to apologize for leaving you so long without news”—addressed care of
the Guaranty Trust Company, New York; the second to “P. Jameson, Esq.,”
and the third to “H. T. Prout, 10 Mecklinburgh Square, London W.”
Then, having shaken hands with his host, he lit a cigarette, and
strolled creakily downstairs to the waiting taxi. . . .
§ 6
Francis’ letter reached his cousin on the morning Peter and Bromley saw
their transfer gazetted in the _Morning Post_. The answer to it, a
packet containing two letters and a postcard addressed “Poste Restante,
St. Omer,” was in Peter’s pocket as they stood in the Chalkshires’
Orderly Room, bidding Colonel Andrews good-bye.
“I’m very sorry you’re both leaving me,” said the Colonel. “Very sorry
indeed.”
“We’re sorry to be going, sir,” from Bromley.
“I’m sorry we’re leaving, sir,” from Peter.
They shook hands with the diffident kindly man, saluted; clanked out,
booted and spurred—the Gunner grenades already on their lapels; ran
into Locksley-Jones.
“Hallo, you chaps,” he stuttered. “Just off. What?”
“Yes,” said Bromley grimly. “We’re going to a show where they’ve got a
_soldier_ for their Adjutant. It will be quite a change. . . .”
But when—(having said good-bye to Mr. Smith, the Regimental Sergeant
Major, to Gladeney and Sergeant Atkins and Corporal Pearson, to Peabody
and Arkwright and Mackenzie, Mosely and Simcox and half a hundred others
who came crowding round the bar at “the Feathers,” to their two servants
who stood watching the train as it slid out of Worthing Station towards
Brighton)—the two friends at last settled themselves in the corner of a
first-class carriage, they both grew very silent—thinking how others
would lead into action those hard-drinking, hard-swearing Cockneys who
sang, as they marched:
_“It’s a long vai, ter get ter Berlin,_
_Ter pai back all we owe.”_
PART ELEVEN
MEN AND HORSES
§ 1
The Southdown Divisional Artillery, at the time Peter and Bromley were
transferred, owned its full complement of men, its khaki, some officers,
a handful of horses, a few old French 90-millimetre guns dating from
1868 (“guns” by courtesy, as they had neither breechblocks, firing nor
sighting apparatuses), a few ammunition caissons to match, and a scratch
collection of harness, begged, borrowed or stolen according to
possibilities.
Weasel Stark’s command had been billeted in Brighton since its
formation: the horses at various livery-stables; the gunners and
drivers—Yorkshiremen for the most part—in squalid terraces at the back
of the town; the senior officers at Prince’s or the Metropole; the
juniors during the intervals between “Cook’s tours” to the Front,
gunnery-courses and telephone courses—at a small private-hotel which
they monopolized.
Stark’s personality pervaded the Fourth Brigade. He had his own theories
on training, on gunnery, on discipline: theories essentially simple,
disregarding the means for the end. A believer in decentralization, he
rarely interfered with subordinates: when he did so, his
strictures—which he couched in the most illuminating profanity—were
usually heeded. His lectures invariably began, “Now if you young
subalterns will only burn those sanguinary books and use a little
commonsense;” he rode as hard as he drank; protected his juniors from
his superiors; never forgot a face and would forgive anything in the
world except lack of keenness.
At the moment, Stark was—to use his own expression—letting ’em have
their heads.
§ 2
Four subalterns sat over the remnants of their dinner in the dark narrow
dining-room of the “Lyndon Hotel.” Outside, rain fell—gently but
audibly—on the stone pavement.
Said Archie Hutchinson, a whippet of a fellow, buff in colour,
thin-shanked, brown-eyed, “horse” written all over him: “There’s a
devilish good little bay come in with that last draft: but I don’t fancy
any of you lads could ride him.”
“Bags I for Beer Battery”—(Gunners usually adopt the code terms “Ack,”
“Beer” and “Don” instead of A. B. C.)—“if it’s a bay,” said Pettigrew,
blue eyes twinkling in brick-red cheeks. “Do you think he’d carry P.J.?”
“Just about.” Hutchinson concentrated on the problem. “P.J. might be
able to manage him. P.J. isn’t a bad horseman. Of course, he hasn’t got
very good hands. . . .”
“Oh, we all know you’re the only chap in the Brigade with good hands,”
put in Archdale—a fair-haired boy of eighteen—maliciously.
“You shut up, Brat. _You_ can’t ride anyway. . . .”
“Who is P.J.?” asked Merrilees, a solemn young man of twenty-six, with
eyes like an owl and the shoulders of a student, who had been
transferred from Colonel Brasenose’s Brigade (the 3rd Southdown) that
afternoon.
“Do you mean to say,” chuckled Pettigrew, “that you’ve never heard of
our Mr. Jameson? Our Mr. Jameson,” he cocked his cigarette into the
corner of his mouth—a very tolerable imitation of Peter’s
mannerism—“the Captain Kettle of the 4th Brigade. Our Mr. Jameson is
some gunner, I can assure you.”
“Really.” Merrilees had no sense of humour.
“Also,” went on Pettigrew, “our Mr. Jameson has a car—some car! And a
wife—_some_ wife.”
“Brat” Archdale, who had developed a violent attack of calf-love for
Patricia, blushed violently.
“I like P.J.,” remarked Hutchinson, pouring himself a second glass of
port.
“So do I,” said Pettigrew, “but he’s a quaint bird.”
“Who’s a quaint bird?” Purves poked a wonderfully brushed brown head
round the door; drew his long body after it; sat down to the table.
“Our Mr. Jameson.”
“Undoubtedly,” pronounced the Oxford man in his best Balliol drawl,
“undoubtedly. As you say, Pettigrew, a quaint bird. But efficient. Very
efficient. His language, on the other hand, reminds me very strongly of
our friend the Weasel’s. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does
talk. . . . You should have heard him in riding-school this afternoon.
Sergeant Murgatroyd positively blushed.”
“Sergeant Murgatroyd, like all these old Army fellows, pulls his horses
about too much. No hands!” The speaker, of course, was Hutchinson.
There came a smart rap on the door; and a crisp voice asked, “May I come
in?” Everybody rose.
“Rather, sir. Have a glass of port, won’t you, sir? Take a chair, sir.
Won’t you take off your things, sir?”
Colonel Stark, very slim and red-haired, looking—except for the lines
about his eyes—almost a boy himself, accepted the many invitations.
Purves filled a glass for him, and they all sat down again.
“Where’s that fellow Straker?” asked the Weasel. “In his room? I wonder
if one of you chaps would mind fetching him for me. Conway anywhere
about? Out, is he?” A chuckle. “At the Palladium, I suppose. . . .”
The Palladium is Brighton’s most palatial picture-house. Its attraction
for the petticoat-loving Conway was well-known. Every one laughed: and
the Colonel beamed round the table.
“We shall have to get Conway married, sir,” remarked Purves: and went
off to find Charlie Straker.
“I suppose you youngsters know we’re moving into camp next week.”
“Yes, sir,” from Pettigrew. “Shoreham, Captain Torrington said.”
“Correct, Pettigrew. And then I shall start gingering you all up a bit.
Especially ‘B’ Battery.” The Colonel turned to Merrilees. “You’re going
to ‘C,’ young man. Did Colonel Brasenose teach you how to ride?”
“I—I think so, sir,” said Merrilees shyly.
“We never ‘think’ in the 4th Brigade, do we Hutchinson?” This, a
reminder of the horsy one’s last attempt at manoeuvring a battery, drew
a twinkle from Pettigrew.
“No, sir.”
Charlie Straker arrived: tall; clean-shaven, curly-headed, with big
hands and a pronounced stutter. A promoted ranker, once in Stark’s own
battery, he had recently come home to take up his commission.
“G-good evening, sir.”
“Evening, Straker,”—Stark had come to the Mess with one of his usual
definite purposes in mind—“I’m going to take you round to the
Jamesons’. There’s an old friend of yours with them, and very anxious to
see you.”
“Who, sir?”
“Jacky Baynet”—a less tactful man might have said “Captain
Baynet”—“he’s home on leave. You remember him, of course.”
“R-rather, sir. He recommended me for my first stripe. I—I’ll go and
get my things on at once, sir.”
“If you young subalterns only knew a quarter as much as Charlie
Straker,” remarked the Weasel, as the ex-ranker clattered upstairs,
“there’d be second stars on a good many sleeves. . . .”
“Damn good chap, the C.O.,” said Hutchinson, when the four were alone
again. “Pretty good seat on a horse too.”
The remainder agreed.
§ 3
“Who’s my best subaltern, Straker?” asked the Colonel as they strode
through the darkness.
The other hesitated. “C-Conway’s very good, sir.”
“And what about Bromley? He’s seen service, you know. . . .” Stark stood
still for a moment. . . . “I wish to goodness you’d learn to read a map,
Straker. Can’t put you in for promotion till you can.”
“I—I know. I’m rotten at it, sir.”
They walked on.
“Jameson’s c-coming along very well with his gun-drill, sir”—Charlie
Straker, by virtue of knowledge, acted as unofficial instructor to the
Brigade—“and he’s r-rather good with horses.”
“I’ve got other plans for P.J. Between you and me, Straker, Torrington’s
fed-up with being indoors. And I can’t very well have a V.C. for
Adjutant. He wants to go back to a Battery. My opinion is that he’s too
ill to command one: still, I’m going to try P.J. in the Orderly Room.
He’s been running offices all his life, and he ought to be able to pick
up the work. . . .”
Arrived at No. 6 Brunswick Terrace, the flat which Peter and Patricia
had taken when they gave up the house in Lowndes Square, the Weasel led
way up the one flight of stairs; and pushed open the front-door into a
rather ornate hall. They peeled off their mackintoshes; hung caps and
riding-canes on the crowded hat-stand; and walked into the drawing-room.
Alice Stark and Patricia were sitting on the sofa under the
rose-curtained window. In front of a small fire, stood
Peter—miraculously without a cigar. Jack Baynet, a little aged by ten
months of active service, lounged in a big armchair, glass at his side,
talking to Bromley.
“Filthy stuff that new Boche gas,” he was saying. . . . “Hello, Straker.
Congratulations on getting your commission. . . .” He got up and the two
shook hands. . . . “Lucky devil not to be in that last show up at
Wipers. The Zouaves sneaked most of our horses when they
panicked. . . .”
The five men began talking “gas”—which had just been employed for the
first time. Soon, Alice joined them, leaving Patricia alone.
Looking at the five in khaki, listening to the military “shop,” she
could not help contrasting that evening with one, over a year ago, when
she had entertained Jack and her father in the big drawing-room at
Lowndes Square. Peter, she remembered, had been in Hamburg! And now,
Peter was a soldier. They lived in a different world: a world of new
values. Somehow, she felt years younger. . . .
“If it hadn’t have been for the Canadians, the Boche. . . .” she heard
her brother’s voice calmly detailing undreamed of heroisms.
A world of new values, of wider horizons! And for sign of it she,
Patricia Jameson, the most reasonable of young women, had fallen in love
with her own husband. She wanted to—to surrender herself to him, just
once, body _and_ soul, utterly, absolutely, to tell him that she was
his—_his_—his woman to do with as he would. . . .
Patricia reined in imagination as a rough-rider reins back a pulling
horse.
“They just stuffed their handkerchiefs over their mouths and hung on.
Discipline? That’s what I call discipline—just hanging on.”
“You’ll be fighting in respirators next.” The Weasel’s voice interrupted
her brother’s story. . . .
Imagination got away with her again. Happy? Yes, in a way she was happy.
Only. . . . Why didn’t Peter realize things? Why couldn’t Peter work a
little less strenuously? He took soldiering as he had taken business. It
_absorbed_ him. When he mounted his horse of a morning—Driver Jelks
holding out the stirrup—his face wore the old “office look.” . . . Of
an evening, he studied his new profession. . . . And of course, he was
smoking too much. . . . The children said Daddy was worried. . . . How
did they know? . . . Perhaps he still regretted Nirvana. . . . Oh, why
couldn’t she console him—time, time flew—and soon, a black hand must
stretch out across the sea, take him from her—perhaps for ever. . . .
“You’re looking very serious, Mrs. P.J.” Bromley lounged across to her.
“Am I?” she smiled at him.
“You won’t desert us when we go into Camp, Mrs. P.J.?” He pulled gravely
at his moustaches. “I was just wondering if you’d help me with the Mess.
Colonel says men are no good at these things. You might help a fellow,
Mrs. P.J.?”
“Why don’t you get Mutton’s to do the whole thing for you, Mr. Bromley?”
“Colonel says we ought to do it ourselves. It trains the cooks, you see.
But _I_ don’t know much about it. In South Africa, we ate when we
could. . . .”
They began a grave discussion on crockery, mess-furniture, groceries,
the wine-cellar: a discussion which lasted till the party broke up. Jack
Baynet had taken a room at the Metropole; walked home with Alice and her
husband. Bromley and Straker stayed for a last drink; departed together.
“Rather amusing, I thought”—commented Peter to his wife—“that first
meeting between your brother and Mrs. Weasel. She looked as though she’d
like to kiss him.”
“My dear Peter. . . .”
“Well, didn’t she?”
Patricia looked her husband straight in the face. Then she said
deliberately: “You don’t know much about women, old thing. Alice is
madly in love with the Colonel. She’d no more dream of letting another
man kiss her than,” a pause “_I_ should.” She marched out of the room,
gold head high.
“I wonder what’s worrying Pat?” thought Peter as he picked a small cigar
from the box on the mantelpiece; took up his “Manual of Field
Engineering,” and began to study section 39, _Cover for Artillery_.
§ 4
Nevertheless, Patricia enjoyed those weeks at Brighton, the
surreptitious rides on government horses provided by Torrington, the
occasional visits to “morning stables,” the talks with Alice, the
convivial tea-parties at her own flat.
One by one, she grew acquainted with most of Peter’s brother officers;
with Lodden, always irascible, querulous, good-natured but utterly
lacking in self-control; with the semi-invalid but still bloodthirsty
Torrington; with “Brat” Archdale and horsy Hutchinson; with the
ever-twinkling Pettigrew and his particular pal Conway, a riotous
black-haired six-foot fellow from the Federated Malay States who used to
say, “Believe me, Mrs. P.J., we’ll make that husband of yours see life
before we’ve done with him.”
Good days! and even when the Brigade moved out to Shoreham, the good
days continued. Patricia used to motor over in the Crossley, sometimes
with Alice (who stayed on alone in Brighton), or the children, sometimes
by herself. Gunner Horne and his unclean brother cooks knew her; would
bow to her judgment on such abstruse points as the using-up of
soup-bones in the big copper of the Officers’ Mess Hut. (For the
hutments had been built at last: Shoreham Camp was a by-word no longer.)
Mr. Black, the keen little wax-moustached Regimental Sergeant Major,
knew her too; and Sergeant Murgatroyd, the enormous Rough Rider with the
worsted spur on his arm; and Bombardier Pink, a trusty grizzled old
Yorkshireman, who supervised the fodder as if it were pure gold.
By now, nearly half the horses had been decanted, protesting vigorously,
at Shoreham Siding; were picketed out in long lines on the flat ground
below the hutments: and Patricia grew to love those sounds no
horse-soldier ever forgets—the whickering and the whinnying which
follows the command “Feed,” the tossing of head-collars and stamp of
hooves on turf as nose-bag slings are slid over laid-back ears; the deep
snuffle of nostrils as muzzles plunge to corn.
Good days indeed! For already the formless mob which Stark had led out
from billets in Brighton took shape under his hand. Harness began to
arrive, and water-carts, and dark-green limbered wagons that stood
ranged orderly in the still gunless gun-park. The Ammunition Column,
that sink whereto all batteries sent their least efficient, had been
formed; and a sleepy regular Major named Billy Williams, with moustaches
like Harry Tate and an astounding capacity for bottled Bass, put in
charge of it. Lodden, alternately bullying and apologizing to his
subalterns—Brat Archdale and a wild young Irishman called
O’Grady—commanded “A” Battery: Torrington, V.C. with Pettigrew and
Straker adoring at his heels, “B”: Reggie Conway and the silent
Merrilees, still lorded it over a captainless “C”: while “Don” Battery,
usually known from its three juniors, Hutchinson, Hall and Halliday, as
the “three H affair,” still awaited a master—by general prophecy,
Bromley, then away on his gunnery-course at Larkhill.
Peter Jameson, master of men since boyhood, saw this new entity growing;
began, in his pride of it, to forget civilian troubles. Stark, true to
his words with Straker, had taken P.J. into the Orderly Room—not yet as
Adjutant but only on probation.
To Conway or Pettigrew, outdoor fellows, the work would have been dull,
desk-tying: but for one brought up in the City, the employment had its
fascination. P.J. assisted by the meticulous R.G.A. clerk—Sergeant
Barber—ran his Orderly Room as he would have run a
business—filing-systems, card-indices, a diminutive stenographer
(picked unwillingly from the Ammunition Column), type-writers. . . .
And, the day’s work over, there was always Driver Jelks waiting with
“Little Willie” (as Peter christened the frisky wicked-looking bay which
Hutchinson had selected for him), and a long kicking scamper across the
Downs, and Driver Garton, his red-cheeked yellow-haired Orderly, waiting
with hot water for the rubber bath in the bare wooden cubicle which
Peter, by right of his position on “H.Q.,” occupied alone.
One by one, other officers joined them: Percy Rorke, a pert lad, fresh
from school, christened by common accord, “Monkeyface”: a jovial Irish
doctor, Ted Carson by name: a few undistinguished subalterns whom Stark
sent to plague Billy Williams in the Ammunition Column.
Purves, as Orderly Officer to the Colonel, began to pick his
Headquarters Staff of Signallers: Corporal Waller (“Lewis” Waller of
course), who had been a telephonist in private life; Gunners Seabright
and Pirbright (bosom friends, constantly scrapping, known by their
intimates as “the Poluskis”), Driver Nicholson (a wireless operator by
profession) and the rest.
So May warmed towards June, and the remarkable days slid by. The Brigade
grew—not even Stark realized exactly how—towards efficiency. If only
they could get one—just one—real 18-pounder gun! But that was denied
them; so volunteer parties of officers and men would take wagon on
Saturday afternoons to Preston Barracks at Brighton, and there pay
limber-gunners good half-crowns for the privilege of half-an-hour’s
peering through real dial-sights, half-an-hour’s clicking at “practice”
breech-blocks.
They took their work in deadly earnest, these stubborn North Countrymen;
studied their gun-drill pamphlets by themselves; were ill folk to
discipline by such officers as they suspected deficient in knowledge.
But even Stark’s most ruby language, they accepted with a smile. He knew
his job!
§ 5
To Peter, sitting alone at his wooden table in the bare Orderly Room Hut
one evening, monthly list of promotions before him, cloud of cigar-smoke
round his head, came Bombardier Pitman—clean-shaven, lantern-jawed,
destined to succeed Sergeant Barber, whose duties would take him to the
Base once the Brigade reached France, in his clerkdom.
“There’s an Infantry Officer asking for you, sir,” said the Bombardier
in broadest Yorkshire.
“Ask him to come in.”
There entered Peabody of the Chalkshires, grin on brown face.
“My word, P.J.—you are a swell.”
“Think so?” Peter looked up from his list.
“Rather.” Peabody threw cap and cane on the bare floor; drew himself up
a chair; lit a cigarette. “I thought you’d like to hear about
Locksley—beg his pardon, Locksley-Jones, _Mister_ Locksley-Jones. No
longer ‘Captain and Adjutant,’ you will observe.”
Bromley, just back from the Larkhill training course, lounged through
the door in time to hear part of the last sentence.
“What’s that about Locksley?”
“Got the boot,” said Peabody laconically.
“How?” asked the two Gunners simultaneously.
“Nobody quite knows. One day he was in the Orderly Room—and the next,
he just wasn’t. Of course, there have been heaps of rumours. . . . The
C.O. gave us one of his ‘pi-jaws’ yesterday—you know the way the old
man lisps when he lectures—all about ‘the honour of the Regiment.’ I
think he knows pretty well what Locksley has been doing, because he
said—rather decent of him I thought: ‘Of course I understand some of
you have had a good deal to put up with’ . . . I believe,” Peabody shook
his young head, “that there must have been something wrong with the
Battalion accounts.”
“Then he ought to have been court-martialled!”
Bromley nodded confirmation of Peter’s epitaph on Locksley’s career.
“Come up to the Mess and have a drink, kid,” he added to the
Infantryman. The three walked out; up the steep dry slope of turf to the
Mess Hut.
Various officers were disposed about the big deal-boarded room: Lodden,
in front of the cold stove, was cursing to Billy Williams about the
_Lusitania_—“Oh I dunno,” purred the big Major, “What do you expect of
_Germans_?” “Brat” Archdale and “Monkey face” lounged in two huge
arm-chairs, sipping manfully at their vermouths: Merrilees, in another
chair, studied Italy’s declaration of war in the _Daily Chronicle_ with
wrinkled brows. From the officers’ huts across the grass, came the
alternating buzz of two telephone transmitters—Conway and Purves
talking to each other in Morse.
“I say,” announced Peabody shyly, when the three had settled down to
their drinks, “what I came over for was this. Slattery—you remember
him—he’s our new Adj.—wants you two to come over and dine at our Mess
tomorrow. Now that Locksley’s gone. . . .”
He let the prepared speech trail off into silence.
“But what about the C.O.?” asked Bromley.
“I think”—Peabody very nearly blushed—“it was the C.O. who suggested
it to Slattery.”
* * * * *
Next evening when they rode over—the Chalkshire Mess was a bare six
hundred yards away, but as Gunners it became the pair to arrive mounted.
Private Haddock, in full khaki and equipment, stood sentry in the
roadway; banged hand against rifle-stock, and beamed ecstatically as
they slid from their horses. Arkwright, three stars on his arm,
schoolmaster stoop more pronounced than ever, met them outside the hut;
led them in as an Ambassador conducting distinguished foreigners.
And somewhat as foreigners they were received; shyly by Colonel Andrews,
unemotionally by Simcox, bluffly by Major Mosely. There was a feeling of
stiffness in the air. Outwardly the mere entertainment of two junior
subalterns; inwardly, the ceremony betokened reconciliation, an
acknowledgment that the 10th Chalkshires had a debt to pay, was paying
it.
Nobody mentioned Locksley; no one proposed a toast; but all the faces
down the two long tables seemed conscious of a special occasion. . . .
* * * * *
A great white moon burned over the tin roofs of the hutments as the two
mounted their horses; walked them slowly across the sleeping camp.
“I always said”—Bromley broke silence gravely—“that, except for
Locksley, there was nothing wrong with the old Chalkshires. They’re a
jolly fine crowd—now. And when we do go out. . . .”
“If we ever _get_ out,” from Peter.
“They’ll give a good account of themselves. Curious, isn’t it, that if
it hadn’t been for that fellow, we might still be with ‘B’ Company. Both
Captains, perhaps.”
They dismounted; led their horses—groom following—down the hill.
“Did you realize when we transferred,” asked Peter, voicing a thought
that had just arisen for the first time in his mind, “that one would be
more comfortable, safer perhaps, in the Gunners?”
“No.”
“More did I. But all those chaps seemed to think so. I wonder if it’s
true.”
“I should doubt it.”