How would you like it if a thousand strings were always tugging at you, if you saw that every course meant the sacrifice of lovely and desirable things, or even the shattering of what you know to be unreplaceable? I'm the kind of stuff poets are made of, but Ihaven't the poet's gift, so I stagger about the world left-handed and game-legged ... Take the war. For me to fight would be worse than for another man to run away. From the bottom of my heart Ibelieve that it needn't have happened, and that all war is a blistering iniquity. And yet belief has got very little to do with virtue. I'm not as good a man as you, Hannay, who have never thought out anything in your life. My time in the Labour battalion taught me something. I knew that with all my fine aspirations I wasn't as true a man as fellows whose talk was silly oaths and who didn't care a tinker's curse about their soul.'
I remember that I looked at him with a sudden understanding. 'Ithink I know you. You're the sort of chap who won't fight for his country because he can't be sure that she's altogether in the right.
But he'd cheerfully die for her, right or wrong.'
His face relaxed in a slow smile. 'Queer that you should say that.
I think it's pretty near the truth. Men like me aren't afraid to die, but they haven't quite the courage to live. Every man should be happy in a service like you, when he obeys orders. I couldn't get on in any service. I lack the bump of veneration. I can't swallow things merely because I'm told to. My sort are always talking about "service", but we haven't the temperament to serve. I'd give all Ihave to be an ordinary cog in the wheel, instead of a confounded outsider who finds fault with the machinery ... Take a great violent high-handed fellow like you. You can sink yourself till you become only a name and a number. I couldn't if I tried. I'm not sure if I want to either. I cling to the odds and ends that are my own.'
'I wish I had had you in my battalion a year ago,' I said.
'No, you don't. I'd only have been a nuisance. I've been a Fabian since Oxford, but you're a better socialist than me. I'm a rancid individualist.'
'But you must be feeling better about the war?' I asked.
'Not a bit of it. I'm still lusting for the heads of the politicians that made it and continue it. But I want to help my country.
Honestly, Hannay, I love the old place. More, I think, than I love myself, and that's saying a devilish lot. Short of fighting - which would be the sin against the Holy Spirit for me - I'll do my damnedest. But you'll remember I'm not used to team work. If I'm a jealous player, beat me over the head.'
His voice was almost wistful, and I liked him enormously.
'Blenkiron will see to that,' I said. 'We're going to break you to harness, Wake, and then you'll be a happy man. You keep your mind on the game and forget about yourself. That's the cure for jibbers.'
As I journeyed to St Anton I thought a lot about that talk. He was quite right about Mary, who would never have married him. Aman with such an angular soul couldn't fit into another's. And then I thought that the chief thing about Mary was just her serene certainty. Her eyes had that settled happy look that I remembered to have seen only in one other human face, and that was Peter's ...
But I wondered if Peter's eyes were still the same.
I found the cottage, a little wooden thing which had been left perched on its knoll when the big hotels grew around it. It had a fence in front, but behind it was open to the hillside. At the gate stood a bent old woman with a face like a pippin. My make-up must have been good, for she accepted me before I introduced myself.
'God be thanked you are come,' she cried. 'The poor lieutenant needed a man to keep him company. He sleeps now, as he does always in the afternoon, for his leg wearies him in the night ... But he is brave, like a soldier ... Come, I will show you the house, for you two will be alone now.'
Stepping softly she led me indoors, pointing with a warning finger to the little bedroom where Peter slept. I found a kitchen with a big stove and a rough floor of planking, on which lay some badly cured skins. Off it was a sort of pantry with a bed for me.
She showed me the pots and pans for cooking and the stores she had laid in, and where to find water and fuel. 'I will do the marketing daily,' she said, 'and if you need me, my dwelling is half a mile up the road beyond the new church. God be with you, young man, and be kind to that wounded one.'
When the Widow Summermatter had departed I sat down in Peter's arm-chair and took stock of the place. It was quiet and ****** and homely, and through the window came the gleam of snow on the diamond hills. On the table beside the stove were Peter's cherished belongings - his buck-skin pouch and the pipe which Jannie Grobelaar had carved for him in St Helena, an aluminium field match-box I had given him, a cheap large-print Bible such as padres present to well-disposed privates, and an old battered _Pilgrim's _Progress with gaudy pictures. The illustration at which I opened showed Faithful going up to Heaven from the fire of Vanity Fair like a woodcock that has just been flushed. Everything in the room was exquisitely neat, and I knew that that was Peter and not the Widow Summermatter. On a peg behind the door hung his much-mended coat, and sticking out of a pocket Irecognized a sheaf of my own letters. In one corner stood something which I had forgotten about - an invalid chair.
The sight of Peter's plain little oddments made me feel solemn. Iwondered if his eyes would be like Mary's now, for I could not conceive what life would be for him as a cripple. Very silently Iopened the bedroom door and slipped inside.
He was lying on a camp bedstead with one of those striped Swiss blankets pulled up round his ears, and he was asleep. It was the old Peter beyond doubt. He had the hunter's gift of breathing evenly through his nose, and the white scar on the deep brown of his forehead was what I had always remembered. The only change since Ilast saw him was that he had let his beard grow again, and it was grey.
