“What other way?”
“Behind the lines--in the back areas. I should have been all right if I
had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to
the devil.”
“Not as bad as that,” I said.
“Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the
flame, “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and,
afterwards, in this cushie job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable,
along the way to Hell. There was little Marguérite in Amiens--such a
kid! Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely but too well. I had
just come down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with
Marguérite was like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked
the flowers of life, and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves
beyond the forest.”
He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words:
“The howling of the wolves!”
Somebody was singing “John Peel”:
“_D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay,_
_D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day,_
_D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away_
_With his horn and his hounds in the morning?_”
Cyril Clatworthy was on his feet, joining in the chorus, with a loud
joyous voice.
“_We’ll follow John Peel through fair and through foul,_
_If we want a good hunt in the morning!_”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
He laughed as he sat down.
“I used to sing that when I was Captain of the School,” he said. “A
long time ago, eh? How many centuries?... I was as clean a fellow as
you’d meet in those days. Keen as mustard on cricket. Some bat, too!
That was before the dirty war, and the stinking trenches; and fever,
and lice, and dead bodies, and all that. But I was telling you about
Yvonne, wasn’t I?”
“Marguérite,” I reminded him.
“No. Yvonne. I met her at Cassel. A brown-eyed thing. Demure. You know
the type?... One of the worst little sluts I ever met. Oh, a wicked
little witch!... Well, I paid for that affair. That policeman was
wrong.”
“What policeman?” I asked.
“The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. ‘It’s the same way to Hell,’ he said,
meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I’ve had
some good hours. And now it’s Armistice night.... Those fellows are
getting rather blue, aren’t they? It’s the blinking cavalry who used
to get in the way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their
ridiculous horses and their preposterous lances. Look here, old man;
there’s one thing I want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl.”
“What is that?” I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom.
“How are we going to get clean enough for Peace?”
“Clean enough?”
I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain
himself.
“Oh, I don’t mean the soap-and-water business. But morally,
spiritually, intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot
of scrubbing before we sit down in our nice little Christian families,
somewhere at Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow, I funk Peace. It means
getting back again to where one started, and I don’t see how it’s
possible.... Good Lord, what tripe I’ve been talking!”
He pulled the bow of one of the “Waacs” and undid her apron.
“_Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!_” he said in his
best French, and started singing “_La Marseillaise_.” Some of the
officers were dancing the Fox Trot and the Bunny Hug.
Brand rose with a smile and a sigh.
“Armistice night!” he said. “Thank God, there’s a crowd of fellows left
to do the dancing.... I can’t help thinking of the others.”
He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that
he drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on
Clatworthy’s shoulder.
“Care for a stroll?” he said. “This room is too foggy.”
“Not I, old lad,” said the boy. “This is Armistice Night--and the end
of the adventure. See it through!”
Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune was
playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master, on the
table-cloth.
I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille,
and did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that
it was the last night of the war--the end of the adventure, as young
Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure, from
first to last--a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like
grass. How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate,
cruelty, love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places
and perilous hours. Comradeship--perhaps that was the best of all:
the unselfish comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a
lowering of civilisation! Our heritage--what was it, after victory? Who
would heal the wounds of the world?
Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past
windows from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He
uttered only one word, but all his soul was in it.
“Peace!”
That night we went to see Eileen O’Connor and to enquire after the girl
Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister.