I should certainly never have met him had it not been for Peter Westcott. Westcott, somewhere in the spring of Nineteen-Nineteen, took for a time the very handsome rooms of Robsart, the novelist, at Hortons in Duke Street, St. James's. It was strange to see Peter in those over-grand, over-lavish rooms. I had known him first in the old days when his Reuben Hallard and Stone House had taken London by storm, and when everything seemed "set fair" for his future. Then everything crumbled: his child died, his wife ran away with his best friend, and his books failed. I didn't hear of him again until Nineteen-Fifteen, when somebody saw him in France. His name was mentioned on several occasions through the terrible years, but nobody seemed to know him well. He kept away, apparently, from everybody. Then on the very day that the Armistice was signed, I met him in the crowd about Whitehall, looking just the same as in the old days—a little older, a little stouter, stocky and resolved and aloof and observant, in a world, as it had always seemed, to which he only half belonged, a sailor on leave in a country strange, dangerous, and interesting.
But this story is not about Westcott. To cut this prologue short, then, he asked me to come and see him, and I went to the magnificent Horton rooms, not once, not twice, but many times. I had loved Peter in the old days. I loved him much more now. The story of those years of his life that immediately followed the war is a wonderful story. I hope that one day he will give it to the world; whether he does or no, I saw in those summer months the beginning of the events that were to lead him back to life again, to give him happiness and self-confidence and optimism once more, to make him the man he now is.
In the story of that recovery, Benedick Jones has his share; but, I must repeat, this is Benedick Jones's story and not Westcott's.
The first day that I saw Jones was one lovely evening in April when Peter's (or rather, Robsart's) sitting-room was lit with a saffron-purple glow, and the clouds beyond the window were like crimson waves rolling right down upon us across the pale, glassy sky. In the middle of this splendour Jones stood, a whisky-and-soda in one hand, and a large meerschaum pipe in the other. He was, of course, orating about something. The first thing that struck me was his size. It was not only that he was well over six feet and broad in proportion, but there seemed to be in his large mouth, his great head with its untidy mop of yellow hair, his big, red hands, a spiritual size as well. He gave one always the impression of having more fire within his soul than he could possibly manage....
He was fat, but not unpleasantly so. His clothes were comfortably loose, but not disorderly. His stomach was too prominent, but the breadth of his chest saved him from unsightliness. His face was a full moon, red, freckled, light yellow eyebrows, light yellow, rather ragged moustache. He was always laughing—sometimes when he was astonished or indignant.
He was forever in the middle of the room orating somebody or something, and his favourite attitude was to stand with his legs wide apart, a pipe or a glass or a book in his extended hand, his body swaying a little with the rhythm of his eager talk.
On this afternoon, I remember, he really seemed to fill the room—words were pouring from his mouth in a torrent, and I stood, stopped by this flood, at the door. Westcott, lying back in a leather chair, smoking, listened, a smile on his generally grave face, something of the indulgent look in his eyes that one might give to a favoured and excited child.
"Hullo, Lester!" he cried, jumping up. "Come along—This is Captain Jones. Bomb, let me introduce you to Mr. Lester. I told you to read To Paradise years ago in France, but of course you never have."
"No, I never have," cried Jones, turning round upon me very suddenly, seizing my hand and shaking it up and down like the handle of a pump. "How do you do! How do you do! I'm just delighted to see you. I don't read much, you know. Better for me if I read more. But I've got to take exercise. I'm getting fat." Then he wheeled round again. "But, Peter," he went on, suddenly taking a great draught from his glass, "it was the most extraordinary thing—I swear it was just as I'm telling you—the girl gave the man a look, spat at him, and ran for her life. There were three men after her then, one a vicious-looking little devil——"
I sat down in the chair nearest to me and listened. I heard a most astonishing story. I'm afraid that I cannot remember at this distance of time all the details of it: it had murder in it, and rape and arson and every sort of miraculous escape, and apparently, so far as I could make it out, Jones had been a spectator of all that he described. There were discrepancies in his narrative, I remember, about which I should have liked to question him, but the words came out so fast, and the narrator's own personal conviction in the reality of his story was so absolute, that questions seemed an impertinence. He stopped at last, wiped his brow, collapsed upon a chair, finished his whisky with a great sucking smack of approval, dug his fingers into the bowl of his pipe, struck matches that were, one by one, ineffective, and lay scattered about him on the floor, and then smiled at me with a beaming countenance.