"I left them outside the orderly-room," said Peter, "except for some that a porter was to bring up. Perhaps they'll be here by now. I've got a stretcher and so on."
"I'll go and see," said Pennell, "and I'll put my man on to get you straight, as you haven't a batman yet." And he strolled off.
"Come to my room a minute," said Arnold, and Peter followed him.
Arnold's room was littered with stuff. The table was spread with mess accounts, and the corners of the little place were stacked up with a gramophone, hymn-books, lantern-slides, footballs, boxing-gloves, and such-like. The chairs were both littered, but Arnold cleared one by the simple expedient of piling all its contents on the other, and motioned his visitor to sit down. "Have a pipe?" he asked, holding out his pouch.
Peter thanked him, filled and handed it back, then lit his pipe, and glanced curiously round the room as he drew on it. "You're pretty full up," he said.
"Fairly," said the other. "There's a Y.M.C.A. here, and I run it more or less, and Tommy likes variety. He's a fine chap, Tommy; don't you think so?"
Peter hesitated a second, and the other glanced at him shrewdly.
"Perhaps you haven't been out long enough," he said.
"Perhaps not," said Peter. "Not but what I do like him. He's a cheerful creature for all his grousing, and has sterling good stuff in him. But religiously I don't get on far. To tell you the truth, I'm awfully worried about it."
The elder man nodded. "I guess I know, lad," he said. "See here. I'm Presbyterian and I reckon you are Anglican, but I expect we're up against much the same sort of thing. Don't worry too much. Do your job and talk straight, and the men'll listen more than you think."
"But I don't think I know what to tell them," said Peter miserably, but drawn out by the other.
Arnold smiled. "The Prayer Book's not much use here, eh? But forgive me; I don't mean to be rude. I know what you mean. To tell you the truth, I think this war is what we padres have been needing. It'll help us to find our feet. Only--this is honest--if you don't take care you may lose them. I have to keep a tight hold of that"--and he laid his hand on a big Bible--"to mind my own."
Peter did not reply for a minute. He could not talk easily to a stranger. But at last he said: "Yes; but it doesn't seem to me to fit the case. Men are different. Times are different. The New Testament people took certain things for granted, and even if they disagreed, they always had a common basis with the Apostles. Men out here seem to me to talk a different language: you don't know where to begin. It seems to me that they have long ago ceased to believe in the authority of anyone or anything in religion, and now to-day they actually deny our very commonplaces. But I don't know how to put it," he added lamely.