“If you like, dear.”
He rose slowly to his feet; and she watched his flannelled figure
disappear in the gloom. Light winked from the tent-flap; the tent glowed
suddenly, a cone of saffron radiance. . . .
He came back to her, picking his way quietly across the grass; saw that
she had not moved. She was aware of him, dropping down beside her in the
gloom.
“Pat darling,”—his voice held a new tenderness; his hand, as it sought
hers, seemed to tremble—“I’ve been wanting to tell you something ever
since we started.”
Their fingers trembled together, met and twined. His left arm slipped
round her shoulders.
“What have you wanted to tell me?”
He drew her close to him. His heart throbbed against her
shoulder-blades.
“I don’t quite know how to say it.” She could feel him blush in the
darkness. “It—it isn’t the sort of thing one says to one’s wife. . . .”
He couldn’t go on: he was afraid she would laugh at him.
“What isn’t, Peter?” The whisper hardly reached him.
“I mean”—words came stumblingly—“I mean—the thing I wanted to tell
you. . . . Pat darling, it isn’t very much. It’s—it’s just that I love
you. And you mustn’t laugh at me for it.”
“Why should I laugh at you, boy?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. Why shouldn’t you laugh at me? Don’t you remember—before
we got married—you said that being in love was all nonsense; that
husband and wife ought to be. . . .”
“Don’t, Peter, don’t!”—he knew, though in all his life he had never
heard her cry, that she was crying. “You make me so ashamed. It’s been
my own fault—every bit of it has been my own fault”—he couldn’t
understand—he only knew that suddenly happiness had come to them
both—she crept into his arms—“Peter?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Am I the only woman you’ve ever tried to make love to? . . . .”
Was she laughing now? or crying? He couldn’t understand—he couldn’t
understand at all.
“Do answer me, boy?”
“Of course you are. I’ve never loved anybody but you in my life.”
“Honestly?” she asked.
“On my dying oath, Pat.”
Suddenly, he felt her hand on his shoulder; heard her say: “Oh, boy,
boy, I believe you. . . . You’re such a rotten lover, boy. . . . You
haven’t even asked me whether I love you. . . .”
“I—” he began.
“Don’t. I’m—I’m rather glad you’re such a rotten lover, boy. I—I love
you for it.”
Very tenderly, their lips met in the darkness. . . .
* * * * *
Tent on the river-bank glowed saffron among the shadows. . . . Light
vanished from the tent. . . . Moon, riding over Eynsham Bridge, saw it,
a gray ghost by the gurgling weir. . . . Moon dipped behind the
willows. . . . Sky lightened. . . . Stars faded. . . . Dyked pastures
silvered to the dawn-gleams. . . . Sun-rim peeped over Eynsham
Hills. . . . The tent-flap parted. . . .
And out of the tent, stepping quietly lest she waken her sleeping mate,
came a woman, golden hair unbound, white feet bare to the dew. . . .
Very quietly she came, like a nymph in the dawn. . . . Very quietly, she
sank to her white knees, alone on the river-bank by the gurgling
weir. . . . Very quietly, she raised her white hands to the rising
day. . . .
“O God,” prayed Patricia, “dear God—let me give him a son.”
EPILOGUE
§ 1
“Six thirty, ack emma, sir. Time to get up, sir.”
James Garton, sometime driver in the Royal Field Artillery, now
convalescing from wounds, on the Tebbits-Jameson farm, tapped his
sleeping master on the left shoulder. Peter, waking with a start, looked
round his comfortable dressing-room, at the mauve eiderdown on his bed,
the bow-fronted wardrobe, the hunting prints on the walls.
“Lord, Garton! What on earth are you playing at? We aren’t on active
service now.”
“No, sir.” The Yorkshireman grinned. “I don’t think there’ll be much
active service after today, sir. Not if the Huns sign this
armistice”—he pronounced the word armistïce—“the newspapers are
talking about.”
“Thought I’d like to wake you for the last morning of the war, sir,”
Garton went on, producing a cup of tea and some biscuits. “Should I put
out your riding-kit, sir?”
“No, Garton, you should not”—laughed Peter, falling in with the spirit
of the game—“you should put out the blue suit of mufti you’ll find in
that wardrobe. Also, you should prepare my bath.”
Said the Yorkshireman, hanging serge slacks carefully over the back of a
chair, “Mister Harry says that you and Mrs. Jameson are sure to get
taken up for joy-riding, sir.”
“That be damned for a tale.” Peter, tea finished, tumbled out of bed;
stuck his feet into a pair of red morocco slippers; drew silk
dressing-gown over pyjamas.
They had been speaking very quietly for fear of waking the pair in the
next room: but now a voice, Patricia’s voice, called through the
doorway:—
“Time to get up, Peter. Are you awake, Peter?”
“Of course I’m awake. Been awake for hours. How’s Peter the Fourth?”
“Slept like a top.” The door opened, revealing Patricia, slipperless,
golden hair falling about her white shoulders. “What on earth. . . .”
Garton, blushing furiously, fled: they heard him busy in the bath-room
as they kissed good-morning.
“Funny fellow, isn’t he?” Peter explained his quondam servant’s
presence. “And now let’s have a look at the heir.”
Arms linked, they passed into the curtained bed-room. Mauve-shaded
candles burned on the white over-mantel, on the table by the
lace-canopied cot. Blinking at the light, still only half awake, lay
Peter the Fourth. The newly-weaned baby smiled happily at its parents.
Peter the Fourth, they thought, would have his mother’s hair, his
father’s eyes: Peter the Fourth, they thought . . . but what these two
thought about their eight-months old son would fill a prologue, an
epilogue, and a hundred chapters in between.
As Evelyn confided, early in the summer, to Primula: “I don’t believe a
word of that gooseberry-bush story, Prim. I believe Mummy and the pater
made that child themselves. They couldn’t be so gone on it”—(“gone on,”
acquired from Garton, was _the_ school-room word of the moment)—“if
they’d just _found_ it.”
Said Primula, sternly practical, “It must be frightfully difficult to
make a baby. Think of its ears. . . .”
The two girls came running, fully dressed, into Patricia’s room just as
Peter slipped off for his bath; stood chattering till Patricia shooed
them away and rang for Elizabeth. . . .
§ 2
The Peter Jameson who breakfasted with his wife at a quarter to eight on
Armistice Morning was a very different animal from the our Mr. Jameson
whose taxi had driven up to 22 a. Lowndes Square, London, four and a
half years previously. Grayed hair and lined face still betrayed
convalescence, the weariness of war-time; but his eyes, his voice, the
whole atmosphere of happiness he exuded, testified a change in the man’s
mentality.
His essential creed had not altered: he still believed in work, and in
successful work; he still loathed inefficiency, slackness, the
never-mind-tomorrow attitude. But love, impersonated in Patricia, had
softened the harshness of his youth; taught him the grand lesson of
tolerance. Love had nearly bridged that vast, bitter gulf between
fighting-man and stay-at-home: almost, he saw England whole—-not a
country divided against itself, but a People working hand-in-hand for
the common cause. Love, too, had opened Peter Jameson’s eyes so that
they saw not only profits but also beauty in the new work to which he
had dedicated himself.
This new work prospered slowly, as the land should prosper. Already
Capital had begun its revivifying influence. Old man Tebbits’
tumble-down milking-sheds existed no longer: instead, were clean stables
of brick and tile, spotless pails and sterilized pans. Useless wooden
structures, harbourage of rats, had been pulled down. The ricks stood,
stone-based, two feet above ground. Charlie Tebbits had re-built and
added to old man Tebbits’ insanitary pig-sties. A tractor-plough phutted
in the fields. Also—Peter’s first _coup_—Tebbits-Jameson Ltd. had
bought out the Arlsfield “carrier,” a rickety old man with a rickety old
horse; replaced his creaking equipage by a petrol delivery-van; and made
themselves masters of the transport-situation. This van, as Peter saw
it, was to be the forerunner of a fleet which would carry passengers,
market produce, sell _and buy_ eggs and milk, fruit and honey and
vegetables across half-a-county. Plans for bacon-factory,
cheese-factory, jam-factory—(and tracings of a sugar-beet plant which
Peter had not yet dared show Harry Tebbits)—all lay locked away till
peace-time in the drawers of Peter’s walnut-wood writing-desk.
Sunflowers, run as a separate establishment, was already unrecognizable.
The paddock—silent, original founder of “T.J.’s Ltd.”—existed no
longer. Only the pig-path, fenced from sties to wood’s edge, still
showed a band of narrowing-green ribbon across the brown of plough. All
autumn, the “paddock” had been a mellow-gold riot of Russian sunflowers:
two acres of sunflowers whose produce, bushel upon bushel of the finest
chicken-feed, filled a dozen zinc bins in the new poultry store-room.
Roger Fry had gone to the war; Roger Fry’s hybrids to the stock-pot. In
their place, came a marvel of a man from St. Dunstan’s Hospital, the
cheeriest soul for all his blinded eyes that ever took good wages of a
Saturday, and two hundred black Leghorns who clucked about the orchard
from sunrise to sun-downing.
“And it’s only in its infancy,” thought Peter, helping himself to
another rasher of Miss Tebbits’ black-treacle curing, “only in its
infancy. Scrap the ‘state-control’ idea. Give every man his chance. Let
Capital and Labour co-operate as we’re co-operating—and the Lord knows
where we won’t get to in a dozen years of peace.”
“We ought to be off in about ten minutes,” he said to his wife. “You
know what Dilly and Dally are at this time in the morning.”
“Dilly and Dally,” at Sunflowers, meant the inhabitants of Glen Cottage,
who kept a mystic time-table of their own, officially supposed to depend
on Francis’ working hours, but actually adjusted—with meticulous
accuracy—to weather-conditions. “When it’s fine,” Beatrice once
condescended to explain, “Prout thinks we ought to rise with the sun.
When it’s wet, he doesn’t think we ought to get up at all.”
“I told them to be ready by half-past eight”—Patricia glanced at the
clock on the wall-bracket—“we don’t want to scorch.”
§ 3
Francis Gordon’s idea of motoring up to London for Armistice Day—a
pastime forbidden by the anti-joy-riding provisions of the Defence of
the Realm Act—had entirely upset the Sunflowers-Tebbits routine.
Usually, by breakfast-time, Peter had made his first inspection of the
poultry houses; visited the milking-sheds; sped Sid Dyson on his way to
Arlsfield Park (Peter, after endless finesse, had secured a
timber-felling contract from the Colonel); discussed his round with
ex-Corporal Hankins, who had one artificial leg, two merry blue eyes,
and a mechanic’s passion for the delivery-van; and argued out at least
one abstruse farming-problem with Harry Tebbits. On this particular
morning it was Harry Tebbits, pipe in mouth, who strode over to see
Peter; found him, cap on head, coat over arm, standing under the beaten
walnut tree.
The blond giant opined that if Peter really meant to go up to London,
the least Peter could do would be to bring back some whisky.
“Well,” said Peter, “I’ll do the best I can, Harry. But if the armistice
_is_ signed, I expect London’ll be drunk dry by half-past two. Don’t
suppose you’ll get much out of the folk today, Harry.”
The giant smiled. “Not much use telling the cows about Armistices.
Still, I don’t expect we’ll kill ourselves with work. Not today at all
events. Old Tiger’s been after the skim again. Never saw such a dog for
the milk.”
“Tiger o’ Sunflowers,” an enormous silver-brindled Dane, lounged up the
drive; gave his master dignified greeting. Patricia, furred and
gauntleted, came hurrying out of the house.
“Well, I may as well see you safe off the premises,” smiled Harry
Tebbits. The three made their way to the “garrige.” Passing the stables,
they heard Driver Garton’s, “Now then, you”; Evelyn and Primula’s raised
voices; the stamp of hooves on tile. Wilhelmina, the bay filly who had
succeeded Little Willie in Peter’s heart, was protesting as usual about
her morning toilet. . . .
Peter and Corporal Hankins had spent all Sunday tinkering with the
Crossley, rubbing away the grease of two years’ idleness, fitting new
sparking-plugs, testing brake-shoes and magneto, filling her petrol-tank
and polishing her brass-work. Still, the car looked her age.
“Charlie’ll have to give her a coat of varnish one of these days,”
hazarded Charlie’s brother, tapping strong fingers on the bonnet. But
the engine started sweetly enough; and Peter, running her out for
Patricia to mount, felt conscious of the old driving-thrill.
“Shan’t be at Dilly-Dally’s till nine,” he said as she climbed up beside
him. Harry ran to open the gate; Tiger o’ Sunflowers smelt at the
Klaxon, bounded away barking at the bark of it; Evelyn and Primula waved
good-bye from the stable-door. They were off.
By the meadow-patch it is a bare mile from Sunflowers to Glen Cottage;
but the shortest road takes you half way to Arlsfield; circles a fair
portion of the Tebbits-Jameson land before it dives towards the chestnut
trees of Arlsfield Park.
It was a goodly November day; soft gray clouds, sun atween, hinting of
rain to come.
They passed the eight-acre vegetable field,—inter-cropped, potatoes,
already dug, with winter green-stuff, fat white-hearted savoys, inturned
broccoli, curly-leaved kale and knee-high Brussels sprouts; they passed
the “warren”—fenced dip of chalk pitted land on which Peter had turned
down half a hundred Belgian Hare does to mate with the “original
inhabitants”; they skirted two stubbles, and a new-sown patch of
pedigreed wheat; hummed through the browning spinney—and made Glen
Cottage by five minutes to nine.
The home of Francis and Beatrice showed no signs of intensive
cultivation; meadow-land, over which Peter’s merinos and Peter’s Jerseys
browsed and grazed at will, ran down to its very walls. Three times, the
indomitable Beatrice had engaged a gardener, but each time Peter, hungry
for men, enticed him away.
“Private gardens,” said our Mr. Jameson, “are out of date. Besides, as
your landlord, your greengrocer, your carrier, your poulterer and your
dairyman—I forbid it.”
Beatrice christened him the “Octopus of Arlsfield”; but eventually
submitted. She was standing at the cottage-gate as the Octopus and his
wife drove up. Fifteen months of matrimony had not altered her essential
girlishness: but the face under the close-fitting toque of ermine seemed
less pale than the day she and Peter first met; the gray eyes, though
still thoughtful, held more of laughter.
“Dally won’t be a minute,” she smiled at them. “You’ve just got time to
turn the car.”
Peter, with a jest about not having enough “gasoline,” obeyed; throttled
down his engine; gave a glance at clock on dashboard as the two women
kissed good-morning.
“Confound Dally,” he said after a while, “it’s nearly ten past already.”
Francis, followed by Prout, who carried an enormous basket and a long
thin parcel wrapped in brown paper, limped out of the house. He wore his
usual brown overcoat, his usual cream buckskin gloves, his inevitable
old Etonian tie.
“What on earth have you got there?” demanded his cousin.
“Food, fizz and flags,” chuckled Francis. “Shove ’em in the tonneau,
Prout. If I know London, we’ll have about as much chance of getting
anything to eat. . . .” He superintended the disposal of these
treasures; handed Beatrice into the car—-and remembered he had
forgotten her muff. By the time Prout had retrieved this, tucked in the
young people, and closed the door on them, it was twenty past nine.
“Shall we do it?” asked Patricia.
“Do it?”—Peter chuckled scornfully—“you watch!” He opened throttle as
he spoke; fingered lever gently from neutral to first, first to second,
second to top. Horse-chestnuts popped from tire-covers as the Crossley
gathered way. Arlsfield Park, a blurr of tree-trunks at side and
interlaced branches overhead, spun behind them. They missed Sid Dyson’s
timber-tug by an ant’s breadth; hooted past the Colonel’s crested
gate-pillars; switchbacked downhill towards Henley.
Dilly and Dally, feet tight-propped against the provision basket, looked
at each other in mock alarm. “It wasn’t our fault,” stammered Francis
through chattering teeth, “why wasn’t the Octopus on time? He said
half-past eight.”
Beatrice, craning forward a moment, eyed the speedometer. “What are we
doing, Beatrice?” “Forty-five and a chip.” “Lord!”
The car shot on, purring—Peter, nearly recumbent, notched wheel gripped
easily in gloved hands; Patricia bolt upright, eyes on the speeding
hedge-rows.
They made the six miles to Henley in a fraction over twelve minutes;
swirled righthanded at the railway-station; took the water-front at a
bound; skidded the Bridge-corner on two wheels. Church, bridge and river
vanished like mad movies.
“Going well,” muttered Peter through set teeth. White Hill rose up like
a roof ahead. “Open that cut-out for me.” Exhaust roaring, cylinders
throbbing, the Crossley hurtled up between the trees; slowed to twenty;
felt herself flung back into second; topped the rise; raced engine the
fraction of an instant; took top-gear again; shot on.
Houses, trees, a crawling dray, flashed astern. Gray tarmac zipped
under. Ahead, the road rose; dropped; rose again. Now, they were in open
country. Peter took one deep breath; fidgeted throttle-lever full open;
jammed foot on accelerator. Couple behind felt the car gather herself as
if for a great leap; saw passing hedge-rows fade out to a continuous
blurr. Speedometer-needle clicked to sixty; held there for three and a
half ecstatic minutes. . . .
“Right, isn’t it?” shouted Peter suddenly. “Yes.” Patricia, map on knee,
watched Hurley Bottom skim by. He slowed; climbed a hair-pin turn
warily; nipped across the Thicket; veered left for Maidenhead.
The clock at Nicholson’s Brewery showed five minutes past ten as they
crawled down into the town; opened out again for the Bridge; swished
over it past Skindle’s Hotel.
“Shall we do it?” asked Pat.
“Question of luck.” He opened the cut-out again; roared under Taplow
Railway-viaduct. So far, road had been almost empty. Now, other cars
appeared ahead. The Crossley raced them down the Bath Road; passed them
one by one. Slough vanished. Something honked behind them; honked again.
Peter, wheels almost on turf, was aware of a Rolls-Royce bonnet, of a
dark-blue car sweeping by; caught a glimpse of Arthur, in sky-blue Air
Service uniform, sitting rigid at the wheel. . . .
Crossley gathered way; Klaxon barked furiously; Rolls-Royce swerved;
Peter, grin on his face, shot past. Beatrice, peering over the back of
the cabriolet, saw Arthur’s eyes light; saw his hand move slowly on the
wheel. Then the Rolls-Royce was on them; creeping up, effortless,
silent. . . . Honk, honk, honk. “Drat the fellow,” muttered Peter. For a
mile, he refused way; then Arthur, with two inches to spare, purred
calmly by; recognized Peter with a wave of the hand—and disappeared in
dust. . . .
Still, they made Hounslow by half-past ten; edged warily over
tram-lines; pulled up for a second to avoid disaster.
“Hope you’re not joy-riding, sir,” grinned a blue-helmeted constable.
“Joy-riding!”—Peter, hand on gear lever, grinned back scornfully—“do
we look as if we were joy-riding!” Francis, peeping overside, was
understood to mutter something about, “bringing the good news from Aix
to Ghent.” . . .
None of the four quite remembers how they made the last lap to London.
It comes back to them as a jerking, fidgety dream—houses, tram-lines,
motor-omnibuses; a scrap of clear straight road here; turns there;
people staring, people cursing; shop-windows in which they saw
themselves skidding past; dogs diving for cover; scream of Klaxon, jar
of gear-lever, throb of engine. . . . “Time?”, Peter kept asking. “Time,
Pat?” . . . “Ten-thirty-five.” . . . “Ten-forty.” . . . “Quarter to, all
but ten seconds.” . . . “Damn it, we must make Piccadilly by eleven o
’clock.” . . . More houses. . . . A saloon. . . . Francis, head down in
the tonneau, groping for his flags, hitting his head against the back of
the driving-seat. . . . “Twelve minutes to eleven.” . . . Beatrice, eyes
on Peter’s cap, muttering to herself, “He’ll never do it. I’ll never
forgive him if he doesn’t do it.” . . .
“Five to!” called Patricia—and Fulham Road streamed out behind as they
zig-zagged in and out among sparse traffic. . . .
“Three minutes.” . . . “What was that? Oh, yes, Harrods. Good old
Harrods.” . . . “Two minutes more.” . . . The Hyde Park Hotel whizzed
by. . . . Railings. . . . A clear road. . . . Hyde Park Corner ahead
. . . and:—
“Done it, I think,” remarked our Mr. Jameson, as a motor-bus, swaying
out of Park Lane, missed their rear mud-guards by the grace of God and
two inches. . . .
Thut of cylinders dropped to steady purr. Clubland on their left,
railings on their right, slackened speed; grew steady and perceptible.
Traffic, through which the Crossley threaded easy way, appeared all
round them. . . . They were in Piccadilly! . . .
Clarges Street—Half Moon Street—Bolton Street—known names,
black-lettered on gray stone—Apsley House—The Ritz—corner of Bond
Street. . . .
And, suddenly, they heard a voice. “P.J.!” bawled the voice. “Hi! P.J.!
Halt, will you! Halt, I say.”
Peter, jamming brakes hard on, felt the car skid under him; felt wheels
jar against sidewalk; was aware of Francis, shouting in his ear “Bravo,
well-driven old thing,” of Beatrice and Patricia standing up, of a
taxi-back two inches from his radiator, of a motor-bus grinding to
standstill—and of a little red man, with flat red moustaches on his
face and faded red tabs on his uniform, a little red man in a huge cap,
who came dashing out of Scott’s hat-shop, bawling: “Halt, confound you,
P.J. Halt! It’s eleven o’clock.” . . .
It was the Weasel; and even as the Weasel darted across the sidewalk,
London went mad and they with London!
Pandemonium broke loose—a tornado of sound—horns, whistles,
rowing-rattles, bugles—men shouting—women screaming. The five in the
Crossley couldn’t hear pandemonium. They were of pandemonium—crazy.
Brigadier General the Weasel, palms to mouth, straddling the radiator
with spurred legs, beating bonnet with his cane, was hallooing like a
lunatic: “Forrard away!” hallooed the Weasel. “Forrard away! Forrard
away! Hi, tear ’em, tear ’em, tear ’em.” Francis, scarlet in the face,
bolt upright, lameness forgotten, bawled an inarticulate “Eton! Well
rowed, Eton.” Peter, finger pressed home on the hoarsely-shrieking
Klaxon, was howling some Indian war-whoop of his own. Patricia, dumb
with emotion, imagined herself to be cheering. And Beatrice, the
hyper-critical, hyper-sensitive Beatrice, was yelling, yelling at the
top of her voice. “Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya,” yelled Beatrice—but somehow or
other she couldn’t finish the yell; dropped back, speechless, in the
tonneau. . . .
Pandemonium! Traffic had stopped. There was no traffic: only motionless
vehicles—lorries, motor-omnibuses, taxis, a Rolls-Royce, a
hansom-cab—yes, a veritable hansom cab. And every vehicle swarmed with
men and women. Men and women swarmed on every vehicle. Swarmed and
shrieked and waved flags. . . .
Pandemonium! The very houses had gone mad. The houses were alive—alive
with men and women. The houses were wide open. Men and women poured out
of the houses into the streets. The streets were alive with men and
women. They swarmed in the streets; swarmed and danced and cheered and
shouted and waved flags. . . .
Pandemonium! The flags had gone mad. There were a million flags—Union
Jacks and Stars-and-Stripes, Tricolour flags and Belgian flags and
Japanese flags; Italian flags and Portuguese flags, Commonwealth flags
and Dominion flags, Royal Standards and White Ensigns. . . .