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.”

Neither then, nor for many days, did Patricia stop to consider the miraculousness of Beatrice’s war-time journey. The romance of the girl’s coming sufficed its hour.

Yet the journey’s self was a romance: a romance of one girl’s persistence. There had been so many difficulties—her parents, the U. S. passport office, British Admiralty regulations; but Beatrice, smile in her eyes and fear at her heart, surmounted them one by one. The call came! and she must answer the call. Nothing else mattered. . . .

Beatrice was thinking of these things as the taxi circled away from Henley Station; took the Harpsden road. So much lay behind her; so much she had yet to face. Of the past, nothing remained except the big trunk clumsily roped beside the driver, the suit-case at her feet.

This England amazed her. She had expected to find at least some semblance to her own country; but, except for the language, everything seemed foreign—foreign and rather hostile. Also, nobody cared. Personalities didn’t exist. She was Beatrice Cochrane: she told herself this several times, as though she might forget it—and for all England cared she might have been Sally Smith. England had welcomed her gruffly in the pitch darkness of a choppy sea; pitch darkness out of which men from low decks had shouted to men on high. England had decanted her as an “alien”; fussed over her passport; shoved her into a train; told her to pull down the blinds in case of air-raids—and left her to her own devices. . . . The rest of her journey seemed to Beatrice’s fantasy a threading of her way through millions of soldiers. She had never seen so many soldiers. And nobody cared!

Even the soldier at her side—the thin careworn man who looked so like Francis—didn’t seem particularly interested. After his first spasm of surprise, he had subsided into Englishness. Apparently, he took it for granted that she was going to stay with him, to marry his cousin. Obviously, he neither knew nor wanted to know what his wife had written to her, or why.

“Jolly, isn’t it?” said Peter. “The country, I mean.”

“Yes. Very—jolly.” She didn’t really think it “jolly”; she thought it rather disappointing. And they were going too fast to see much more than hedges and fields switching by. The fields looked very small; the roadside cottages they passed, very modern.

“Is Sunflowers far from Henley?” she asked.

“About another five miles.”

A golf-course flashed by; more hedges; a tumble-down-looking farm-house. She began to think, shyly, about Francis. What would he say to her, she to him? Had she done right in dashing half across the world at a letter from an unknown Englishwoman? . . .

Peter leaned forward, said to the driver: “Take the Arlsfield road when you come to it. Straight on through the village and then up to Tebbits’ Farm.”

The man merely nodded. They came to a village-green; shot across it. More hedges—a red-brick townlet. Now, the road rose straight ahead of them; looking forward over her bobbing trunk, Beatrice saw a tree-crowned ridge.

“Oh,” she said suddenly, “what a lovely house!”

“That’s Sunflowers.” He did not seem particularly proud of the place; but he jumped out of the car politely enough; swung the gate for it to enter; ran to the front door. The door was open; and Beatrice saw a woman standing in the doorway—a tall golden-haired woman.

“Pat,” ejaculated Peter, “there’s a girl—”

“I know,” said Patricia, “I’ve been expecting her.”

The next moment, Beatrice found herself being helped out of the car; shaken hands with; asked if she’d like to wash before tea.

“I must ask Peter one question first; you don’t mind, do you? He’s just been up for his Board, and I want to know what they’ve done to him. Peter!”

“Yes, dear. . . .”

Beatrice tried not to listen; but she couldn’t help hearing the brief colloquy: “What happened?” “Oh, they fired me out. _Napoo._ _Fini._” Then Patricia took her by the arm; rushed her through a brightly furnished hall, up some blue-carpeted stairs to a chintz-curtained room—and there, without any warning at all, her hostess burst into tears.

The American girl put a tentative hand on the English-woman’s arm: “What is it? Oh, do tell me what it is? Has anything happened to Mr. Jameson—anything bad, I mean?”

“No, nothing bad. Just something wonderful”—Patricia smiled through her tears. “Excuse me for welcoming you so stupidly. But it’s been such a strain—nearly three years of it—and now that it’s really over, I”—she dabbed viciously at her eyes—“I’m a little upset, that’s all. Do please forgive me, Miss Cochrane.”

“Forgive?”—Beatrice’s gray eyes smiled up into her new friend’s face. “It’s I who ought to be forgiven. You wanted to talk to each other—and I was in the way. Do go down to him. I’ll be quite all right. . . .”

For answer, Patricia kissed the girl’s cheek. “My dear, I wouldn’t have him see me cry for anything in the world. That was why I ran you up the stairs so quickly.” She stepped to a bell-push by the fireplace; rang. A servant appeared. “Bring up Miss Cochrane’s bag, please, and tell Mr. Jameson we’ll be down for tea in twenty minutes.”

Beatrice, unpinning her hat at the mirror on the oak toilet-table, thought to herself, “Well, some of them care anyway.”

“And now, my dear”—her hostess’ voice interrupted reverie—“let’s talk sensibly. . . .”

When the two women at last came arm-in-arm down the staircase, it seemed to Peter Jameson as though it was Beatrice who had been crying; but she talked happily enough through tea-time—and refused his escort beyond the ricks of Tebbits’ Farm. Peter, watching the slight figure dwindling down the meadow-path into the mist of a March twilight, could not help thinking to himself, “A girl like that is much too good for poor old Francis.” Then, remembering that he had a bone to pick with Patricia, he strode rapidly back to Sunflowers.

§ 4

Francis Gordon sat at his great desk by the open window. All day he had been conscious of springtime, of a stir in his veins, a longing, a dissatisfaction. What did springtime or any time matter to him—to Francis Gordon? All his real springtimes lay behind: in front, stretched nothing but a gray void of seasons—hopeless and lonely. His brave days had gone down in dust. He was a cripple—a drag on the swift wheels of humanity—clog in a bright machine. And his one puny Power, the power of words he had once deemed so strong, that too availed nothing. “To write!” he thought, “O God, to _write_ when the world’s hand is on the sword-hilt. . . .”

He looked out across Arlsfield Park. The sun, just dipping behind crest-line, irradiated the broad avenue of close-bitten turf. Feeding bunnies made sable dots all about the green: a herd of deer, antlered shadows, moved in and out among the new-leafed chestnut trees. At avenue’s end, the hills swelled blue-purple to a rose wash of sky. . . .

But sunset’s beauty made no appeal to the heart of Francis Gordon. It felt cold, the heart within him, heavy with the sorrows of the world. Sunsettings and sunrisings—beauties of inanimate senseless things—God’s mockeries at humanity! God? . . . The man laughed.

As if there were a God! He—whoever He might be—was no god, but a devil, a torturer. Yet men tricked themselves into this idea of godhead. Every cruelty in the world had been perpetrated in the name of some deity. The very Beasts in Gray wore His Name for device. And he, Francis Gordon, in the pride of his brain, had submitted to such trickery. For the sake of this fool-god, he had renounced the one woman.

In return for that renunciation, the fool-god had promised him the Power of Words. He was to write, to spend his life at this stupid desk. . . .

Meanwhile, _men_ fought. . . .

He began to think of his own tiny share in that great fighting. Even there, he had not played a man’s part. Better to be one of those tortured men he had seen in the prison-camps of the Beast, than—a spy. Yes, a spy—it came down to that in the end. If only he had killed one Beast, killed it with his own hands, squeezed the life-blood from its foul throat. . . .

Now, thought of the Beast obsessed him. The horrors he had seen in the Land of the Beast danced uncleanly sarabands in his brain. And God, the gentle Jesus black-coated priests still whined about on Sundays, God permitted these horrors. . . . Better then, the old gods, Thor and Odin, whose priests dipped hands in blood and slew. . . .

A vast wave of hatred surged over the man’s soul. There could be no happiness on earth until the Beast was exterminated; male and cub and female, the Beast must perish. There must be one great killing! With fire and sword, men must traverse the Country of the Beast: not only the Beast, but all his works—his handiwork and his mind-work, the corrupting thought and the corrupting accomplishment—all these must be wiped out, the very memory of them be obliterated. . . . And after that, there should be no more gods, neither Jesus nor Jehovah, neither Thor nor Odin—only Men, men and women, walking a new clean earth, unafraid of any Beast or any god. . . .

In his hatred, it seemed to Francis Gordon as though Power had come back to him. In this great killing, words too might play their part. Not the words of any fool-god, but the words of a cripple—a cripple who knew that there was neither god nor devil, but only Man, man and the Beast. . . .

And suddenly a Voice spoke to Francis Gordon, a stern clear Voice from the heart of the sunset: “Thou Fool,” cried the Voice. “Thou blind Fool! If the Beast perish, man also perishes. For this is God’s Purpose.”

But the mind of the man answered the Voice out of the sunset: “There is no God. I, a cripple, am greater than any god. In mine own mind, have I renounced Thee. Thou art the Liar of the World. There is no god save Man.”

And God said: “Dost thou deny Me?”

“Aye,” answered the man, “by the existence of the Beast, I deny Thee. By my own courage, I deny Thee. By the power which is mine, I deny Thee. By every tortured body in this world, and by my own tortured body, I deny Thee.”

“Yet thou hearest me,” said God.

Now, it was Francis Gordon who spoke. His twisted body rose from its seat by the desk; his eyes looked unafraid into the heart of the darkling sunset. “There is no god. God’s purpose is a fraud and a lie. This voice which I hear is the lying voice of my own mind.”

Very faintly came the answer out of the sunset: “I am in thy mind as I am in thy body. Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.”

Then it seemed to Francis as though some veil had been drawn back from across the world; as though, for the first time, he saw God’s Purpose plain. Never while earth endured would the Beast utterly perish: for God had created the Beast even as He created man to subdue the Beast. Without this menace of the Beast, man’s finest attribute—the very manhood of him—would atrophy. He would become flabby, emasculate: and in his flabbiness, he would perish.

And looking into his own mind as the Voice bade him, Francis Gordon saw for the first time the true meaning of this dream he had christened, for want of better name, “Anglo-Saxondom.” Anglo-Saxondom was Man’s bulwark against the Beast: the spirit and essence of Liberty: a federation not of leagues and treaties, of obligations and entangling alliances, not even of common blood—but a Federation of Sentiment: a tie of mutual thought and mutual speech and mutual Ideals. So long as this Federation, the Federation of the English-speaking races, held together, the world could be safe from the Beast: for this Federation was selfless, it sought no domination save the domination of Good over Evil: it was of the Spirit, not of the Flesh; friend of every decent human being, foe to every Beast; God’s gift for suffering Humanity. . . .

* * * * *

A coal, dropping in the grate, aroused him from his dreaming. It had grown almost dark. Trees and turf and hills beyond were all veiled in misty shadows—things of the twilight, ghosts of a world. And with the glory of the sunset, the glory of his visioning departed.

Doubt tore him as with pincers. Once again, this Voice he called God had lied to him. The English-speaking races were not united, could never be united. He had imagined a vain thing. . . .

“Both by thy mind and by thy body, I send thee a Sign.” The words of the Voice came back to him. Mockery! The Voice had lied. There was no God. . . .

Voices! He must get away from voices. Always, he heard voices. A second ago it had been God’s voice: now, it was the voice of a girl, _her_ voice. He could have sworn he heard her voice. Some one was coming upstairs. Some one was opening the door. . . .

“Francis!”—more voices, would he never be done with voices—“Francis!”

His eyes, jerked suddenly from dreaming, saw a shadow glide across the room towards him. He felt his heart give a great leap as though he were dying.

“Beatrice!” he stammered, “Beatrice!”

Words went from them. They stood speechless. Their hands met in the twilight. Lips faltered to lips. Then she was in his arms; and God grew real at last. . . .