PART NINETEEN

THE CITY OF FEAR

§ 1

Had Peter Jameson been an Irishman, a Gaul, or an Italian, his mind—as he taxied to Victoria Station—would have pictured to himself the physical charms of the wife he was leaving: her dark eyes framed in the golden aureole of hair, her smooth loving hands, the tones of her low voice. . . . But Peter, in his attitude towards women, was very much the Anglo-Saxon; and his thoughts of Pat, if he could have voiced them, would not have exceeded: “Dear old Pat, she’s a jolly good sort.”

Still, it needed effort not to think of her overmuch during the long journey back to his Brigade!

Three mornings after they had said good-bye, he lit a cigar; pulled tight the belt of his mackintosh; drew on his gauntlets; and set out on his first journey from Poperinghe to “Wipers.”

Little Willie, skittish after long inactivity, lashed out as his master mounted; danced erratically over the cobbles: Queen Bess and Jelks jogged soberly in rear.

It had been snowing. Under-foot the streets were still starred and sodden; and when they came to the great Square, they found men at work, shovelling dirty brown heaps to the side of the road. Gloomy, the place looked: gray-housed under its gray skies, inhospitable, a vision of discomfort. . . .

Peter rode on.

Scant houses gave way to flat open country—white on either side between the shell-pocked trees. It was very silent. An occasional car, a returning G.S. waggon, the clop of their own horses’ hoofs, alone broke the silence. They came to the red ruin of Vlamertinghe; passed the Church, halved by a 17-inch shell as a man halves cheese with a knife, and the four roads and the railway. Now, the road mounted, glistening bluely, veneered with mud. Peter heard, in front of him, the whistle and burst of a heavy shell; slowed to a walk.

At the top of the incline, between the trees, stood a little white toll-house. From it, emerged a man in khaki, holding up his hand.

“What’s the matter?” asked Peter.

“They’re shelling the road, sir. I should wait a little, if I were you. It’s big stuff.”

Peter dismounted; surveyed the country. In front of him the road dipped to a level-crossing; rose again. In the hollow, stood a red-and-yellow château, forlorn among dank gardens. Along the railway, to the left of the road, showed a line of dug-outs—gigantic molehills, brown and shapeless.

“Seems safe enough,” he said to his groom: but even as he spoke, there came the ominous whistle, the double crash of a five-nine shell, the black spattered fountain of it among the trees on the crest in front. Hell for leather through the spattered fountain, galloped a heavy two-horse waggon, driver lashing frantically from his seat. The waggon bounded across the railway, up the slope into safety. . . .

By now, a little crowd had congested round the toll-house. Peter heard the men talking. Said one:—

“Funny? I don’t call it funny. How long have you been out? Two months. I thought so. I’ve had over a year of it. You wait till you’ve seen a bit more. Funny indeed.”

They waited half-an-hour, as civilians wait for it to stop raining; trotted on up the slope. Now they could see the shattered roofs of Ypres. At that distance, it still looked like a city. Only as they came to it, was its nakedness, the ruin and desolation of the place, apparent.

The huge red bulk of the Asylum turned, as they approached, to a gutted skeleton of a building; and beyond, the houses which they passed leered at them in drunken burlesque, shameless. Here, a made bed lurched half out of a shattered window; there, shells had ripped away the whole front of a dwelling, exposing—as a lewd woman exposes herself—all the petty secrets of what had once been a home.

Left they swung, past the chipped and bulging Water Tower, past more ruins of villadom, into a bare tree-lined road; right again.

“Colonel doesn’t like the horses to come further than this by daylight, sir” warned Jelks.

“Very well.” Peter dismounted. “Which way do I go?”

“Just up to that bridge, sir. Then, left along the canal bank. You’ll see the Lock-House just in front of you.” . . .

Peter found the Weasel, reading his _Times_ by the light of their one oil lamp (it was just lunch-time) in a low, timber-shored dug-out which one approached down greasy steps, along duck-boards laid just above the water-level of a muddy creek.

“Hallo,” said the Weasel. “So you’ve turned up at last, have you? Jolly place this. What?”

“A trifle cramped, sir,” laughed Peter; and began to explain his overdueness.

“Oh, that’s all right,” chaffed Stark; “we’ll take the three days off your next leave. I’m glad you’re back though. Purves, as acting Adjutant, does not shine. Morency’s at the waggon-lines. I’ve had to do most of the office-work myself. He’s out on the wires now. We’re commanding a ‘Group.’ If you get that map down, I’ll show you the battery-positions.”

He indicated them.

Doctor Carson came in, bumping his head on the lintel as usual; said “Hallo, P.J. Jolly spot, isn’t it? Time for lunch, I think.”

Bombardier Michael appeared, carrying plates; followed by Peter’s batman Garton, with food from the tiny cook-house which Gunner Horne had found on a tottery foot-bridge over the creek.

Somehow, in spite of discomforts, Peter was glad to be back. Lunch over, he explored along the creek; was shown the doctor’s dug-out (shared willy-nilly with Purves); clambered a little mud-slope; found the “office,” a steel tunnel let into the foundations of what must once have been a house, and the “telephone-room”—a sunk cellar.

“I’ve put your bed in the office, sir,” announced Garton. “The room next to the Colonel’s leaks.”

“Good lad,” said Peter, looking down, from the little mound, onto the desolation of “Wipers.” . . .

In the months which followed, he grew to know that view as a bank-clerk knows Lombard Street. Below him, on his left, stretched the muddy waters of the Yser Canal, men living like water-rats all along its banks. On his right, stood the shattered lock-house beneath which slept Sergeant (once Corporal) Waller and the staff. In front of him, water lapped the stone quay of “Tattenham Corner,” with its tipsy blind lamp-posts, its twisted railings. For the rest, the panorama was just ruined houses, skeletons of houses, mockeries of homes: above them, jagged spires—broken dogs-teeth against winter skies. Sometimes at night, a blue, almost Whistlerian radiance brooded over this ghost of a city: but mostly blackness hid it—a blackness broken only by the silver of Véry lights, the orange of candle-flames in dug-outs, the crimson flash from a gun-muzzle. . . .

§ 2

It is owing to a higher capacity for adaptability that the human animal has defeated all the other animals on this planet; made himself in fact the “lord of creation.” For example, one need but take the Southdown Division during its winter in the “City of Fear.”

Their life—from the front-line infantry, frozen blue or blown to bits between rotting sandbags, to the drivers in the swamped horse-lines where the dumb beasts stood all day, tail to storm, fetlock-deep in mud, and whence men and beasts sallied forth every night up that road of death between the scarred poplars—was indescribably foul, a reversion to conditions at which an aristocratic caveman might well have jibbed.

In the fighting-zone itself, boredom followed fear, fear boredom, with monotonous and unending regularity. There were some days when never a rifle cracked, never a gun barked: others—as that Sunday which saw Stark’s headquarters moved to the Ramparts—when unanswered salvos rained on ruined streets, on gun-positions, and cross-roads, on stumbling fatigue-parties and sentries acrouch behind sandbags; when the very breastworks heaved and blew skyward, crashing down in mud and mine-débris on the corpses of the men who had inhabited them.

Still, the human animal endured. More, he learned to adapt himself to this condition and that; avoiding danger by instinct; finding his needed relaxation in petty amusements; making to himself, even, some social order out of the chaos wherein he dwelt. And since none, sallying forth, might know if he would come back alive, a certain careless spirit,—more hysteria than the “war humour” stay-at-homes christened it,—stiffened endurance, irradiated relaxation.

In the Ramparts, vast catacombe of old brickwork impervious to any artillery, were pianos, gramophones, picture-galleries selected from coloured supplements of the _Sketch_ or _La Vie Parisienne_; cheery Messes whereto came mud-soaked men out of the noisy night, eager for whisky, always ready to break into song. Some of those men died; some were wounded; some sickness took: but always other men replaced them—and life went on. Moreover, since the human animal cannot now exist without the written word, he even discovered, buried away among the ruins of the City, a printing-press, and type, and paper, from which evolved itself the semblance of a news-sheet—which he called _The Wipers Times_.

In this atmosphere, whatever glamour “active service” once possessed for P.J. soon disappeared. He did his work now, office and telephone duties varied by trips to front-line or batteries, with the meticulous accuracy of an automaton; wrote much to Patricia; and read the daily, weekly and monthly newspapers from cover to cover.

Towards the end of February, however, chance provided him with a new interest. Monsieur Van Woumen, the Belgian who had taken furnished his house in Lowndes Square, was anxious to renew the agreement. Peter, purely from habit, wrote back to the agent who made the offer, that he thought there should be an increase in the rent. The agent replied that his client would not increase the furnished rent; but might be prepared, on certain conditions, to take the remainder of the Crown lease off Peter’s hands. “Would you,” wrote the agent, “consider an offer for the furniture?”

The little deal kept Peter amused for a whole two months. He had no particular sentiment about either house or chattels. Patricia, consulted in a long business-like letter, approved of the scheme: making only certain reservations—some of her own bedroom furniture, the desk and sideboard in the dining-room, a blue carpet, and various other pieces she thought it inadvisable to dispose of. Monsieur Van Woumen paid his deposit; signed the agreement and completed the purchase-money by the time that—after three months and twenty-seven days which are best left to the imagination—the Southdown Artillery was ordered a week’s rest at Eecke.

§ 3

In and around Eecke, the Southdown Division Artillery abode ten good days. It was earliest April. Sun shone on clean farms, on green fields and white pavé roads. Men, cleaning harness and equipment or leading teams to water, whistled at their work: the lines which the City had graven on their faces, disappeared. They chaffered merrily with the peasants for eggs or milk; sang songs in the _estaminets_; strolled, cigarettes in mouth, to Steenvoorde or Caestre, to Godewaersvelde or Sylvestre Cappel.

General Blacklock gave a dinner to his Colonels; the Colonels dined and wined their Battery Commanders. They held a “race-meeting” at which Peter and Little Willie—to the intense joy of all spectators—took a scunner at the post-and-rails, rolling headlong and unharmed in the mud. But, principally, the Fourth Brigade played poker.

Night after night, Headquarter Mess resounded to, “Raise you fifty, sir,” “All right, P.J., I’ll see you.” Even Lodden caught the infection.

They played high; and they played fast: but they played neither high enough nor fast enough to catch the Weasel. Always, he defeated them; his hard blue eyes, his firm lips, gave never a hint of the cards in his hand. Even Conway, who had learned his poker wisdom in Iquique (where there is no rain but much whisky) and completed his education at the “Spotted Dog” in Kualalumpur (where there is much rain and still more whisky) acknowledged himself overmastered. Sandiland, the newcomer,—a blond clean-shaven Regular who looked more like an actor than a soldier—stone-walled in vain; was lured from his caution; heavily mulcted: Lodden, the richest member of the party, found bluff met with counter-bluff. Only Peter held his own. For Peter, in addition to knowing the game, knew his Colonel.

“Very wrong for me to play so high with my juniors,” Stark used to say—crushing notes into his pocket-book after the defeated ones had gone; “but they’ll only rob each other if I don’t rob them. Where did you learn the game, P.J.?”

“I, sir.” Peter would smile. “Oh, I’ve sat in some rather hot games in my time. In Havana, with the Tobacco Trust crowd; and when I was in New York.”

Then they would sit up over a last whisky-and-soda, discussing the play of this hand or that; till Stark produced his pet theory: “Say what you like, P.J., no man ever knows another till he’s drunk port and played poker with him.”

§ 4

Good days! but they came to an end: and once again the Brigade marched out, polished to the last bandolier-buckle, for Neuve Eglise.

“A mighty good place,” assured the Canadians—serious-minded men—from whom they “took over.” And so indeed, with one or two exceptions, they found it.

Batteries barked from a pleasant valley, under real trees: a valley down which a man might ride in safety. Peasants still lived, close to the firing line, in unshelled farms; crops were reaped within two miles of the trenches. Headquarters, instead of rat-infested cellars, found an unholed house—fields in rear, farm in front, Belgian landlady in the kitchen—at the foot of the village, below the skeleton of the Church.

But here, as everywhere along the front, danger lurked. Men, grown careless by long immunity, had neglected to fortify their habitations. During their first week, the Southdown Infantry paid—for this neglect—the price of one hundred men, killed in their rest-billets behind the firing line.

Still, compared with Ypres only a few miles away to northward, the place was—for gunners at any rate—paradise. . . .

They had been at Neuve Eglise a week, were just getting comfortable, when Miss Macpherson’s telegram arrived. The dispatch rider brought it, shortly before tea; and Peter, busy signing the correspondence for Artillery Headquarters in the bare back-room where Corporal Pitman and Driver Norris had established themselves, let the thing lie for a good five minutes before he opened it. Then he tore the envelope; read: “Simpson died yesterday can you get leave macpherson.”

He stood there, flimsy paper in his hands: no longer Lieutenant and Adjutant P. Jameson R.F.A., but Peter Jameson cigar merchant, of P. Jameson & Co., Lime Street, London. For a moment, he felt sorrow, the words “poor old Tom” framed themselves at his lips; till the brain, putting sorrow aside, insisted on business.

“Tom Simpson being dead”—reasoned the brain—“meant that Tom Simpson’s widow would have to be paid out in cash.” “In cash!” the brain repeated. What a fool he had been to renew that partnership agreement. But then, who would have imagined that of two partners, one on active service, the other at home, the civilian should die first. A fantastic trick—fantastic. . . .

Peter stalked out of the office, through the backyard, into the fields beyond.

“Wonder what’s upset ’im,” commented Driver Norris, looking up from his typewriter.

“He’s certainly worried,” admitted Corporal Pitman; and bent once more over his interminable “Army Forms.”

Alone in the big hedged grass field Peter Jameson, business man, wrestled with his problem. He must get leave of course. . . . But after that. It was no use going home without a plan. . . . He remembered suddenly that all leave had been cancelled the day before; strode back to the house.

The Colonel sat in the Mess—a comfortable room looking onto the road, light papered, tile-floored, furnished with some spindly chairs and a good dining-table.

“Leave!” said the Weasel, looking up from the vari-coloured map he had been studying. “You’ll be damn lucky if you get it. Hang it. I haven’t had _my_ second leave yet.”

Peter explained rather curtly, ending up: “If you’ll sign the application, sir, I’ll take it in to Bailleul tonight. . . .”

“Do you know, P.J.,” chaffed the Weasel as he wrote “Recommended. D. Stark Lt. Col.” on the carefully-typed foolscap, “that you’re a damned undisciplined fellow? God knows what’d happen if you were Adjutant to any one except myself.”

But Peter was in far too serious a mood for back-chat. Outside, Jelks waited with the horses. He took the paper; buttoned it carefully into his tunic-pocket; mounted; rode off across the fields to the main road. All the way to Bailleul—they made the eight miles of pavé within the hour—he conned over his arguments. “Urgent Private Affairs!” Well, this was urgent enough. . . .

Coolsdon the Staff Captain, busy with papers in a handsomely furnished room, seemed doubtful. “Let me talk to him,” said Peter; and was ushered into a plush-sofaed parlour where General Blacklock sat smoking a cigar.

“Leave!” sputtered Blacklock. “What for?”

“Urgent private affairs, sir. My partner died the day before yesterday.”

“Hm,” said the General. “Lot of money at stake?”

“About thirty thousand, sir.”

The Brigadier signed the application.

“Stay to dinner, won’t you?” he invited.

“No, thanks, sir. I want to take this to Division myself.”

At Divisional Headquarters, a vast house on the Rue d’Armentières, Peter, running up an imposing stair-case, met the very man he sought—a tall, fiery-eyed General with upturned moustaches and an eye-glass.

Peter saluted; and the “Whirligig”—who prided himself on never forgetting a face—growled out, “You’re Jameson of the 4th Brigade, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Can I speak to you for a minute?”

“Go ahead.”

For answer Peter, knowing his man, drew the application from his pocket. The General glanced at; noted the signatures at foot; said “Got a pencil?” . . .

“Hope you settle things all right,” he growled out as he handed back the document. “Q’s at the end of the passage. Tell ’em, with my compliments, to send this on to Corps at once, and mark it Urgent.”

* * * * *

Twenty-four hours later Peter, opening the big envelope from Artillery Headquarters, found his Leave Warrant. This time, the yellow ticket seemed to hold no promise of enjoyment!