It is owing to a higher capacity for adaptability that the human animal has defeated all the other animals on this planet; made himself in fact the “lord of creation.” For example, one need but take the Southdown Division during its winter in the “City of Fear.”

Their life—from the front-line infantry, frozen blue or blown to bits between rotting sandbags, to the drivers in the swamped horse-lines where the dumb beasts stood all day, tail to storm, fetlock-deep in mud, and whence men and beasts sallied forth every night up that road of death between the scarred poplars—was indescribably foul, a reversion to conditions at which an aristocratic caveman might well have jibbed.

In the fighting-zone itself, boredom followed fear, fear boredom, with monotonous and unending regularity. There were some days when never a rifle cracked, never a gun barked: others—as that Sunday which saw Stark’s headquarters moved to the Ramparts—when unanswered salvos rained on ruined streets, on gun-positions, and cross-roads, on stumbling fatigue-parties and sentries acrouch behind sandbags; when the very breastworks heaved and blew skyward, crashing down in mud and mine-dÉbris on the corpses of the men who had inhabited them.

Still, the human animal endured. More, he learned to adapt himself to this condition and that; avoiding danger by instinct; finding his needed relaxation in petty amusements; making to himself, even, some social order out of the chaos wherein he dwelt. And since none, sallying forth, might know if he would come back alive, a certain careless spirit,—more hysteria than the “war humour” stay-at-homes christened it,—stiffened endurance, irradiated relaxation.

In the Ramparts, vast catacombe of old brickwork impervious to any artillery, were pianos, gramophones, picture-galleries selected from coloured supplements of the Sketch or La Vie Parisienne; cheery Messes whereto came mud-soaked men out of the noisy night, eager for whisky, always ready to break into song. Some of those men died; some were wounded; some sickness took: but always other men replaced them—and life went on. Moreover, since the human animal cannot now exist without the written word, he even discovered, buried away among the ruins of the City, a printing-press, and type, and paper, from which evolved itself the semblance of a news-sheet—which he called The Wipers Times.

In this atmosphere, whatever glamour “active service” once possessed for P.J. soon disappeared. He did his work now, office and telephone duties varied by trips to front-line or batteries, with the meticulous accuracy of an automaton; wrote much to Patricia; and read the daily, weekly and monthly newspapers from cover to cover.

Towards the end of February, however, chance provided him with a new interest. Monsieur Van Woumen, the Belgian who had taken furnished his house in Lowndes Square, was anxious to renew the agreement. Peter, purely from habit, wrote back to the agent who made the offer, that he thought there should be an increase in the rent. The agent replied that his client would not increase the furnished rent; but might be prepared, on certain conditions, to take the remainder of the Crown lease off Peter’s hands. “Would you,” wrote the agent, “consider an offer for the furniture?”

The little deal kept Peter amused for a whole two months. He had no particular sentiment about either house or chattels. Patricia, consulted in a long business-like letter, approved of the scheme: making only certain reservations—some of her own bedroom furniture, the desk and sideboard in the dining-room, a blue carpet, and various other pieces she thought it inadvisable to dispose of. Monsieur Van Woumen paid his deposit; signed the agreement and completed the purchase-money by the time that—after three months and twenty-seven days which are best left to the imagination—the Southdown Artillery was ordered a week’s rest at Eecke.