Had Peter Jameson been an Irishman, a Gaul, or an Italian, his mind—as he taxied to Victoria Station—would have pictured to himself the physical charms of the wife he was leaving: her dark eyes framed in the golden aureole of hair, her smooth loving hands, the tones of her low voice.... But Peter, in his attitude towards women, was very much the Anglo-Saxon; and his thoughts of Pat, if he could have voiced them, would not have exceeded: “Dear old Pat, she’s a jolly good sort.”

Still, it needed effort not to think of her overmuch during the long journey back to his Brigade!

Three mornings after they had said good-bye, he lit a cigar; pulled tight the belt of his mackintosh; drew on his gauntlets; and set out on his first journey from Poperinghe to “Wipers.”

Little Willie, skittish after long inactivity, lashed out as his master mounted; danced erratically over the cobbles: Queen Bess and Jelks jogged soberly in rear.

It had been snowing. Under-foot the streets were still starred and sodden; and when they came to the great Square, they found men at work, shovelling dirty brown heaps to the side of the road. Gloomy, the place looked: gray-housed under its gray skies, inhospitable, a vision of discomfort....

Peter rode on.

Scant houses gave way to flat open country—white on either side between the shell-pocked trees. It was very silent. An occasional car, a returning G.S. waggon, the clop of their own horses’ hoofs, alone broke the silence. They came to the red ruin of Vlamertinghe; passed the Church, halved by a 17-inch shell as a man halves cheese with a knife, and the four roads and the railway. Now, the road mounted, glistening bluely, veneered with mud. Peter heard, in front of him, the whistle and burst of a heavy shell; slowed to a walk.

At the top of the incline, between the trees, stood a little white toll-house. From it, emerged a man in khaki, holding up his hand.

“What’s the matter?” asked Peter.

“They’re shelling the road, sir. I should wait a little, if I were you. It’s big stuff.”

Peter dismounted; surveyed the country. In front of him the road dipped to a level-crossing; rose again. In the hollow, stood a red-and-yellow chÂteau, forlorn among dank gardens. Along the railway, to the left of the road, showed a line of dug-outs—gigantic molehills, brown and shapeless.

“Seems safe enough,” he said to his groom: but even as he spoke, there came the ominous whistle, the double crash of a five-nine shell, the black spattered fountain of it among the trees on the crest in front. Hell for leather through the spattered fountain, galloped a heavy two-horse waggon, driver lashing frantically from his seat. The waggon bounded across the railway, up the slope into safety....

By now, a little crowd had congested round the toll-house. Peter heard the men talking. Said one:—

“Funny? I don’t call it funny. How long have you been out? Two months. I thought so. I’ve had over a year of it. You wait till you’ve seen a bit more. Funny indeed.”

They waited half-an-hour, as civilians wait for it to stop raining; trotted on up the slope. Now they could see the shattered roofs of Ypres. At that distance, it still looked like a city. Only as they came to it, was its nakedness, the ruin and desolation of the place, apparent.

The huge red bulk of the Asylum turned, as they approached, to a gutted skeleton of a building; and beyond, the houses which they passed leered at them in drunken burlesque, shameless. Here, a made bed lurched half out of a shattered window; there, shells had ripped away the whole front of a dwelling, exposing—as a lewd woman exposes herself—all the petty secrets of what had once been a home.

Left they swung, past the chipped and bulging Water Tower, past more ruins of villadom, into a bare tree-lined road; right again.

“Colonel doesn’t like the horses to come further than this by daylight, sir” warned Jelks.

“Very well.” Peter dismounted. “Which way do I go?”

“Just up to that bridge, sir. Then, left along the canal bank. You’ll see the Lock-House just in front of you.” ...

Peter found the Weasel, reading his Times by the light of their one oil lamp (it was just lunch-time) in a low, timber-shored dug-out which one approached down greasy steps, along duck-boards laid just above the water-level of a muddy creek.

“Hallo,” said the Weasel. “So you’ve turned up at last, have you? Jolly place this. What?”

“A trifle cramped, sir,” laughed Peter; and began to explain his overdueness.

“Oh, that’s all right,” chaffed Stark; “we’ll take the three days off your next leave. I’m glad you’re back though. Purves, as acting Adjutant, does not shine. Morency’s at the waggon-lines. I’ve had to do most of the office-work myself. He’s out on the wires now. We’re commanding a ‘Group.’ If you get that map down, I’ll show you the battery-positions.”

He indicated them.

Doctor Carson came in, bumping his head on the lintel as usual; said “Hallo, P.J. Jolly spot, isn’t it? Time for lunch, I think.”

Bombardier Michael appeared, carrying plates; followed by Peter’s batman Garton, with food from the tiny cook-house which Gunner Horne had found on a tottery foot-bridge over the creek.

Somehow, in spite of discomforts, Peter was glad to be back. Lunch over, he explored along the creek; was shown the doctor’s dug-out (shared willy-nilly with Purves); clambered a little mud-slope; found the “office,” a steel tunnel let into the foundations of what must once have been a house, and the “telephone-room”—a sunk cellar.

“I’ve put your bed in the office, sir,” announced Garton. “The room next to the Colonel’s leaks.”

“Good lad,” said Peter, looking down, from the little mound, onto the desolation of “Wipers.” ...

In the months which followed, he grew to know that view as a bank-clerk knows Lombard Street. Below him, on his left, stretched the muddy waters of the Yser Canal, men living like water-rats all along its banks. On his right, stood the shattered lock-house beneath which slept Sergeant (once Corporal) Waller and the staff. In front of him, water lapped the stone quay of “Tattenham Corner,” with its tipsy blind lamp-posts, its twisted railings. For the rest, the panorama was just ruined houses, skeletons of houses, mockeries of homes: above them, jagged spires—broken dogs-teeth against winter skies. Sometimes at night, a blue, almost Whistlerian radiance brooded over this ghost of a city: but mostly blackness hid it—a blackness broken only by the silver of VÉry lights, the orange of candle-flames in dug-outs, the crimson flash from a gun-muzzle....