§ 1
If this were a “war-book,” at least two chapters might here be devoted to the months which the Fourth Southdown Brigade spent in and around Neuve Eglise. But since we are only considering war as it affected the fortunes of our Mr. Jameson, his wife Patricia, and a few other individuals, the reader at this point—as once before, in the City of Fear—is asked to use his or her imagination.
Suffices, that the war went on. In England, goaded by a strong Press, vacillating politicians introduced their weakling Conscription Act with a brave fanfare of trumpets; a few perverts developed a “conscience” which did not prevent their eating food brought to them at the risk of human life; the bulk of the nation, humping its pack with a shrug, were much consoled by the official announcement of the Jutland Victory as a defeat. In the firing-line, the Huns hammered vainly at Verdun, the British and French prepared counter-attack on the Somme.
But Peter Jameson, Cigar Merchant, cared for none of these things. He had reached that particular point in the soldier’s existence which is only described by the French word “cafard” or its Anglo-Saxon equivalent “fed-up.”
How much the mental, how much the physical contributed to this “cafard” of our Mr. Jameson—are questions for the psychologist. Remain the facts that he was bored, irritable, depressed—and more intolerably efficient in the routine duties of his Adjutancy than ever.
Only two thoughts consoled: one personal, “I’ve made such a muck of things at home that perhaps the front is the best place for me”: and the other, “Besides, if anything does happen—Pat and the kids will get that insurance money.”
His home letters, of course, continued to depict the Brigade as a permanent poker-school established some leagues behind the firing-line!
§ 2
Meanwhile, the inevitable wastages of warfare—commenced at Loos and continued in the City of Fear—went on among that collection of voluntary fighters known as the Fourth Southdown Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. Now “re-organization” came to complete the process. “Billy” Williams and his command were transferred en bloc to the enlarged Divisional Ammunition Column—still presided over by that same Colonel Mallory who had dined with the Weasel on Christmas Eve, 1914: Bromley and his eighteen-pounders were exchanged for a Howitzer battery: Doctor Carson secured a specialist appointment at the Base—his place being taken by Laurillard, a young and not too sympathetic student of St. Bartholomew’s hospital: Horrocks the Veterinary officer took promotion, Morency a leg-breaking fall from his horse, and Stanley Purves to an impassioned flow of soldier poetry.
“Shan’t have a friend left at this rate,” thought our Mr. Jameson. And then to crown disasters, the Weasel announced his own promotion to Brigadier.