent with the other fellows. Meanwhile you’d better come and have some tea. Those are the officers’ lines,” he pointed to a row of tents by the road, “the men are over there,” his stick switched across the parade-ground, “and we mess in this big marquee.”
“I don’t wonder Harry Preston whistled,” thought Peter, as they picked their way across the tent-ropes to Mess; passed through the deserted “ante-room” where a red stove glowed welcome, into the main part of the marquee.
Scattered about in groups at the trestle-tables under the swinging oil-lamps, little knots of officers sat eating and drinking. Civilian waiters bustled about, serving them.
“Hello, Adjutant,” exclaimed a tall thin Major, twinkling face red-veined with port and the open air. “What’s this? Another budding Napoleon?”
Locksley-Jones introduced Peter deferentially; the Major shook hands; asked the usual “Done any soldiering before?”; was told “Yes, Sir. Eton Volunteers”; apologized for talking shop in Mess; and buried his nose in a large cup of boiling tea.
“Peter Jameson?” he said, emerging. “Let me think. Name sounds familiar somehow. You’re not Tessa Bradley’s son, by any chance, are you? She married a man named Jameson.”
“My father, Sir,” said Peter.
“Good Gad,” said Major Fox-Goodwin, “why I was at their wedding. Thirty-five years ago or I’m a Dutchman. Fancy, little Tessa having a grown-up son. I say, Jones,—beg pardon, Locksley-Jones. . . .”
“Yes, Major.” The Adjutant was visibly irritated; firstly by his superior’s reception of the newcomer, secondly at the mistake (which he knew intentional) in his own name.
“Young Jameson will be posted to my company. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Major.”
“And if he knows his drills, you’re not to put him ‘on the square.’ See?”
“Quite, Major.” The acting adjutant finished his tea hurriedly; went out.
“Between you and me and the gatepost,” whispered Fox-Goodwin, “Andrews will make the mistake of his life if he keeps that young bounder in the Orderly Room much longer.”
Peter nodded comprehension; and the old man—he was, as he informed his new subaltern, “rising sixty-five”—began to reminisce. He had soldiered under “Chips” Bradley in the late seventies, or was it the early eighties? “Damned if he knew, but Chips Bradley had the best eye for a pretty gal . . . and as for his two daughters, Tessa and Dolores: bit Jewish-looking though . . . they got that from their mother of course.” He rambled on for nearly ten minutes; then called across the room. “Here, Bromley, come and be introduced to our latest.”
Harold Bromley lounged over with the unmistakable gait of the ex-Cavalryman. A tall unsmiling fellow, heavy-moustached, light-blue of eye and auburn-haired, who wore the two South African ribbons, yellow-red-black green-white, across his rather crumpled tunic.
“Leave you two youngsters alone,” announced the Major, introductions over; and wiping his gray moustache with a brown bandanna handkerchief, withdrew to the ante-room.
“Marvellous old chap,” commented Bromley. He spoke rather slowly but without any drawl. “Always reminds me of a character in Thackeray. Do you read Thackeray?”
“I’m not much of a bookworm,” said Peter; and waited for more information. He had knocked about the world enough to learn the advantage of listening much and talking little on first acquaintance. But his liking for the grave man—whom in spite of the single star on the shoulders of his high-collared tunic, he judged to be nearly forty—was instinctive.
“I’m glad you’re coming to ‘B’ Company,” went on Bromley. “The Major’s a great sport—but he doesn’t know a word of his drill; and now that he’s acting second-in-command, most of the work falls on myself and the Sergeant-Major. I suppose you know enough to come on parade right away, without bothering about recruit-drill.”
“Oh, I think so,” said Peter; and proffered his inevitable cigar-case.
Bromley accepted a cigar; and the two sat talking for a few minutes. Characteristically, neither spoke of his life before joining the army; their conversation confined itself to generalities.
“Let’s go into the ante-room,” suggested Bromley.
They found two comfortable basket-chairs near the stove. Locksley-Jones, returned from the Orderly-room, had established himself at one of the baize-covered tables, was tearing the wrapper from a fresh pack of cards. “Care for a game, Jameson?” he called across the room.
Bromley looked sideways at his new friend (the instinctive liking had been mutual); saw his eyelashes just flicker; heard him say, “No, thanks, not tonight.” The ante-room began to fill up; grew loud with talk, hazy with tobacco-smoke. The Adjutant’s rubber soon filled. Bromley, in a discreet undertone, began pointing out various worthies.
There was Captain Mosely, a great ox of a fellow, ex-Regular newly-rejoined, who sat by himself in a far corner, writing letters—the flimsy chair creaking each time he dived for ink (“O. C. ‘D’ Company,” whispered Bromley): and Simcox who commanded “A”—a fat stockbroker of forty, looking curiously out of his element among a group of very junior subalterns. There was Fanshawe (“son of Judge Fanshawe”) beetle-browed, black-locked, long of leg and short of temper, discussing Military Law with Bareton, a tall clean-shaven young lawyer, light-haired, stubborn in temperament, a puritan fanatic with a tendency to dreaming, (“they’re running ‘C’ between ’em, rather efficient fellows,” confided Bromley): and Peabody, a brown-faced kid of eighteen, looking the child in his converted cadet tunic; Arkwright, tall and lank with the unmistakable stoop of the junior master in an English Public School; Mackenzie, a round-faced Scotch boy who had been studying for “the Ministry” when war broke out—and many others. A curious team to be driven by a Colonel of limited outlook, who had made his first mistake when he decided to live out of Mess, his second when he confided the acting-Adjutancy to the astute but unscrupulous Locksley-Jones.
“Care to come round the lines?” asked Bromley. “I usually go about now.”
They found their caps and canes, sauntered out.
Already, it was dusk—a chill dry night, moonless. Under the shadows of the trees in front of them, tents glowed—warm orange cones in the darkness. Figures passed them as they walked across the dry grass; touched caps awkwardly; muttered “Good-night, sir.”
Bromley made way towards a light that shone out like an eye from the open doorway of the first tent. Approaching, Peter saw, under it, a head in a khaki cap, bowed over an open book. The head lifted to the sound of their footsteps; the body underneath jerked itself to attention.
“Good-evening, sir,” said Company-Sergeant-Major Gladeney—a fierce little alert-eyed man with the waxed moustaches of the old-time non-com.
“Evening, Colour Sergeant,” Bromley acknowledged the salute. “May we come in?”
“With pleasure, sir.”
They stepped over the tent-fly; and were made welcome on two packing-cases.
“This is Mr. Jameson, one of our new officers, Colour Sergeant”—it must be explained that Bromley had not yet accustomed himself to the new title of “Company-Sergeant-Major”—“do you think you can find him a good servant?”
“I think so, sir. There’s a man here, name of Priestley, who was with us in South Africa. He ought to take a stripe but he won’t. . . .”
“Knows the game too well, I suppose,” suggested Bromley.
“That’s about the size of things, sir. He’s out now; but if your batman could look after Mr. Jameson for tonight, I’ll send him over first thing in the morning.”
“Very well, Colour Sergeant. How are the boys?”
“All right, sir. They’re shaking down pretty well.” He relaxed a little, put a match to his pipe. “Wonderful thing to me, sir, how they put up with things. Those boots you bought in Brighton were a God-send, sir. They may be able to march now. Before, half of them couldn’t do more than hobble. And tomorrow we’ll be serving out the new uniforms.”
“What, khaki?” interrupted Peter.
“No, sir. Workhouse stuff, sir—at least that’s what they look like to me. Blue slops and forage-caps for the most part. And a few of our old militia uniforms.”
“Not the old scarlet-runners.” This from Bromley.
“The identical, sir, with the old white facings. Don’t know what they’ll look like when we get ’em dressed up, sir. But it’ll be better than their civvies anyway.” He patted his own be-ribboned khaki tunic, pulled hard at his pipe.
“Any need for me to go round the lines, Colour Sergeant?”
“I don’t think so, sir. Mr. Fanshawe is Orderly Officer tonight.”
Bromley got up; said “Thank you, Colour Sergeant. I think that will be all then”; acknowledged Gladeney’s salute, and stepped back into the darkness. Peter followed.
Walking back, Bromley linked arms; said, “Look here, old chap, you’d better come into my tent tonight. I’m a quiet old stick—but you’ll find the kids a bit trying.”
So began a real friendship.
Began too, for Peter Jameson, a new life—the life which every untrained gentleman of the Empire who could spoof a recruiting doctor into passing him young enough or fit enough for service, was then living. A life neither of comfort nor—as many wrote and made much money by their writing—of good humour. A life of adults gone back to the irritation of school: save that for school-house they had sodden camps; for dining-hall, a draughty tent where fleecing contractors served half-cold meals; for schoolmasters, the incompetence of brave fellows wrongly employed.
But neither Peter nor Bromley concerned themselves over much, in those first weeks, with generalities. They realized, none better, that all was not well with the “Voluntary System,” with the Chalkshires; that Locksley-Jones’ influence with their Colonel continued to grow, that his pernicious example had already affected the junior officers. They realized—and went on with their work. For them, as for Fanshawe and Bareton in “C” Company, nothing save their men existed. And for every minute they lavished on their men, their men repaid them a hundredfold.
Thosemen! For, of the officers, one does not write. The well-educated, the well-off, the comfortable classes, must needs defend the country from which they draw their riches and their education: and he who did not do so—voluntarily, without compulsion or fear of compulsion—whatever his fancied responsibilities to his profession, to his businesses, to his housen, to his women or his children, is surely anathema maran atha, the moral leper, the pariah among his kind.
But thosemen! men of the People: uneducated, unwashed, foul-mouthed, drinkers and womanizers if you will; the “proletariat,” product of shop and Board School, of mill and mine, of farm and factory; thosemenwho came voluntarily from all the earth, waving no flags, moved only by that dumb blind Anglo-Saxon spirit which has made and unmade Kings since the beginning of time! how shall one write of these?
They had, in those early days, neither leaders nor equipment. They trained, grotesquely, with blocks of rough wood—hewn to the semblance of a rifle. They were herded fourteen, sixteen and twenty together, in leaking tents, with never a floor-board between their one blanket and the mud below. They were flung out into our towns in suits of sloppy blue, in overcoats cobbled together by sweated aliens—a mockery on the public streets. They had scarcely any leave. Their wives and children starved because their separation-allowances were not paid. Their own food was cooked, weather permitting, in shallow trenches on the bare ground—with civilian houses fifty yards away.
And when the sodden camps chosen for them stood two feet deep in greasy slime, when neither their single blankets nor their single suits could be dried, when the fires would not burn and the sick-parade marched double-company-strong to the doctor’s tent half-a-mile away—then, they werevaccinated, willy-nilly, and left to cure their swollen arms as best they might, jostling against each other in their crowded styes!
Till gradually that first fine enthusiasm, which made them trainable even by the untrained, oozed from their souls—even as the mud oozed up through the ground on which they slept: till all the keenness, and all the joy, and all the glory of the finest profession in the world evaporated; leaving nothing save the dour stark spirit of Anglo-Saxondom to carry them on.
And as, in mud and muddle and incompetence, these early volunteers began their soldiering; so, in blood and incompetence and disaster, most of them ended it. Yet though they grumbled, they never weakened; though the song died on their lips and the jest from their eyes, neither their hearts nor their limbs flinched from the tasks appointed.
Let library-historians give the palm to this Field-Marshal or that Statesman if they will, we who did our best for him know that it was the “common man,” “poor bloody Tommy”—on his lorry or his ration-cart, at his telephone-station or his observation-post, in his trench or his gun-pit—“poor bloody Tommy,” hungry sometimes, tired mostly, frightened to the depths of his unimaginative soul, butenduring always, who staved off every British defeat and won every British victory all the way back from Mons to Compiègne and all the way forward from Compiègne back to Mons again.
Pray God that he find honest leaders—for leaders he must have—in this future he has won for us!
PART SEVENALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
“Take it from me, P.J.,” said Bromley, as he dumped himself down on the untidy camp-bedstead and began re-winding his puttees, “this is a damn good battalion—to get out of.”
It had rained during the night, making early parade impossible, postponing the morning’s route-march for an hour so as to enable the men to get some breakfast.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that, old man. The Company’s getting on all right,” said Peter, picking up the letters which Private Priestley had deposited—according to custom—on his canvas pillow.
“I wasn’t talking about the Company. Nothing wrong there. Considering the circumstances, the way they’ve come on is a miracle. I was talking about the Battalion in general, its Adjutant in particular. You see this isn’t a new game to me, P.J. I’ve seen bad fellows ruin the finest shows before now.”
“Why can’t you leave Locksley-Jones alone? He’s not doing us any harm. Besides the Colonel’s all right—although he did tell me at last night’s lecture that ‘the machine-gun is not a weapon of precision.’ ”
“He wouldn’t say that if he’d been shot in the stomach by one, like I was,” commented Bromley. “Not that he’s a bad chap, all the same. But he leaves too much to Locksley. Locksley’s playing for his own hand all the time. I don’t mind his rooking the youngsters at Bridge, or running them over to Brighton in his car every night. If they’re fools enough to go with him, that’s their hunt. But when it comes to his interfering with Company Commanders in their recommendations for promotion. . . .”
“But he hasn’t done that, surely?”
“Yes, he has. I didn’t mean to tell you, but the Major put both of us in for our second star”—(the Major had actually put Bromley’s name down for a Captaincy and Bromley knew it)—“and Locksley blocked it with the Colonel.”
“Well, I don’t care about promotion anyway,” said Peter, starting to open his letters.
“Don’t be a fool, P.J. Everybody who’s any good wants to goup. And can’t you follow what Locksley’s game is?Ican. He’s keeping the Captaincies for his pals. Especially these new blighters who keep on coming down to see him in mufti. You mark my words, they’ll all be turning up as officers in a week or two. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the men and the old Major, I’d apply for a transfer tomorrow.”
Such conversations were not unusual between them. Locksley-Jones, confirmed in his Adjutancy, was all (and more) than Bromley had hinted. But for the moment Peter had forgotten the Chalkshires.
He was reading, very carefully, a long letter written by his brother Arthur—a letter from Java, which had been two months under way. Arthur put his case very clearly. The tobacco-farm, newly established, carried a mortgage of £2000. Arthur’s capital had gone in farm-implements, in seedlings, in the cheese-cloth with which he was experimenting. He couldn’t realize, owing to the drop in land values. The mortgage-money had been lent by a Hun trading-house. Under the Dutch laws, they could prevent his leaving the country. “I can’t even get to Singapore, unless you’ll lend me the money,” wrote Arthur. “I’ve asked them to foreclose, but they won’t. The interest is 8% and they say I can make it for them as long as I stop here. Damn them!”
Peter knew enough about the tobacco-farming industry to realize that the “mortgage” Arthur spoke of must include a lien on the growing crop; enough about Hun methods of peaceful penetration to understand the seriousness of the position: decided, after railing inwardly at the untimeliness of the demand, that he would have to find the cash somehow.
“Fall in, ‘C’ Company,” boomed Sergeant-Major Gladeney’s voice. Peter shuffled the remainder of his correspondence into his tunic-pocket; pulled on his cap and gloves; switched stick under arm; and stalked out.
“Something’s upset P.J.,” thought Bromley, following at leisure.
In those early days of “Kitchener’s Army” week-end leave for officers was more of a habit than a privilege; and though Locksley-Jones demurred slightly at the irregularity, Friday evening found Peter, haversack at side, waiting for the 4:30 upon the bleak, dirty station of Shoreham-on-Sea.
The human animal is amazingly adaptable, amazingly restricted. Peter had been scarcely four weeks a soldier; but all the way up to town the old life seemed almost a thing of the past. Only arrival at Victoria, bright under its arc-lamps against the darkness outside, brought it back.
His mind, now concentrated on the question of whether to borrow the two thousand from his own bank or overdraw it from Jameson’s, did not allow of careless merrymaking. So that Patricia, although he fell in readily enough with her suggestion of two stalls at the Palace Vaudeville, found him curiously unaltered. He kissed her, but no more warmly than if he had just returned from a business-trip. She had expected nothing else: nevertheless she felt unreasonably disappointed. Physically, fresh air and exercise had tanned his cheeks, hardened his muscles: mentally, she could detect no change. And as they sat in the theatre, she could not but envy the obvious good spirits, the excited affection of the other couples about them.
He told her about Arthur; talked of “B” Company; answered questions about his new life readily. Nirvana, she heard, went as well as could be expected; Jameson’s sales had been rather disappointing. It was nice of her to offer to drive him back on Sunday in the car; but he thought the journey home, in the dark and without a chauffeur, might be too much for her.
Simpson too, asked by wire to be in the office on Saturday, could not see much difference in our Mr. Jameson. His grip of things did not seem to have suffered. He enquired about customers by name; about Hartopp (geborenerHagenburg) in particular. He mentioned the partnership deed; suggested a tentative renewal—say for two years or the “duration”—on the old terms. The older man, warning him vaguely about taking two thousand pounds out of the business at such a time, met with a curt, “I don’t like it any more than you do, but a fellow must stand by his own.” Mention of Beckmanns evoked another flash of temper.
Bramson, on the other hand, summoned peremptorily to give up the better part of his Saturday afternoon off, found Peter rather overbearing: confided the fact to his cousin Marcus with whom he dined that evening.
Said Marcus, “My boy, you forget that you’re a civilian to him now.”
Whereafter, the two settled down to piquet—with occasional references to the stationary condition of Nirvana trade as compared with the leaping canteen business of “Pullman Virginias.”
“Pretty” Bramson was perfectly straight: but after all “a fellow must stand by his own!”
In the crowded Pullman car of the last Sunday night train back to Shoreham, Peter fell in with his Colonel. The diffident, kindly man—usually shy with his subalterns—offered a whisky-and-soda; grew a little talkative.
“I wish I were out in France,” he confided. “I’d rather be a Major out there than a Colonel in England any day. But the powers-that-be won’t hear of it. It looks like a long war, Jameson—a really long war. But of course it might end tomorrow—and then one would never have had one’s chance.”
“Do you think we shall be going out soon, sir?” Peter asked the stock-question from pure habit.
Colonel Andrews began to talk the other side of war, the difficulties of finding seasoned wood for rifle-stocks, the lack of dyes for khaki. His outlook, if limited, was—except on the question of machine-guns—extraordinarily sound: and Peter, when their homeward way separated in the rain at the cross-roads by the cycle-shop, found difficulty in realizing how so decent a chap could have let himself be misled into taking Locksley-Jones for Adjutant. . . .
Turning into the Camp, Peter could see immediately that something must be wrong. Although it was nearly one o’clock in the morning, lights glowed in most of the officers’ tents. Across the blurr and rain drizzle of the parade-ground, under the acetylene flares by the latrine-buckets, figures moved, lanterns swayed. He heard voices calling.
“What’s up?” he asked the sentry.
“Trouble over in the lines, I’m afraid, sir. They do say as ’ow ‘D’ Company’s flooded out altogether.”
Peter stumbled across the darkness towards his own lines; nearly collided with a dripping figure in gum-boots. A torch flashed in his face.
“That you, P.J.?” said Bromley’s voice. “Been out on the tiles, and come to have a look round at the picnic?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing much. Only most of the Camp flooded; about twenty tents blown down; and half the men soaked to the skin. ‘A’ and ‘D’ have got it worst. Hark at Mosely’s voice.”
They heard it, raised like a foghorn above the din: “Now, then, you chaps, form up, will you? Never mind your blasted blankets.”
“Come and have a look-see. It’s worth while. Reminds me of a stampede in South Africa.” Peter had never known Bromley speak so crisply.
They pashed back to the lines; found confusion indescribable. Mosely had by now got his company into some sort of order; they stood there, dripping and shivering, faces white under the big flare, unlaced boots flopping as they stamped on the lime-washed slime: but Simcox’s lines looked as if a tornado had struck them. Tents lay in writhing coils; from under them, men crawled, mud-soaked and cursing; the stockbroker, in gum-boots and pyjamas, a “British Warm” coat to complete the costume, alternately damned their eyes and adjured them to “buck up”; his subalterns scuttered about, still half asleep, laughing and quite useless. “C” were already away, making for the railway-station. Peter heard Bareton’s high voice shepherding them, “Don’t straggle there. Keep together,” and a man in the rear four grousing, “Bloomin’ fine weather for ducks. . . .”
“But what’s happened tous?” he asked Bromley—for “B” Company’s tents stood dark and deserted.
Bromley chuckled: “Oh, they don’t catchmethat way, P.J.Ourmen are all tucked up comfy round a big stove in the Schoolhouse.Isaw this coming at about half-past eight: so I sent Gladeney to find a good billet; routed the chaps out; posted a sentry to tell the leave-men where to make for. . . . Andweslacked our tent-ropes when the rain started.”
“Why didn’t you warn the others?”
“I did; but they wouldn’t listen. I’m a quiet old stick, I am.” He chuckled again, with all the “old soldier’s” delight at having scored off his colleagues.
Far away, on the high road, they heard the roar of a car; saw the glare of a single headlight; watched it nosing for the Camp gates.
“That’s our friend the Adjutant,” commented Bromley, “back from one of his little jaunts to Brighton.”
The engine stopped; the headlight was cut off. A minute or two later, Locksley-Jones’ bow-legged figure came waddling towards them. Bromley flashed the torch in his face; and they saw his puffy eyes flinch as the light struck them.
“Who are you?” he called.
“Friend.” Bromley, a little above his usual grave self, had gone clean back to South African days. The amenities of home service were, for the moment, completely in eclipse.
“Oh, it’s you, Bromley, is it? What’s all this skylarking?” blustered Locksley.
The situation was curtly explained to him; and he turned for advice—as weak men will in a crisis—to the stronger character.
“What do you think I ought to do?”
“Do!” said Bromley contemptuously. “Do?Well, if I were you, I should go to bed. This is aman’sjob.”
“He’ll never forgive you for that,” said Peter, snuggling gratefully between his Jaeger blankets.
“My part!” chuckled Bromley across the darkness of the tent.
PART EIGHTDISSENSION
A man and his wife can occasionally (if they are very circumspect) conceal matrimonial disturbances from their servants: but, in a Regiment, the slightest tension between officers is known to the lower ranks almost at the moment of its occurrence. Mess-waiters gossip; batmen gossip; the Sergeant’s Mess gossips: between a parade and a parade, twelve hundred men are taking sides in the quarrel of two. And the Chalkshires were no ordinary peace-time regiment: volunteers to a man; of different social gradings but almost every one a Londoner; intensely curious about their new profession; it did not take them long to discover—“B” Company especially—how matters stood between 2nd Lieutenant Harold Bromley and Captain and Adjutant Locksley-Jones.
By the time that the late-November rains (and various hints in the Press about “the scandalous state of some of our Camps”) drove the Chalkshires out of the Shoreham slime into billets at Worthing Green, a suburb of Worthing-on-Sea, bets were being freely laid (in beer) on the result.
“Bet any of you,” said Private Longstaffe, who had been a bookmaker’s clerk before he joined, “that old Bromley downs the blighter before we’re a month older.” He looked furtively round the snuggery of the “Dog and Bun.”
“Well, per’aps he will; and per’aps he won’t,” said Peter’s batman Priestley—an old soldier with curling moustaches and a roving eye. “Anyway, I ’ope ‘P.J.’ won’t go if Bromley has to.”
“P.J.’s orlright.” The verdict came from a little man in the corner. “ ’E’s orlright: though ’e does damn and swear like ’ell. My sister, she works for ’im up in the Brixton Road. ‘ ’Addick,’ ’e says to me the other dai—you know the wai ’e ’as of cockin’ ’is cigar up in the corner of his mouf,—‘ ’Addick,’ ’e says, ‘ ’aven’t I told you a ’undred bloodstained times not to crorss your bloodstained bootlices?’ ‘You certainly ’ave, sir,’ I says. ‘Then why the ’ell,’ says ’e, ‘don’t you do what you’re told?’ ’Ee don’t know I know ’e’s got a factory. . . .” This secret knowledge seemed to give Private Haddock a peculiar satisfaction.
Conversation meandered on.
Meanwhile, Peter and Bromley—ignoring though quite conscious of Locksley’s growing animosity—went on with their jobs.
The two friends billeted at a low white cottage in the village street, about a hundred yards from the Mess—now established in two parlours and a long, bare dining-room at “The Feathers.” Bromley’s prophecy about Locksley bringing in his own pals was already coming true; they arrived almost daily, and the War Office added aspirants of its own. By the first week in December, officers numbered fifty.
Inevitably, cliques formed. The tiny differences of English “caste” (imperceptible to a foreigner) drew these together, separated those. Still, with few exceptions, all were keen. Without Locksley, Andrews might have driven them comfortably; made his selection at leisure; jettisoning the less trained when the Battalion proceeded overseas. But Locksley-Jones, an intriguer by instinct rather than design, shrewd without character, self-seeker and not patriot, made harmony impossible. One by one, he succeeded in securing the promotion of his favourites, posting them over the heads of men like Fanshawe and Bareton; who grumbled but carried on—loyal to their men at all personal costs.
So far, however, Major Fox-Goodwin had prevented any such interference with “B” Company. But the average Englishman’s distaste for trouble prevented him from forcing-through Bromley’s promotion to Captain.
Peter, who, unlike Bromley, had not quarrelled openly with Locksley, and whose experience of bossing men did not include being bossed himself, failed to realize the exact position. During the day, work occupied him: through the long evenings when they sat together in the lamp-lit study, his mind was busy with other problems.
He discovered himself, for the first time in his life, missing Patricia—not the woman Patricia, but the pal Patricia: looking forward eagerly to her letters. Murray had enlisted—she wrote. She herself was busy; had taken up volunteer war-work; driving soldiers-on-leave across London in the car. But she accepted his suggestion that they should spend Christmas together at the Royal York.
But Patricia was not the main problem. Deliberately, Peter had postponed decision on the Nirvana gamble till the completion of the year’s trading. But instinct already warned him of the worst. Reid’s dissected statistics revealed, all too clearly, a serious decline in the export-business. Home-trade held stationary—but could hardly remain so on their limited advertising. Bramson’s letters had lost “snap”: he deplored, without suggesting remedies, the increase of competition—especially from his cousin’s travellers. “The Pullman business is going ahead. They’re not cutting downtheiradvertisements,” was the burden of his cry: a cry which did not deceive our Mr. Jameson.
Peter realized perfectly, had done for some time, the danger of employing a competitor’s relative. On the other hand, if it became vital to sell out, that very danger might be turned to advantage. Marcus Bramson would not let his cousin lose a good job (“andthe best part of a thousand pounds,” argued Peter) if there were a chance of acquiring Nirvana as a going concern.
But the ease with which, he felt, he could dispose of the business was poor consolation at best. Although decision had been reached, and reached irrevocably, before joining the Army, Peter could not contemplate without emotion the cold fact of giving up his factory.
The thing had meant so much to him; meant much still. If only he could save it! But Arthur’s two thousand precluded drawing another penny of capital from Jamesons: and, though it was not impossible to secure money in other ways—on his assurances for instance—the gamble would be too dangerous. . . .
To Peter, considering these points over the wreckage of tea, and Bromley, plunged as usual in a book, entered—on an afternoon early in December—Jack Bareton of “C” Company; said, “Hallo, you chaps. Just thought I’d look you up,” and dropped onto the horse-hair sofa in the corner of the tiny sitting-room.
“Don’t see you round often,” commented Bromley. He pushed the cigarettes across the table, and added: “What’s the matter?”
“Locksley.” The newcomer’s voice was curt; but his eyes, the eyes of a fanatic, blazed. “Locksley, blast his dirty soul.”
“Oh, chuck it,” said Peter, “I’m sick of Locksley.”
“So am I; so’s Fanshawe; so’s every decent chap in this show. If you two came into Mess a bit more often you’d know. But he’s gone too far this time.” The tone became shrill. “Too damn far altogether; and I’m going to have him out of this battalion or go myself. The man’s a blasted traitor. A traitor, I tell you.”
“Easy on, Bareton,” Bromley spoke very calmly. “You can’t make accusations like that about him.”
“I can. And I do. He said just now, over tea, right in front of everybody, that we should lose this war.”
“We probably shall,” put in Peter.
“It depends how these things are said. Hemeantit, I tell you. Hemeantit. And damn it, oh,damnit”—there were tears in the man’s eyes—“my governor was killed yesterday! Killed, I tell you. At Ypres. And all these bastards here can do is to talk about their bloody promotions. . . .”
Bromley got up; put his hand on Bareton’s shoulder. “I’m awfully sorry, old chap,” he said gruffly, “but your governor wouldn’t want you to lose your head, you know.”
The man pulled himself together with a huge effort; took a cigarette; puffed at it in silence. Came a knock on the door, and Fanshawe, tall, beetle-browed, obviously on the trail of his friend.
“Hallo, Fan,” said Peter.
“Hallo, P.J.” Then to Bareton, “Oh, here you are, are you? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Come down town and have a drink.”
“I’m going to see the Colonel first,” said Bareton stubbornly.
“No, you’re not. You’re coming to the Club with me.” Fanshawe walked over, pulled his friend to his feet. “Come on, you old ass,” he said kindly. . . .
They went out.
“Poor devil,” said Peter, “he must have bolted straight here from Mess. . . .”
“And Fanshawe followed him.”
Both men, though neither would have admitted the fact to the other, were on edge.
“Fanshawe was right not to leave him alone,” went on Bromley. “You never know what a chap will do when he gets into that sort of state. Thank goodness, I’m a quiet old stick, I am.”
He shook his big frame; tugged at his moustache; sat down again. Peter lit a cigar. But neither Peter’s smoke nor Bromley’s book could keep Bareton out of their minds. He seemed to be still on the sofa, blazing tears in blazing eyes.
“Let’s call up a taxi and go into Brighton,” said Peter suddenly. “I can’t stick this room any more tonight.”
Bromley looked up from “The Newcomes”—“We’ll share it, then.”
“No, we won’t. My taxi and my dinner. Go and get your slacks on. I’ll run out and telephone for the car.”
The Hotel Metropole at Brighton is a monstrous edifice of red-brick and iron balconies, which leers stolidly across an asphalt “Front” to the sea. The stone steps of its entrance, occupied of a morning by fat couples in wicker chairs, lead under a glass-roofed portico, through a revolving door past the mahogany “Reception Offices” to a narrow hall—fire-placed and crowded with comfortable Maplesque upholstery. Beyond, are marble corridors, lifts, and a dark lounge which opens out into a vast conservatory of glass-and-iron work, wherein the band plays and love-birds (some caged, some in coats and skirts) twitter behind dusty palm-trees.
In front of the fire-place in the hall, cocktail in hand, looking down on his wife’s blond head, stood “Weasel” Stark of the Gunners.
His nickname fitted the dapper fresh-complexioned little soldier well. He had reddish hair, inclined to curl: eyes of clear cold blue: flat auburn moustache over firm lips. The tight long-skirted tunic, beltless for dinner, fitted like a skin over the muscled shoulders, the in-curved back: his slacks fell straightly creased to shining brown shoes. His hands—clean capable hands—showed a hint of freckling, the suspicion of auburn fluff. The domed forehead betrayed intelligence. A brand-new D.S.O. ribbon completes the picture.
Alice Stark (once, as Alice Sewell, the object of Jack Baynet’s none-too-stable affections) was a comfortable little person, brown-eyed, a little rabbity about the mouth. Her low dress, blue and girlish, revealed excellent shoulders, firm arms and slim hands.
The pair had been married six months: three of which the husband had spent on active service. A wound in the foot, now almost healed, had re-united them.
“Almost time for dinner, I think,” said the Colonel, putting his empty glass on the mantelshelf behind him.
“Yes, dear.” Alice looked up; saw, pushing squirrel-wise through the revolving door, a familiar figure.
The figure came towards her, and she recognized—after a minute’s hesitation at the disguise of khaki—our Mr. Jameson.
Bromley, following leisurely, heard her say, “Is it really you, Peter?” and then, “This is Douglas.”
“How do you do, sir,” Peter shook hands, introduced his friend.
“Cocktails, I think,” remarked the Weasel.
“Who is he?” he asked his wife, while the two were depositing hats and coats in the cloak-room opposite.
“Peter Jameson. He married a great friend of mine,” she whispered.
“Better invite ’em both to dinner.”
Alice nodded: and the invitation was accepted over the cocktail glasses. They passed through the glass door into the dining-room—Bromley, always shy with strangers, last—and were escorted through the crowd to an empty table.
Said the Colonel, handling the wine-list, “We can manage a Magnum, I think.”
They settled down to hors d’œuvres and gossip.
“Are you on leave, sir?” Bromley ventured his first remark.
“Leave? No such luck. I’m commanding one of these Kitchener Brigades.” He gave the number. “Southdown Division, I believe they call it.”
“Then we are going to have some Artillery,” put in Peter. “I was told at the War Office, when I applied for my commission that there wasn’t going to be any Artillery with the new Armies.”
“Who told you that fairy-tale?” said Stark.
“A Colonel Thompson.”
“Oh, Cocky Thompson. Just like him. Pulling your leg, of course. So you joined the Infanteers, thinking the war would be done before you could get your kit. And you”—he turned to Bromley—“you’re a Cavalryman if ever I saw one!”
Bromley explained himself: the Colonel, who never put questions without a reason, following sharply.
“Like the Chalkshires?” he queried suddenly: and gathered, from the tone of the answer, all he wanted to know. The Weasel, in addition to having one of the best heads for strong liquor in the Gunners, was no mean judge of a man. Also, the “fourth Southdown Brigade” of the R.F.A.[2]needed officers badly. He let his wife change the conversation.
“And how does Pat like you’re being a soldier?” she said to Peter. “Fancy her being only a subaltern’s ‘poor thing,’ and me a ‘Colonel’s lady’! Does she come down here often?”
“She’s coming down for Christmas.”
Bromley and the Weasel began to talk horse; the dinner went on. . . .
“And Francis?” asked Alice. “What is our Francis Gordon doing for his country?”
Bromley broke off from a discussion on “Birdcatcher blood,” said “That isn’ttheFrancis Gordon, is it? The chap who wrote ‘The Nut Errant’?”
“Extraordinary,” thought Peter, having explained the relationship, “how many peopledoknow that weird cousin of mine.” And he wondered, for the fiftieth time, what could have happened to Francis. But of Mr. “Raymond P. Sellers” and the Amsterdam trip, he said nothing. . . .
Dinner over, they settled themselves with coffee, liqueurs and cigars, before the fire in the hall. The band was playing in the Winter Garden, the hall almost deserted.
Stark, whom two cocktails, the best part of a bottle of fizz and three liqueur brandies had left quite unmoved, began a tactful catechism. He wanted to know the number of subalterns in the Chalkshires; what chance they had of promotion: who their Colonel was; and how they got on with him: if Peter knew anything about horses; and why he had given up fox-hunting. Having assured himself on these points, he threw his cigar into the grate, and asked suddenly:
“I suppose neither of you two would care for a change?”
Bromley said, “I don’t quite understand?” Peter, who had followed the drift of the conversation almost from the first, did not speak.
“Well, quiteentre nous,” began Stark, “I’m eight officers short of my twenty-four. I’ve written to Dawson at the W.O. and he says”—drawing a letter from his tunic-pocket—“ ‘Why not hunt about among the Infanteers? They’re hundreds over establishment in your Division.’ . . . So I thought perhaps. . . .”
There fell a short silence: then Peter said: “It’s the men I’m thinking about;” and Bromley: “I shouldn’t care to leave the old Major.”
“Well, take your time about it. There’s no hurry. We’ve only got fifty horses out of our seven hundred so far.” The Weasel pulled down his tunic; rang the bell; ordered three whiskies and sodas, a lemonade.
Shortly afterwards, with a “See you two again, I hope,” from the Colonel, and a “Yes. Do come in and dine with us, won’t you?” from his wife, the couple stepped across to the lift, shot upwards out of sight.
“Another drink?” asked Peter, lighting a cigar.
“Not much.” Bromley, a little flushed about the gills, tapped a cigarette on the back of his case. “That Colonel friend of yours must have a head like a balk of teak.”
They settled themselves comfortably in front of the fire. It lacked five minutes to half-past ten. Thought Bromley: “P.J. doesn’t realize how near we are to a bust-up. If anything happened to the old Major, Locksley would soon put his foot onus.” Thought Peter: “If ‘B’ Company weren’t so jolly good: and if we hadn’t made it ourselves: there might be something in a transfer.” But the evening had yet to provide its finale.
“Hallo, P.J.” interrupted a voice.
Peter looked up; saw the bow legs, the unpleasant features of Locksley-Jones. The fellow came over to the fire; stood with his back to it; said—taking no notice of Bromley—“Care for a drink, P.J.?”
“Thanks. No.”
“Devilish pretty woman you were talking to just now. Wish you’d introduce me, some time. . . .” Peter did not answer: he thought, suddenly, of the tears in Bareton’s eyes.
“By the way,” went on Locksley, taking no notice of the snub, “have you chaps got a taxi? My car’s broken down. The magneto’s gone wrong, I believe. If you have, I’d like a lift. . . .”
Bromley never moved.
“I’m sorry,” said Peter, very politely, “but our taxi only holdstwo. However”—he glanced at his wrist-watch—“You’re in nice time for the last train.”
“That’s put the lid on it,” remarked Bromley in the darkness of the jolting car: and, just before they went to sleep, “Mark my words, there’ll be some trouble in this ruddy Battalion.”
There was!