a crazy letter to have written. Perfectly crazy!”
§ 3
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. _Have_ you 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. . . .
§ 4
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 lived _for_ the 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 but _you_, 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.
§ 5
. . . 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 THIRTY
THE COMMENCEMENT OF DREAMS
§ 1
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 an _ejao_ at 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. The _George Washington_ arrived 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.
[16] Army term for draught horses.
§ 2
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; bought _Punch_, _John Bull_ and _The 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 with _John 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.
“A _very_ pretty 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
proffering _The 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—_is_ Mr. 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.”
“_Pat_ wrote 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.
§ 3
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! She _had_ got “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.”