He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that he drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on Clatworthy’s shoulder.
“Care for a stroll?” he said. “This room is too foggy.”
“Not I, old lad,” said the boy. “This is Armistice Night—and the end of the adventure. See it through!”
Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune was playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master, on the table-cloth.
I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille, and did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that it was the last night of the war—the end of the adventure, as young Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure, from first to last—a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like grass. How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate, cruelty, love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places and perilous hours. Comradeship—perhaps that was the best of all: the unselfish comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a lowering of civilisation! Our heritage—what was it, after victory? Who would heal the wounds of the world?
Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past windows from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He uttered only one word, but all his soul was in it.
“Peace!”
That night we went to see Eileen O’Connor and to enquire after the girl Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister.