PART TWENTY-NINETHE LIFTING OF SHADOWS
It is no use pretending that Patricia was not ashamed of herself. She was—desperately so. She felt she had been guilty of immodesty, that she had forfeited her husband’s respect. Even when she realized that Peter’s damaged memory retained few details of their night except his promise to consult her father about his “nerves,” shame haunted her. Constantly, she expected him to remember, to judge, to condemn. . . . Yet actually, she had saved him!
For Peter’s “case” was, in the terms of psycho-pathology (which is the science of soul-illnesses), one of “repressed complexes”: in simpler language, of bottling-up his emotions. At their first interview, Heron Baynet put the matter to him very simply. Heron Baynet said:—
“You have been twice wounded. One wound is in your arm; the other in your mind. The flesh wound, you let us cure: you understood that it needed antiseptics, drainage, bandages, rest. The wound in your mind, you concealed from us; and it has festered. Now, tell me what you are most afraid of?”
“Consumption,” admitted Peter.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve got it.”
“Who put that idea into your head?”
Peter told his father-in-law about the gas-attack at Neuve Église, about his cough, about Rolleston. Heron Baynet laughed.
“We’ll soon settle that. Tubercle’s a bacillus. I’ll test you for it. Now then, what else are you afraid of?”
Peter hesitated.
“Shall I tell you a few things?” went on the doctor. “You’re afraid of going out by yourself. You’re afraid of noise. You’re afraid of time.”
“How do you know?” asked Peter wonderingly.
“My dear boy, how doyouknow things? By learning them, don’t you? You were trained in business, you were trained in soldiering. You studied them. Well, I’ve studied the mind. . . .”
“But damn it,” said Peter, “one oughtn’t to be afraid of anything. At least, one oughtn’t to admit it?”
“Oughtn’t”—the doctor smiled. “There’s no ‘oughtn’t’ in the mind. ‘Oughtn’t’ is half your trouble. You’ve corked-up all these fears with your ‘oughtn’ts’ until they’ve become obsessions.”
“Well, anyway I’m a coward,” said Peter stubbornly. “You can’t get over that, however much you argue about it.”
“Of course you are,” countered his father-in-law blandly, “of course you’re a coward. So are nine-hundred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have tried to control this wound in your mind. You were afraid to tell anybody about it, weren’t you?”
“I suppose I was.”
“Why?”
“Cowardice, I suppose. According to your theory.”
“Exactly. Don’t you see, Peter, that cowardice and bravery are ridiculous terms?”
“No, I don’t,” snapped Peter. “A man either does his job, or he funks it. If he funks it, he’s a coward.”
“You mean, if he funks it and doesn’t do it. Supposing he funks it, and does it all the same.”
“Then,” admitted Peter, “he’s not a coward.”
“Good. Now, let me tell you something. That power which drives the man to do a thing he funks, is not bravery but the will-to-be-brave. Your will-to-be-brave is damaged; you’ve overstrained it. If you go on overstraining it, you’ll lose it altogether. Give it a rest. Do you understand me? Give it a rest. All these repressions you’ve been so proud of—don’t interrupt, youhavebeen proud of them, subconsciously proud—all these repressions are wrong. You’ve bound the wound up tight instead of allowing it to drain. You’ve been sitting on you’re mental safety-valves. If you want to jump when you hear a noise, for God’s sake jump. It’s much better for you than the effort to control yourself. If you’re afraid of open spaces, avoid ’em—don’t go through them with a loaded gun and pretend you’re trying to shoot rabbits. . . .”
Peter blushed scarlet; and the lesson went on. One by one, Heron Baynet detailed the Fears—Fear of Open Spaces, Fear of Closed Spaces, Fear of Time, Fear of Money, Fear of Pain and Fear of Death. To his listening son-in-law, the catalogue seemed inexhaustible.
“Is everybody afraid of something?” asked the patient at last.
“Everybody with any sense,” was the answer. “Fear is the beginning of knowledge.”
“Then what areyouafraid of?”
“I!” Heron Baynet’s quiet eyes held Peter’s for a full second. “I’m afraid of not knowing enough.”
. . . “Afraid of not knowing enough!” The phrase lingered in Peter’s mind—as Heron Baynet had intended it should linger: and with it, came back a scrap of Greek wisdom, γνωθι σεαυτον [Greek: gnôthi seauton] (“Know thyself”). For the first time in his life, Peter began tothink.
Hitherto, he had lived automatically; actions had contented him. Now, he started in to reason about his actions. Why had he done thus? Why had he done so? What was the driving-force behind his actions? Why had that driving-force suddenly run down?
The process—study of “cause” as opposed to study of “effect”—fascinated a mind hitherto devoid of introspection; so that by the time he went up to town for his second “lesson,” the following question formulated itself:
“What,” asked Peter Jameson, “is the real cause of this neurasthenia? Is it a mental trouble or a physical one? I’ve had the devil’s own time since I saw you last. I’m as nervy as fourteen cats. My hands wobble all over the place. I don’t seem able to control my memory. I’ve had three nightmares in four nights; and woken up screaming my guts out. What’s wrong—my mind or my body?”
“Can you separate ’em?” said Heron Baynet. “You’re not God. Nor am I. I’m only a doctor: but I don’t know more about both your body and your mind than you do. Now listen. . . .”
So, twice weekly, the educative process went on. And gradually, with the coming of knowledge, fear abated.
But Patricia’s fears did not abate. To her, the days were terror; the nights, agony. The very love she bore her husband became a scourge.
For Patricia was not interested in “cases”: her interest lay in Peter the man. And Peter the man, as she saw him now, seemed utterly broken. She lived too close to his body, too far from his mind, to be aware of the gradual cure which was being wrought in him. She saw only the shaking hands, the glaring eyes of neurasthenia; heard only its high-pitched quavering voice, its outbursts of uncontrollable rage, its intolerable depressions. Night after night, Peter’s screams woke her from tormented sleep: day after day his temper fretted her almost to breaking point.
Yet, out of the very love which scourged her, Patricia fashioned healing for him. Calm, clear-eyed, infinitely tender, mastering herself to save him, she walked by his side through the cold shadows—understanding sometimes, pitying always, but faltering never, learning with each painful step Love’s ultimate lesson, the lesson of self-sacrifice.
And always, as she walked beside him, the petty responsibilities of home-keeping—responsibilities she had never known in the sheltered days of their Kensington existence—fretted at her mind. (They are not “literature,” these responsibilities of home-keeping; they are neither dramatic, nor romantic: but, for the women of what we in England call the “middle-class,” they are “life”—the instant problem of existence, its thousand daily pettinesses which may not be postponed. Only the “middle-class” woman, the woman of moderate income who wants not a house but ahome, will understand how much these responsibilities added to Patricia’s burden!). . . .
One other burden, too, she carried on her willing shoulders through those dark days of January, 1917—the burden of her responsibility for Francis Gordon. Her brain was never quite free from the picture of the long writing-room, the fire in the grate, the dark bookshelves against the cream walls, and the big desk under the window—the desk—and the silver photograph-frame—and the menacing fully-cocked pistol.
“Melodrama!” she used to say to herself. “Melodrama! People don’t kill themselves for love nowadays—they only kill for hate.” But intuition warned her, every time she saw Francis, that he had determined on suicide. She told herself that such a man was not worth saving, that he was a weakling, a coward . . . but her mind never ceased to make excuses for him.
“Supposing,” she used to argue, “that I had lost Peter and the children—supposing that I were a cripple—supposing that I saw nothing ahead of me but a dragged-out, sexless existence, wouldn’t I think of Death kindly, look forward to it as a relief?” . . .
Again and again, she tackled him about his writing; again and again, he gave her the same answer, “It’s a futile game, Pat. Futile! Books are the most useless things in the world. The worst-educated agricultural labourer does more good with his hoe in ten minutes than I can do with my pen in a whole life-time.” “Then why not take a hoe?” Patricia used to say. “Some of us can’t!” answered Francis Gordon. “We’re built to be brain-workers—and brain-work doesn’t satisfy us. Besides. . . .”
Patricia knew too well the meaning of that “Besides,” of the downward glance at his left leg, at the distorted boot and the crutch-stick, which accompanied it. At such times, she was glad that she had written to “that girl.” Perhaps, “that girl” would understand. . . . But January passed; February opened with threats of unlimited submarine warfare; threat turned to actuality—and still no word arrived from Beatrice.
“Why should she answer?” thought Patricia. “Why should she come? It was a crazy letter to have written. Perfectly crazy!”
February nineteen-seventeen darkled the shadow which had lain so long across the world; but into those particular shadows which brooded over the life of Patricia Jameson it brought a little ray of light.
Peter began to get better—obviously, perceptibly better. Already, rest, freedom from constraint, and, above all, the “suggestions” with which Heron Baynet had been feeding his damaged mind, told their visible tale. There came periods—sometimes a bare ten minutes, sometimes an hour, and once a whole wonderful afternoon—when he seemed his normal self. There came nights when he slept beside her as a child sleeps—motionless, head pillowed on arm.
At first, she could hardly believe. The sudden changes from ill-tempered gloomy hypochondriac to ordinary human being bewildered her. It seemed to Patricia as though there were two Peters; and she never knew, leaving one Peter alone for a minute, whether she would find the other Peter in his place on her return.
As a matter of psychological fact, there were—at this period in the man’s career—not two Peters but at least five.
To begin with, there was Peter the neurasthenic—a huddled frightened soul who lived alone in its black caves of gloom, and still prayed with whining ingratiation for death. At this creature, the new soul of Peter Jameson—Heron Baynet’s creation—used to laugh. “You’re a fraud,” the new soul said to it, “an utter fraud. Call yourself a soul. Absurd! You’re physical. Do you understand? Purely physical. If my body hadn’t got that knock on the head you’d never have existed at all.” Then, there was the original soul of Peter which contented itself with the assertion that both its confrères were non-existent, phantoms of the imagination: also the soul of “P.J.,” sometime a Gunner in Kitchener’s Army, who cared for nothing in the world except the whereabouts and well-being of the Fourth Southdown Brigade (this soul was particularly active at post-time or when reading the newspapers); and lastly, there was the soul of Peter Jameson, worker by instinct, who had begun to want employment. This last Peter spent many profitless hours in the garden, watching Fry dawdle through his work, prowling about the stables, annoyed that they should be horseless, or slipping into the garage to inspect the dust-sheet-shrouded Crossley—and a few profitable ones with old man Tebbits and his son Harry, a blond giant of indomitable labour.
But the Peter of Patricia’s dreaming—Peter the lover—was still fast asleep!
Still, he grew better—obviously, perceptibly better: and for the moment that betterment satisfied his wife’s reason. The other Patricia, the unreasonable love-hungry Patricia, contented herself once more with the thought of palship. . . .
Towards the end of the month, a blizzard swept the Thames Valley, almost isolating them. Their regular callers—Parson Smithers, Doctor and Mrs. Wainwright, the Misses Rapson (who kept prize chows and were always trying to dispose of one: “a sweet doggie, Mrs. Jameson, and such breeding”), and the few other gregarious creatures whom neither Patricia’s stand-offishness nor Peter’s nerves had defeated—left them alone for a whole week.
Sunflowers, red roof snow-covered, looked like a house on a Christmas card. The road to Arlsfield was just passable; but the footpath to Glen Cottage lay three feet deep under crumbly drifts.
“I think I’ll go over and see Francis,” said Peter, one morning. “Poor old chap, he won’t be able to get out much in this.”
“Hadn’t you better wait till this afternoon?” Patricia looked at her husband across the breakfast-table. “Then we can go together.”
His eyes met hers steadily; there was a positive twinkle in them.
“I shan’t take the twelve-bore,” remarked our Mr. Jameson.
She postponed the children’s lesson-time a good half-hour—just for the pleasure of slipping out of the house after him, of concealing herself behind Tebbits’ snow-thatched rick to watch his stocky figure toiling downhill.
He came back in time for lunch, very out of breath but very delighted with his achievement; announced that, “Agoraphobia had been bloodily repulsed.”
“And how was Francis?” smiled Patricia, forgetting her usual “Language, Peter!” in excitement at this tangible proof of recovery.
“Francis!”—Peter hesitated a perceptible second. “To tell you the truth, Pat, I’ve been rather bothered about Francis. He’s brooding about something or other. His legs, I suppose.Haveyou noticed anything?”
“No,” lied Patricia. “I haven’t noticed anything.”
“May be only my imagination,” decided Peter. “But I don’t like the look of him somehow. He ought to consult that father of yours. However, he seemed better this morning. He’s got a new bee in his bonnet—America.”
“What about America?” Patricia pricked up her ears.
“Well, as far as I could make out, this submarine campaign—according to Francis—is going to bring America in. Once America comes in—also according to Francis—the war’s over; the English-speaking races are re-united; and we’re in for a hundred years of peace.”
“Oh, is that all?” said Patricia—who was thinking of Beatrice Cochrane.
“Yes, that’s all.”
Peter did not tell his wife that his “bother” about his cousin had not been allayed, but rather accentuated, by the phrase, “If I could just live to see that come off, old boy, I’d die a happy man,” with which Francis had closed the topic. . . .
March cleared the snow from the hills. Already, the leafless trees seemed hinting of springtime; already Patricia’s crocuses made an orange carpet under the walnut-tree. But Peter Jameson was not thinking of crocuses. As leave-time grew shorter, so thoughts turned more and more to the Brigade. Sandiland, now a Major, wrote a long gossipy letter. Could Peter get back to Beer Battery? Had Peter heard about the new Army Artillery Brigades, about six-gun batteries? Had Peter seen Lodden? Of course, the show wasn’t what it used to be—still, some of the old gang were carrying on. Conway would be glad of a sixth for poker. Charlie Henry had got his second pip. Merrilees sent his kind regards. Purves was home—Sandiland didn’t think he’d come out again. The “Brat” was acting Adjutant. Mr. Black had been given a commission. “And R.,” the letter concluded, “is playing up for a Brigadiership. He’ll get it too.”
The war had seemed a thousand miles from Sunflowers, but Sandiland’s blurred handwriting brought it back with a rush. Pictures—Heron Baynet had taught his son-in-law all about brain-pictures—formed themselves in Peter’s mind. He saw war again, the whole nauseating fascinating panorama of war. Did he want to go back to it? “Not much!” said our Mr. Jameson.
But would he go back? Would he have to go back? If he went back, would he be able to stick it? These questions perturbed Peter; and he began testing himself, overhauling the machinery of his mind. Deliberately, he conjured up the worst of his “out there” experiences; saw them clear-pictured at their limit of horror.
The process strained his new will-power very nearly to breaking-point. Twice,—after particularly terrible visions—he abandoned hope. The old reproach of “coward” formulated itself in his brain.
Then he began to make excuses for himself: “It was absurd to go back. Unpatriotic. Unfair to the men. His nerve might give out in a crisis. He might panic; make some ghastly mistake, involving not only his own honour but the lives of others.” . . . This last thought nauseated him; and finally he defeated it.
His physical condition, curiously enough, the man omitted to consider.
“I’ll go back,” said P.J., “be damned if I won’t go back. Self-respect demands it of me. What would happen to the country if everybody who had the slightest excuse stopped at home!”
He began to think about the country, not nebulously but as Something Definite. There were only two classes of people in any country—Citizens and Parasites. The Citizen livedforthe country; the Parasite lived on the country. In time of War, the able-bodied citizen had one clear duty—to fight. And he must fight to his last gasp. Any other argument was pure eye-wash.
Peter figured the problem out in his favourite rowing-terms. You had to pull your own weight in the boat. If you didn’t, you became a “passenger.” Racing-eights couldn’t afford “passengers.” And you had to “pull your own weight” from pistol-crack to winning-post. Otherwise,you—not the other seven oarsmen and the cox butyou, you yourself—lost the race; but you didn’t lose it for yourself, you lost it for the School.
He tried to get round this by arguing: “But we can’t all be in the Eight. The Eight is a picked body. Besides somebody has to make the boat, the oars: otherwise one couldn’t row at all.”
“Specious!” decided our Mr. Jameson, “very specious. But it doesn’t apply to me. I’m in the Eight—a picked man. I’m trained to row—not to make oars. This is my privilege. If I throw it away—if I refuse to row. . . .” And he thought of Pat’s brother-in-law, Sir Hubert Rawlings, tricked out in “colours” he had not earned, running along the tow-path, barking encouragement to the rowers.
“Swine,” said Peter—and this time he spoke aloud.
His mind was made up: he would finish the course.
. . . And the doctors laughed at him. They laughed very kindly; but all the same, they laughed.
Heron Baynet began the disillusionment when he signed the “opinion” demanded by the Medical Board.
“You haven’t got a dog’s chance,” said his father-in-law. “Not a dog’s chance. Look at yourself in the glass; and be reasonable. I’ll certify you cured of shell-shock if you insist. But what about your physical condition? You’ve lost three stone in weight: you admit you sweat at the slightest exertion: and your lungs wouldn’t pass a medical student if you made him three-parts tight before he tested ’em.”
“All the same,” said Peter, stubbornly, “I’m going to have a shot for it.”
Heron Baynet worded that opinion very carefully. Neither as doctor nor as father-in-law did he wish his patient to fall into the clutches of bureaucratic medicine. For although, after two years of agitation, the War Office had at last consented to admit the existence of neurasthenia, although neurasthenia was to have its own Medical Staff, its special “clinics” for treatment, its special recovery hospitals, so far, very little had been accomplished. Heron Baynet knew that there were at least thirty thousand cases to be treated—and recovery accommodation for about three thousand. The remainder . . . Heron Baynet did not like to think about the remainder: he had heard their screams too often, walked too many nights among the wards where they lay—each man’s distracted mind poisoning his neighbour’s. Therefore Heron Baynet did not write the word “neurasthenia” on the opinion he gave about his son-in-law: instead he wrote . . . “is still suffering, in my opinion, from slight debility.”
“Is that the best you can do?” asked Peter.
“Yes,” the doctor dried his crabbed handwriting with a vicious blow of the tortoise-shell blotting-pad, “and I’ve perjured my medical soul by writing the word ‘slight.’ ”
Two days later, as he waited his turn for examination in a long draughty corridor, Peter drew the opinion from his tunic-pocket; re-read it with great care—and tore the paper to shreds.
He might just as well have produced the document. Nothing he could say to the three over-kind men in khaki made the slightest difference. They entered up papers; they examined papers; they made him take off his tunic; they made him put it on again. Then with great politeness they turned him out of the room.
“Well?” asked the President, a white-haired gentleman with three medal-ribbons and gold-rimmed eye-glasses.
The two younger members of the Board looked at him doubtfully. “What do you think, sir?”
“Done in,” said the President laconically. . . .
They sent for Peter and put the position to him. “Go into a nursing-home—or resign your commission. Either way you’ll never be fit for active service again.”
Peter thought the matter over for fifteen seconds; then he said, “Very good, sir. I’ll chuck it.”
They entered up more papers; certified him for a temporary pension. They advised him to live in the country; and forgot to acknowledge his meticulous salute. “Next officer, please,” Peter heard behind him as his spur-chains clanked down the corridor.
Once in the open air, he found himself trembling all over. He let himself tremble. He could tremble till Kingdom Come if it amused him. Trembling passed. He lit a cigar; hailed a taxi.
“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.
Peter was conscious of three distinct impulses: to have a drink by himself, to stand somebody else a drink, and to be stood a drink by somebody.
“The Savoy Hotel,” said the man who had finished the course.
PART THIRTYTHE COMMENCEMENT OF DREAMS
Peter Jameson was no “hero,” only an average decent human being who had gone out to fight the two-legged Beasts which threatened his country, very much as his ancestors might have gone out to wage war against the four-legged beasts which threatened their caves. And being an average human being, his feelings—as the taxi whirled him Savoy-wards—expressed himself in crude song. “And another little drink wouldn’t do us any harm,” sang Peter Jameson. . . . It must be admitted that he sang execrably.
He overpaid the driver; swung through the revolving door; turned left past the grill-room; and made for the bar. It was just one o’clock, and the place hummed with drinking men.
“Good God,” said a voice, “here’s old P.J.”
Peter looked up and recognized Major Conway. The big black-haired sportsman stood, riding-cane in one hand, sherry-cobbler in the other, among a little knot of subalterns.
“What’ll you have?” he asked.
Peter decided on a Martini; swigged it down; stood a round to the party.
“When are you coming out again?” said the Major; and being told the news, “Lucky devil. Wish I were out of it. Wish I were lyin’ on a long chair in the Tanglin Club at Singapore, with anejaoat my elbow and a Manila cheroot stuck in my face. You ought to try the F.M.S.,[15]P.J. This country’s no good for a white man. Too many sanguinary restrictions.”
The subalterns melted away, and the two friends sat down at one of the little round marble-topped tables. “ ’Nother drink?” suggested Conway. “Champagne cocktail?”
“All right”—Peter nodded to the waiter—“but you’ll lunch with me.”
“Sorry, old thing; but I’ve got a bird meeting me at Romano’s. Can’t afford to waste time on leave. All right for you—you lucky devil—you’re out of it.” He finished his cocktail, strode off.
“Lucky devil?” mused Peter. “I wonder if I am.” The first fine exhilaration of freedom had worn off already. He was “out of it!” He looked down at his cord breeches, his high boots, his chained spurs. “Out of it,” thought Peter. “Cast! like some rotten hairy.[16]”. . .
Lunch, alone at a pillar-table in the crammed restaurant, proved an expensive fiasco. The music annoyed, the waiter fidgeted. Half way through, he got an attack of nerves; his left hand shook so that he could hardly hold his fork. Coffee arrived ten minutes after the sweets—stone-cold. Peter paid his bill disgustedly; retrieved cap and cane from the cloak-room; looked up his train; and passed out into the courtyard.
The usual baggage stood piled on the pavement—a miscellaneous collection, “Saratogas,” “Innovations,” flat cabin-trunks and dome-topped portmanteaux.
“People still travelling, I see,” said Peter to the commissionaire.
“Yes, sir. TheGeorge Washingtonarrived yesterday. Taxi, sir?”
“Thanks. No. I’ll walk for a bit.”
Half way down the Strand, another attack of nerves came on. He would be late for his train—he would miss his train. . . . “Undoubtedly,” thought Peter, “those chaps were right when they told me to live in the country.”
[15]Federated Malay States.
[15]
Federated Malay States.
[16]Army term for draught horses.
[16]
Army term for draught horses.
Once at Paddington Station—(he had taken another taxi and was twenty-five minutes too early)—Peter felt perfectly calm again. Twenty-five minutes seemed an enormous time: he inspected each of the three bookstalls; boughtPunch,John BullandThe Tatler; lounged into the refreshment-bar for a last drink; was told he couldn’t be served after two-thirty; expostulated vainly—and made number four platform just in time to swing the door of a first-class carriage as the train got under way.
In his excitement, Peter had not noticed that the compartment was a non-smoker. Now, seeing a girl seated in the far corner of it, he flung his cigar-butt out of the window, put his cane on the rack, and settled himself down with his rather-crumpled papers. The train glided out of the station; started worming its way between smoky houses towards the country.
For a few minutes, Peter busied himself withJohn Bull—Horatio Bottomley was rather amusing, Bottomley had just been to the front, Bottomley had been telling Douglas Haig how to run the Army. “Good old Horatio!” thought Peter. . . . Then he became aware that the girl was watching him. He looked up, and her eyes turned away.
The face seemed somehow familiar. Peter forgot all about Horatio; began to study his companion. At first, she did not strike him as pretty: her colouring was too pale, much paler than Patricia’s; her eyes, from his transient glimpse of them, he imagined to be gray, pale gray; the hair, as far as hat revealed it, held the colour of ripe barley—palest gold; curved cheek, lobe of close-set ear, dimpled but resolute chin, clean-cut nostrils, all made the same impression of paleness. But the dark eyebrows, long lashes, and red bow of mouth redeemed her pallor; heightened it to significance.
“Averypretty girl,” thought Peter at second glance.
She was dressed with extreme simplicity: dark blue coat and skirt, coat rather long, skirt pleated; blouse of pale silk, high at neck; gray doeskin gloves on slender hands. Patent-leather shoes and black silk stockings seemed moulded to the attractive feet and ankles. Peter judged her of medium height; put her age at twenty-three. . . .
The certainty that he knew her face grew to conviction. . . . He continued to study her over the top of his paper. She had nothing to read; seemed quite content to watch the outskirts of London—factories, fields, canal-banks, a church among greenery, an empty golf-course—as they slid past the carriage windows. Peter noticed, in the rack above her head, a suit-case of dark purple leather: but neither label nor monogram on the suit-case gave any clue to the girl’s identity.
Passing West Drayton, she turned round suddenly; and their eyes met again.
“Would you care to look at one of my papers?” asked Peter, tentatively profferingThe Tatler.
“Thank you so much,” said the girl. Her voice, low and perfectly accented, betrayed no hint of shyness. “It was nice of you to throw away your cigar. But I don’t mind a bit if you want to light another.”
“Oh, I don’t want to smoke. Really, I don’t. I say”—Peter, no ladies’ man, felt thoroughly uncomfortable; bit off the question. “Yes”—began the girl.
He plunged in. “It’s frightfully stupid of me, of course—I mean, the question sounds perfectly idiotic—but I’m certain I’ve seen you before—somewhere or other.”
The girl laughed. “And I’ve been thinking the same about you ever since you opened that carriage door. You”—she hesitated—“you’re terribly like somebody I used to know very well. Only we can’t have met before, because I only landed in England for the first time yesterday evening. . . . Unless. . . .”
She stared at him, positively stared; dumb with excitement.
“Unless what? . . .” asked Peter. He too felt himself on the verge of some amazing disclosure.
“Unless you’re Mr. Gordon’s cousin Peter. . . .” His look alone told the girl all she wanted to know; and she rushed on, tripping over her words. . . . “You are. I felt certain of it. You’re Patricia’s husband, and you live at a house called Sunflowers, and you’ve got two children, and you’re in the tobacco business, at least you were in the tobacco business, and you’ve been wounded and, and, and—isMr. Gordon quite well?”
“He was yesterday. I didn’t see him before I came up this morning. And”—Peter’s mind leaped to the only possible conclusion—“your photograph’s still on his writing-table.”
“Oh!” She did not blush; but a faint rose tinged the pallor of her cheeks. “Is it?”
For a moment, neither spoke. Then Beatrice said: “But weren’t you expecting me?”
“Expecting you! Why, I don’t even know your name. But that’s just like Francis—I mean like he is now—never tells anybody anything.”
The train rattled through Slough Station.
“Mr. Gordon doesn’t even know I’m in England. It was Mrs. Jameson who wrote to me; and I cabled her ten days ago; they wouldn’t let me cable the port of arrival or the sailing-date.”
“Patwrote to you!” Incredulity drove Peter’s voice up into his head.
“Yes. I—I thought she’d have told you. Perhaps I oughtn’t to have said anything about it. And I sent her a telegram from the boat as soon as we got in.”
“Well,” said Peter, “I don’t know about the telegram. That may have come some time today. But we’ve had no cable delivered. It couldn’t have come without my knowing it. Besides—”
Arrival at Maidenhead Junction interrupted further conversation.
Arlsfield Post Office does not function after lunch on Tuesdays. Telegrams are telephoned from Henley to Little Arlsfield; and if “Little Arlsfield” (which happens to be a grocery store) is not too busy, the grocer’s boy delivers them sometime or other on a rickety push-bike.
All afternoon—it was a wonderful sunlit day of late March—Patricia, children at her heels, had been pottering about the garden of Sunflowers. Prudence the pig had been duly scratched till she grunted with delight; they had watched Fry sowing his peas; inspected and re-inspected the three broodies lying close under their coops in the paddock; made the round of the outhouses and the orchard; sat under the walnut-tree, and tested the new lawn-mower on the sunk lawn.
“Mummy’s got something on her mind,” observed Evelyn. “She hasn’t said anything for ages.”
Patricia smiled down on the two furry hats. “Time for tea, kids,” she said. “Run along indoors. Mummy wants to be alone.”
She watched them dart into the house; ringlets tossing, bare legs twinkling under their short red skirts. Yes! Shehadgot “something on her mind.” . . . And the children were getting altogether too observant: they ought to go to school. . . . Supposing Peter had got his own way—supposing “those doctors” had passed him fit for service—how stupid men were—stupid—as if Peter were fit for anything except to be taken care of—in his own house—by his own wife. . . .
She heard the ring of a bicycle-bell; heard the gate creak on its hinges; ran up from the lawn onto the gravel drive. The podgy grocer’s boy plucked at his cap, handed her two telegrams.
“Any answer, mum?”
“No. There’s no answer,” She stood there, opened envelopes in one hand, message-forms in the other; wordless, heart beating quickly. For the fraction of a second, she forgot her anxiety about Peter. Beatrice Cochrane had not failed. Beatrice was in England. Beatrice might be at Sunflowers any moment. The first telegram, “Sailing George Washington,” had been held up by the censor; the second. . . .
“Oh, bother the telegrams,” thought Patricia. “I must get the spare room ready at once—I ought to fetch her from the station—it’s too late now—she’ll probably get a taxi—I hope to goodness Francis doesn’t turn up for tea.”
All the time she was supervising Elizabeth’s bed-making, fire-making, papering of drawers and turning-out of wardrobe, Patricia’s imagination played about Beatrice Cochrane. What on earth was she going to say to her; how explain? What would Beatrice do? Would she go to Francis at once? “Of course she will,” said Patricia. “I should. I wouldn’t wait a moment.”
Neither then, nor for many days, did Patricia stop to consider the miraculousness of Beatrice’s war-time journey. The romance of the girl’s coming sufficed its hour.
Yet the journey’s self was a romance: a romance of one girl’s persistence. There had been so many difficulties—her parents, the U. S. passport office, British Admiralty regulations; but Beatrice, smile in her eyes and fear at her heart, surmounted them one by one. The call came! and she must answer the call. Nothing else mattered. . . .
Beatrice was thinking of these things as the taxi circled away from Henley Station; took the Harpsden road. So much lay behind her; so much she had yet to face. Of the past, nothing remained except the big trunk clumsily roped beside the driver, the suit-case at her feet.
This England amazed her. She had expected to find at least some semblance to her own country; but, except for the language, everything seemed foreign—foreign and rather hostile. Also, nobody cared. Personalities didn’t exist. She was Beatrice Cochrane: she told herself this several times, as though she might forget it—and for all England cared she might have been Sally Smith. England had welcomed her gruffly in the pitch darkness of a choppy sea; pitch darkness out of which men from low decks had shouted to men on high. England had decanted her as an “alien”; fussed over her passport; shoved her into a train; told her to pull down the blinds in case of air-raids—and left her to her own devices. . . . The rest of her journey seemed to Beatrice’s fantasy a threading of her way through millions of soldiers. She had never seen so many soldiers. And nobody cared!
Even the soldier at her side—the thin careworn man who looked so like Francis—didn’t seem particularly interested. After his first spasm of surprise, he had subsided into Englishness. Apparently, he took it for granted that she was going to stay with him, to marry his cousin. Obviously, he neither knew nor wanted to know what his wife had written to her, or why.
“Jolly, isn’t it?” said Peter. “The country, I mean.”
“Yes. Very—jolly.” She didn’t really think it “jolly”; she thought it rather disappointing. And they were going too fast to see much more than hedges and fields switching by. The fields looked very small; the roadside cottages they passed, very modern.
“Is Sunflowers far from Henley?” she asked.
“About another five miles.”
A golf-course flashed by; more hedges; a tumble-down-looking farm-house. She began to think, shyly, about Francis. What would he say to her, she to him? Had she done right in dashing half across the world at a letter from an unknown Englishwoman? . . .
Peter leaned forward, said to the driver: “Take the Arlsfield road when you come to it. Straight on through the village and then up to Tebbits’ Farm.”
The man merely nodded. They came to a village-green; shot across it. More hedges—a red-brick townlet. Now, the road rose straight ahead of them; looking forward over her bobbing trunk, Beatrice saw a tree-crowned ridge.
“Oh,” she said suddenly, “what a lovely house!”
“That’s Sunflowers.” He did not seem particularly proud of the place; but he jumped out of the car politely enough; swung the gate for it to enter; ran to the front door. The door was open; and Beatrice saw a woman standing in the doorway—a tall golden-haired woman.
“Pat,” ejaculated Peter, “there’s a girl—”
“I know,” said Patricia, “I’ve been expecting her.”
The next moment, Beatrice found herself being helped out of the car; shaken hands with; asked if she’d like to wash before tea.
“I must ask Peter one question first; you don’t mind, do you? He’s just been up for his Board, and I want to know what they’ve done to him. Peter!”
“Yes, dear. . . .”
Beatrice tried not to listen; but she couldn’t help hearing the brief colloquy: “What happened?” “Oh, they fired me out.Napoo.Fini.” Then Patricia took her by the arm; rushed her through a brightly furnished hall, up some blue-carpeted stairs to a chintz-curtained room—and there, without any warning at all, her hostess burst into tears.
The American girl put a tentative hand on the English-woman’s arm: “What is it? Oh, do tell me what it is? Has anything happened to Mr. Jameson—anything bad, I mean?”
“No, nothing bad. Just something wonderful”—Patricia smiled through her tears. “Excuse me for welcoming you so stupidly. But it’s been such a strain—nearly three years of it—and now that it’s really over, I”—she dabbed viciously at her eyes—“I’m a little upset, that’s all. Do please forgive me, Miss Cochrane.”
“Forgive?”—Beatrice’s gray eyes smiled up into her new friend’s face. “It’s I who ought to be forgiven. You wanted to talk to each other—and I was in the way. Do go down to him. I’ll be quite all right. . . .”
For answer, Patricia kissed the girl’s cheek. “My dear, I wouldn’t have him see me cry for anything in the world. That was why I ran you up the stairs so quickly.” She stepped to a bell-push by the fireplace; rang. A servant appeared. “Bring up Miss Cochrane’s bag, please, and tell Mr. Jameson we’ll be down for tea in twenty minutes.”
Beatrice, unpinning her hat at the mirror on the oak toilet-table, thought to herself, “Well, some of them care anyway.”
“And now, my dear”—her hostess’ voice interrupted reverie—“let’s talk sensibly. . . .”
When the two women at last came arm-in-arm down the staircase, it seemed to Peter Jameson as though it was Beatrice who had been crying; but she talked happily enough through tea-time—and refused his escort beyond the ricks of Tebbits’ Farm. Peter, watching the slight figure dwindling down the meadow-path into the mist of a March twilight, could not help thinking to himself, “A girl like that is much too good for poor old Francis.” Then, remembering that he had a bone to pick with Patricia, he strode rapidly back to Sunflowers.
Francis Gordon sat at his great desk by the open window. All day he had been conscious of springtime, of a stir in his veins, a longing, a dissatisfaction. What did springtime or any time matter to him—to Francis Gordon? All his real springtimes lay behind: in front, stretched nothing but a gray void of seasons—hopeless and lonely. His brave days had gone down in dust. He was a cripple—a drag on the swift wheels of humanity—clog in a bright machine. And his one puny Power, the power of words he had once deemed so strong, that too availed nothing. “To write!” he thought, “O God, towritewhen the world’s hand is on the sword-hilt. . . .”
He looked out across Arlsfield Park. The sun, just dipping behind crest-line, irradiated the broad avenue of close-bitten turf. Feeding bunnies made sable dots all about the green: a herd of deer, antlered shadows, moved in and out among the new-leafed chestnut trees. At avenue’s end, the hills swelled blue-purple to a rose wash of sky. . . .
But sunset’s beauty made no appeal to the heart of Francis Gordon. It felt cold, the heart within him, heavy with the sorrows of the world. Sunsettings and sunrisings—beauties of inanimate senseless things—God’s mockeries at humanity! God? . . . The man laughed.
As if there were a God! He—whoever He might be—was no god, but a devil, a torturer. Yet men tricked themselves into this idea of godhead. Every cruelty in the world had been perpetrated in the name of some deity. The very Beasts in Gray wore His Name for device. And he, Francis Gordon, in the pride of his brain, had submitted to such trickery. For the sake of this fool-god, he had renounced the one woman.
In return for that renunciation, the fool-god had promised him the Power of Words. He was to write, to spend his life at this stupid desk. . . .
Meanwhile,menfought. . . .
He began to think of his own tiny share in that great fighting. Even there, he had not played a man’s part. Better to be one of those tortured men he had seen in the prison-camps of the Beast, than—a spy. Yes, a spy—it came down to that in the end. If only he had killed one Beast, killed it with his own hands, squeezed the life-blood from its foul throat. . . .
Now, thought of the Beast obsessed him. The horrors he had seen in the Land of the Beast danced uncleanly sarabands in his brain. And God, the gentle Jesus black-coated priests still whined about on Sundays, God permitted these horrors. . . . Better then, the old gods, Thor and Odin, whose priests dipped hands in blood and slew. . . .
A vast wave of hatred surged over the man’s soul. There could be no happiness on earth until the Beast was exterminated; male and cub and female, the Beast must perish. There must be one great killing! With fire and sword, men must traverse the Country of the Beast: not only the Beast, but all his works—his handiwork and his mind-work, the corrupting thought and the corrupting accomplishment—all these must be wiped out, the very memory of them be obliterated. . . . And after that, there should be no more gods, neither Jesus nor Jehovah, neither Thor nor Odin—only Men, men and women, walking a new clean earth, unafraid of any Beast or any god. . . .
In his hatred, it seemed to Francis Gordon as though Power had come back to him. In this great killing, words too might play their part. Not the words of any fool-god, but the words of a cripple—a cripple who knew that there was neither god nor devil, but only Man, man and the Beast. . . .
And suddenly a Voice spoke to Francis Gordon, a stern clear Voice from the heart of the sunset: “Thou Fool,” cried the Voice. “Thou blind Fool! If the Beast perish, man also perishes. For this is God’s Purpose.”
But the mind of the man answered the Voice out of the sunset: “There is no God. I, a cripple, am greater than any god. In mine own mind, have I renounced Thee. Thou art the Liar of the World. There is no god save Man.”
And God said: “Dost thou deny Me?”
“Aye,” answered the man, “by the existence of the Beast, I deny Thee. By my own courage, I deny Thee. By the power which is mine, I deny Thee. By every tortured body in this world, and by my own tortured body, I deny Thee.”
“Yet thou hearest me,” said God.
Now, it was Francis Gordon who spoke. His twisted body rose from its seat by the desk; his eyes looked unafraid into the heart of the darkling sunset. “There is no god. God’s purpose is a fraud and a lie. This voice which I hear is the lying voice of my own mind.”
Very faintly came the answer out of the sunset: “I am in thy mind as I am in thy body. Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.”
Then it seemed to Francis as though some veil had been drawn back from across the world; as though, for the first time, he saw God’s Purpose plain. Never while earth endured would the Beast utterly perish: for God had created the Beast even as He created man to subdue the Beast. Without this menace of the Beast, man’s finest attribute—the very manhood of him—would atrophy. He would become flabby, emasculate: and in his flabbiness, he would perish.
And looking into his own mind as the Voice bade him, Francis Gordon saw for the first time the true meaning of this dream he had christened, for want of better name, “Anglo-Saxondom.” Anglo-Saxondom was Man’s bulwark against the Beast: the spirit and essence of Liberty: a federation not of leagues and treaties, of obligations and entangling alliances, not even of common blood—but a Federation of Sentiment: a tie of mutual thought and mutual speech and mutual Ideals. So long as this Federation, the Federation of the English-speaking races, held together, the world could be safe from the Beast: for this Federation was selfless, it sought no domination save the domination of Good over Evil: it was of the Spirit, not of the Flesh; friend of every decent human being, foe to every Beast; God’s gift for suffering Humanity. . . .
A coal, dropping in the grate, aroused him from his dreaming. It had grown almost dark. Trees and turf and hills beyond were all veiled in misty shadows—things of the twilight, ghosts of a world. And with the glory of the sunset, the glory of his visioning departed.
Doubt tore him as with pincers. Once again, this Voice he called God had lied to him. The English-speaking races were not united, could never be united. He had imagined a vain thing. . . .
“Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.” The words of the Voice came back to him. Mockery! The Voice had lied. There was no God. . . .
Voices! He must get away from voices. Always, he heard voices. A second ago it had been God’s voice: now, it was the voice of a girl,hervoice. He could have sworn he heard her voice. Some one was coming upstairs. Some one was opening the door. . . .
“Francis!”—more voices, would he never be done with voices—“Francis!”
His eyes, jerked suddenly from dreaming, saw a shadow glide across the room towards him. He felt his heart give a great leap as though he were dying.
“Beatrice!” he stammered, “Beatrice!”
Words went from them. They stood speechless. Their hands met in the twilight. Lips faltered to lips. Then she was in his arms; and God grew real at last. . . .