II

It was when the Peace Treaty had been signed but not ratified by the

representatives of Germany and Austria that I met some of the friends

with whom I had travelled along many roads of war or had met in scenes

which already seemed far back in history. In London, after a journey

to America, I came again in touch with young Harding, whom I had seen

last on his way home to his pretty wife, who had fretted at his long

absence, and Charles Fortune, whose sense of humour had made me laugh

so often in the time of tragedy. Those were chance meetings in the

eddies of the great whirlpool of London life, as I saw other faces,

strange for a moment or two, until the difference between a field-cap

and a bowler hat, a uniform and civil clothes, was wiped out by a look

of recognition, and the sound of a remembered voice.

Not by chance but by a friendship which had followed me across the

world with written words, I found myself once more in the company of

Wickham Brand, and with him went again to spend some evenings with

Eileen O’Connor, who was now home in Kensington, after that grim drama

which she had played so long in Lille.

With “Daddy” Small I had been linked up by a lucky chain of

coincidences which had taken us both to New York at the same time and

brought us back to Europe on the same boat, which was the White Star

liner _Lapland_.

My chance meeting with Harding led to a renewal of friendship which was

more of his seeking than mine, though I liked him a good deal. But he

seemed to need me, craving sympathy which I gave with sincerity, and

companionship, which I could not give so easily, being a busy man.

It was on the night when London went mad, because of Peace, though not

so mad, I was told, as on the night of Armistice. It all seemed mad to

me when I was carried like a straw in a raging torrent of life which

poured down the Strand, swirled round Trafalgar Square, and choked

all channels westwards and eastwards of Piccadilly Circus. The spirit

of London had broken bounds. It came wildly from mean streets in the

slum quarters to the heart of the West End. The worst elements had

surged up and mingled with the middle-class folk and those who claim

exclusiveness by the power of wealth. In ignorance that all barriers

of caste were to be broken that night, “society” women, as they are

called, rather insolent in their public display of white shoulders, and

diamonds, and furs, set out in motor-cars for hotels and restaurants

which had arranged Peace dinners, and Peace dances. Some of them,

I saw, were unaccompanied by their own men, whom they were to meet

later, but the vacant seats in their open cars were quickly filled by

soldiers, seamen, or merry devils in civil clothes who climbed over the

backs of the cars when they were brought to a standstill in the crush

of vast crowds. Those uninvited guests, some of them wearing women’s

bonnets, most of them fluttering with flags pinned to their coats, all

of them provided with noise-making instruments, behaved with ironical

humour to the pretty ladies, touched their coiled hair with “ticklers,”

blew loud blasts on their toy trumpets, delivered cockney orations to

them for the enjoyment of the crowds below. Some of the pretty ladies

accepted the situation with courage and good-humour, laughing with

shrill mirth at their grotesque companions. Others were frightened,

and angry. I saw one girl try to beat off the hands of men clambering

about her car. They swarmed into it and paid no heed to her cries of

protest....

All the flappers were out in the Strand, and in Trafalgar Square, and

many streets. They were factory-girls, shop-girls, office-girls, and

their eyes were alight with adventure and a pagan ecstasy. Men teased

them as they passed with the long “ticklers,” and they, armed with

the same weapon, fought duels with these aggressors, and then fled,

and were pursued into the darkness of side-streets, where they were

caught and kissed. Soldiers in uniform, English, Scots, Canadians,

Australians, came lurching along in gangs, arm-in-arm, then mingled

with the girls, changed head-gear with them, struggled and danced and

stampeded with them. Seamen, three sheets in the wind, steered an

uneven course through this turbulent sea of life, roaring out choruses,

until each man had found a maid for the dance of joy.

London was a dark forest with nymphs and satyrs at play in the glades

and Pan stamping his hoofs like a giddy goat. All the passions let

loose by war, the breaking-down of old restraints, the gladness of

youth at escape from death, provided the motive-power, unconscious and

primitive, behind this Carnival of the London crowds.

From some church a procession came into Trafalgar Square, trying

to make a pathway through the multitude. A golden Cross was raised

high and clergymen in surplices, with acolytes and faithful women,

came chanting solemn words. The crowd closed about them. A mirthful

sailor teased the singing women with his tickler. Loud guffaws, shrill

laughter, were in the wake of the procession, though some men stood

to attention as the Cross passed, and others bared their heads and

something hushed the pagan riot a moment.

At the windows in Pall Mall men in evening clothes who had been

officers in the world-war, sat by the pretty women who had driven

through the crowds, looking out on the noisy pageant of the street. A

piano-organ was playing, and two young soldiers danced with ridiculous

grace, imitating the elegance and languorous ecstasy of society

dancers. One of them wore a woman’s hat and skirt and was wonderfully

comic.

I stood watching them, a little stupefied by all the noise and tumult

of this “Peace” night, and with a sense of tragic irony, remembering

millions of boys who lay dead in quiet fields and the agony of many

peoples in Europe. It was then that I saw young Harding. He was sitting

in his club window just above the dancing soldiers, and looking out

with a grave and rather woebegone face, remarkable in contrast with

the laughing faces of fellow-clubmen and their women. I recognised him

after a moment’s query in my mind, and said, “Hulloa, Harding!”

He stared at me and I saw the sudden dawning of remembrance.

“Come in,” he answered. “I had no idea you were back again!”

So I went into his club and sat by his side at the open window, glad of

this retreat from the pressure and tumult of the mob below.

He talked conventionally for a little while, and asked me whether I

had had “a good time” in the States, and whether I was busy, and why

the Americans seemed so hostile to President Wilson. I understood from

him that he approved of the Peace Treaty and was glad that Germany and

Austria had been “wiped off the map” as far as it was humanly possible.

We chatted like that for what I suppose was something more than

half-an-hour, while we looked out upon the seething multitude in the

street below, when suddenly the boy’s mask fell from him, so abruptly,

and with such a naked revelation of a soul in anguish, that concealment

was impossible.

I saw him lean forward with his elbows on the window-sill and his

hands clenching an iron bar. His face had become like his shirt front,

almost as white as that. A kind of groan came from him, like that of

a man badly wounded. The people on either side of him turned to look

at him, but he was unconscious of them, as he stared at something in

the street. I followed the direction of his eyes and guessed that he

was looking at a motor-car which had been stopped by the crowd who

were surging about it. It was an open car and inside were a young man

and woman in fancy-dress as Pierrot and Columbine. They were standing

up and pelting the crowd with long coloured streamers, which the mob

caught, and tossed back again, with shouts of laughter. The girl was

very pretty, with an audacious little face beneath the white sugar-loaf

cap, and her eyes were on fire. Her companion was a merry-eyed fellow,

clean-shaven and ruddy-faced (for he had not chalked it to Pierrot’s

whiteness), and looked to me typical of a naval officer or one of our

young air men. I could see nothing to groan about in such a sight.

“What’s wrong, Harding?”

I touched him on the elbow, for I did not like him to give himself away

before the other company in the window-seat.

He rose at once, and walked, in a stumbling way, across the room, while

I followed. The room was empty where we stood.

“Aren’t you well?” I asked.

He laughed in a most tragic way.

“Did you see those two in the car? Pierrot and Columbine?”