“I suppose it is,” he reflected. “But what am I to do? It wouldn’t be playing the game to accept promotion over a friend’s head.” . . .
“No. I suppose not.” She began to realize that his seriousness had its reasons. “But the men?” she asked.
“I know.” He grew very silent. In those three months Peter had learned a great affection for “B” Company, which he had watched grow from a mere mob to an orderly body; a body to be moved at will and by a word. Individuals too, he would be sorry to part from: Gladeney, Sergeant Atkins, his servant Priestley, “long” Longstaffe who started the choruses from the leading “four” in Number Five platoon, a funny little chap called Haddock, always untidy but always willing. “It’s best for them, though. Rows between officers don’t do the men any good. But you’re right about it being a failure, Pat. I suppose that’s what’s making me so mad.”
Only then, did she quite understand. It was failure: but failure excused by loyalty: loyalty to a friend, loyalty to his sense of playing the game, loyalty to that intangible thing—the spirit of a regiment, against which individuals do not count.
“I’m sorry.” She laid a hand on his arm. He took it, rather shamefacedly: said “Come on, old thing. Let’s go out for a walk.”
§ 3
They walked straight out of the hotel into the arms of a voluble stout little civilian, with eyebrows like the horns of a stag-beetle, a blue silk muffler round his throat and a bowler hat, not quite clean, crammed down over his big head.
“And how are you, Mr. Jameson? Very glad to see you, I’m sure. My cousin Sam told me I might run into you down here.”
Peter introduced Marcus Bramson, owner of Bramson’s Pullman Virginia’s (“the cigarette you must try”) to a slightly standoffish Patricia.
“A fine fellow, your husband, Mrs. Jameson. Everybody in the trade is proud of the way he enlisted. Right at the start, too. I was telling my cousin Sam, only the other night, how grateful he ought to be to work for such a man.”