“Arthur came home. He’s in the R.F.C.[8] somewhere or other. Rummy devil. Rather like you. Never writes letters.”
They came without mishap into the great Place of Béthune; and Peter saw, black by moonlight, round holes in the shining roofs—sole sign of long-range bombardment.
The car stopped. “This is my billet. Come in and have a drink, old man.”
They passed up a flight of stairs; Francis drew matches from his pocket; lit candles on the mantelpiece. Between them—like a saint’s picture on a shrine—stood a photograph, a brand-new photograph of Beatrice Cochrane!
Half past nine at night, Friday, September the 24th, 1915!
In the quiet roomy library of Doctor Baynet’s home in Harley Street, London, Patricia sat talking to her father.
“He says in this letter, that they aren’t in action yet.” The gold head lifted from the pencilled scrawl she had been studying: the dark eyes looked quietly towards the man at the littered desk.
“I’m glad of that, my dear,” said Heron Baynet; and went on with his work.
Nine-thirty, “pip emma,” on the last day of the Loos bombardment.
Outside the little house at Annequin, cigar between his lips, Peter Jameson stood watching the show. All round the eastward horizon, gun-flashes winked and blazed, lighting up the sky. Far to southward, beat the continuous drum of French seventy-fives, firing _la rafale_. Every half-minute, from one or other of the pits below the shadowy trees in front of him, spurted a flash of orange, followed by the bark of an 18-pounder, the dwindled hiss of flighting shell, the faint thud of its alighting. In the pits themselves, laboured tired and grimy men, sleepless for three days and four nights;—an orderly labour, unhurried: shell to open breech, breech-block clanged home, eye to dial-sight, hand to range-dial: “_Set_,” “_Ready_,” eye to watch, fingers to ear-drums, “_Fire_,” roar of piece discharging, rocking carriage, stink of cordite, “_Repeat!_”
So men laboured, unhurried but unsleeping, at Vermelles and Noyelles-Les-Vermelles, at Cuinchy and Noeux-Les-Mines, northwards and southwards. The intermittent thunder of their labours came to Peter, standing alone in the moonlight: and with it came the jingle and clank of ammunition waggons, the far crackle of an occasional machine-gun, the sound of Scotch singing from shuttered houses in the village on his left.