I went out to the officers’ club which had been established in Lille, and found Brand there, and Fortune, and young Clatworthy, who made a place for me at their table.

Two large rooms which had been the dining and drawingrooms of a private mansion were crowded with officers, mostly English, but with here and there a few Americans and French, seated at small tables, waited on by the girls we called Waacs (of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps). Two old-fashioned candelabra of cut-glass gave light to each room, and I remember that the walls were panelled with wood painted a greyish-white below a moulding of fruit and flowers. Above the table where my friends sat was the portrait of a French lady of the eighteenth century, in an oval frame of tarnished gilt.

I was late for the meal on Armistice night, and many bottles of champagne had already been opened and drunk. The atmosphere reeked with the smell of food, the fumes of wine and cigarette smoke, and there was the noise of many men talking and laughing. I looked about the tables and saw familiar faces. There were a good many cavalry officers in the room where I sat, and among them officers of the Guards and the Tank Corps, aviators, machine-gunners, staff officers of infantry divisions, French interpreters, American liaison officers, A.P.M.‘s, town majors, and others. The lid was off at last. All these men were intoxicated with the thought of the victory we had won—complete, annihilating—and of this Armistice which had ended the war and made them sure of life. Some of them were a little drunk with wine, but not enough at this hour to spoil their sense of joy.

Officers rose at various tables to make speeches, cheered by their own groups, who laughed and shouted and did not listen.

“The good old British Army has done the trick at last——”

“The old Hun is down and out.”

“Gentlemen, it has been a damned tough job——”

Another group had burst into song:

“Here’s to good old beer, put it down, put it down!”

“The cavalry came into its own in the last lap. We’ve fought mounted and fought dismounted. We’ve rounded up innumerable Huns. We’ve ridden down machine-guns——”

Another group was singing independently:

“There’s a long, long trail a-winding,

To the land of my dreams.”

A toast was being pledged at the next table by a Tank officer, who stood on a chair with a glass of champagne-raised high above his head: “Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the Tank Corps. This war was won by the Tanks——”

“Pull him down!” shouted two lads at the same table. “Tanks be damned! It was the poor old bloody infantry all the time.”

One of them pulled down the little Tank officer with a crash and stood on his own chair.

“Here’s to the foot-sloggers—the infantry battalions, Tommy Atkins and his company officer, who did all the dirty work and got none of the reward, and did most of the dying.”

A cavalry officer with a monocle immovably screwed in his right eye demanded the attention of the company, and failed to get it.

“We all know what we have done ourselves, and what we failed to do. I give you the toast of our noble Allies, without whom there would be no Armistice to-night. I drink to the glory of France——”

The words were heard at several tables, and for once there was a general acknowledgment of the toast.

“Vive la France!”

The shout thundered out from all the tables, so that the candelabra rattled. Five French interpreters in various parts of the room rose to respond.

There were shouts of “The Stars and Stripes—Good old Yanks—Well done, the U.S.A.!” and I was sorry Dr. Small was still at Valenciennes. I should like him to have heard those shouts. An American staff officer was on his feet, raising his glass to “England.”

Charles Fortune stood up at my table. He reminded me exceedingly at that moment of old prints portraying George IV. in his youth—“the First Gentleman of Europe”—slightly flushed, with an air of noble dignity and a roguish eye.

“Go to it, Fortune,” said Brand. “Nobody’s listening, so you can say what you like.”

“Gentlemen,” said Fortune, “I venture to propose the health of our late enemy, the Germans.”

Young Clatworthy gave an hysterical guffaw.

“We owe them a very great debt,” said Fortune.

“But for their simplicity of nature and amiability of character the British Empire—that glorious conglomeration of races upon which the sun utterly declines to set—would have fallen into decay and debility as a second-class Power. Before the war the German Empire was gaining our trade, capturing all the markets of the world, waiting at table in all the best hotels, and providing all the music in the cafÉs-chantants of the universe.... With that immense unselfishness so characteristic of their race, the Germans threw away these advantages and sacrificed themselves for the benefit of the British. By declaring war they enabled all the ancient virtues of our race to be revived. Generals sprang up in every direction—especially in Whitehall, Boulogne and Rouen. Staff officers multiplied exceedingly. British indigestion—the curse of our race—became subject to a Sam Brown belt. Business men, mostly bankrupt, were enriched enormously. Clergymen thundered joyfully from their pulpits and went back to the Old Testament for that fine old law, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ Elderly virgins married the youngest subalterns. The youngest flapper caught the eldest and wiliest of bachelors. Our people were revivified, gentlemen—revivified-”

“Go easy,” growled Brand. “This is not a night for irony.”

“Even I,” said Charles Fortune, with a sob of pride in his voice, “even I, a simple piano-tuner, a man of music, a child of peace and melody—Shut up, Brand!—became every inch a soldier!”

He drew himself up in a heroic pose and, raising his glass, cried out: “Here’s to our late enemy—poor old Fritz!”

A number of glasses were raised amidst a roar of laughter.

“Here’s to Fritz—and may the Kaiser roast at Christmas!”

“And they say we haven’t a sense of humour,” said Charles Fortune modestly, and opened a new bottle of champagne.

Brand had a sense of humour, and had laughed dining Fortune’s oration, knowing that beneath its mockery there was no malice. But I noticed that he had no spontaneous gaiety on this night of Armistice and sat rather silent, with a far-away look in his eyes and that hag-ridden melancholy of his.

Young Clatworthy was between me and Brand, drinking too heavily, I thought. Brand thought so too, and gave him a word of caution.

“That champagne is pretty bad. I’d ‘ware headaches, if I were you, young’un.”

“It’s good enough,” said Clatworthy. “Anything to put me in the right spirit.”

There was an unnatural glitter in his eyes, and he laughed too easily at any joke of Fortune’s. Presently he turned his attention to me, and began talking excitedly in a low monologue.

“Funny to think it’s the last night! Can you believe it? It seems a lifetime since I came out in ‘14. I remember the first night, when I was sent up to Ypres to take the place of a subaltern who’d been knocked out. It was Christmas Eve, and my battalion was up in the line round Hooge. I detrained at Vlamertinghe. ‘Can any one tell me the way to Hooge?’ I asked one of the traffic men, just like a country cousin at Piccadilly Circus. He looked at me in a queer way, and said, ‘It’s the same way to hell, sir. Straight on until you get to Ypres, then out of the Menin Gate and along the road to Hell-fire Corner. After that you trust to luck. Some young gentlemen never get no further.’ I damned his impertinence and went on, till I came to the Grande Place in Ypres, where I just missed an eight-inch shell. It knocked out a gun-team. Shocking mess it made. ‘The same way to hell,’ I kept saying, until I fell into a shell-hole along the Menin Road. But, d’you know, the fellow was wrong, after all.”

“How?” I asked.

Young Clatworthy drank up his wine and laughed, as though very much amused.

“Why, that wasn’t the way to hell. It was the other way.”

I was puzzled at his meaning and wondered if he were really drunk.

“What other way?”

“Behind the lines—in the back areas. I should have been all right if I had stuck in the trenches. It was in places like Amiens that I went to the devil.”

“Not as bad as that,” I said.

“Mind you,” he continued, lighting a cigarette and smiling at the flame, “I’ve had pleasant times in this war, between the bad ones, and, afterwards, in this cushy job. Extraordinarily amusing and agreeable along the way to hell. There was little MaiguÉrite in Amiens—such a kid! Funny as a kitten! She loved me not wisely, but too well. I had just come down from the Somme battles then. That little idyll with MarguÉrite was like a dream. We two were Babes in the Wood. We plucked the flowers of life and didn’t listen to the howling of the wolves beyond the forest.”

He jerked his head up and listened, and repeated the words:

“The howling of the wolves!”

Somebody was singing “John Peel”:

“D’ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay.

D’ye ken John Peel at the break of day,

D’ye ken John Peel when he’s far, far away.

With, his horn, and his hounds in. the morning?”

Cyril Clatworthy was on his feet, joining in the chorus with a loud joyous voice.

“We’ll follow John Peel through fair and through foul.

If we want a good hunt in the morning!’’

“Bravo! Bravo!”

He laughed as he sat down.

“I used to sing that when I was captain of the school,” he said. “A long time ago, eh? How many centuries?... I was as clean a fellow as you’d meet in those days. Keen as mustard on cricket. Some bat, too! That was before the dirty war, and the stinking trenches, and fever, and lice, and dead bodies, and all that. But I was telling you about Yvonne, wasn’t I?”

“MarguÉrite,” I reminded him.

“No. Yvonne. I met her at Cassel. A brown-eyed thing. Demure. You know the type?... One of the worst little sluts I ever met. Oh, a wicked little witch... Well, I paid for that affair. That policeman was wrong.”

“What policeman?” I asked.

“The traffic man at Vlamertinghe. ‘It’s the same way to hell,’ he said, meaning Hooge. It was the other way, really. All the same, I’ve had some good hours. And now it’s Armistice night.... Those fellows are getting rather blue, aren’t they? It’s the blinking cavalry who used to get in the way of the infantry, blocking up the roads with their ridiculous horses and their preposterous, lances. Look here, old man, there’s one thing I want to know. Tell me, as a wise owl.”

“What is that?” I asked, laughing at his deference to my wisdom.

“How are we going to get clean enough for peace?”

“Clean enough?”

I could not follow the drift of his question, and he tried to explain himself.

“Oh, I don’t mean the soap and water business. But morally, spiritually, intellectually, and all that? Some of us will want a lot of scrubbing before we sit down in our nice little Christian families, somewhere at Wimbledon or Ealing. Somehow I funk peace. It means getting back again to where one started, and I don’t see how it’s possible.... Good Lord, what tripe I’ve been talking!”

He pulled the bow of one of the “Waacs” and undid her apron.

“Encore une bouteille de champagne, mademoiselle!” he said in his best French, and started singing “La Marseillaise.” Some of the officers were dancing the fox trot and the bunny hug.

Brand rose with a smile and a sigh.

“Armistice night!” he said. “Thank God there’s a crowd of fellows left to do the dancing.... I can’t help thinking of the others.”

He touched a glass with his lips to a silent toast, and I saw that he drank to ghosts. Then he put the glass down and laid his hand on Clatworthy’s shoulder.

“Care for a stroll?” he said. “This room is too fuggy.”

“Not I, old lad,” said the boy. “This is Armistice night—and the end of the adventure. See it through!”

Brand shook his head and said he must breathe fresh air. Fortune was playing a Brahms concerto in the style of a German master on the table-cloth.

I followed Brand, and we strolled through the dark streets of Lille and did not talk. In each of our minds was the stupendous thought that it was the last night of the war—the end of the adventure, as young Clatworthy had said. God! It had been a frightful adventure from first to last—a fiery furnace in which youth had been burnt up like grass. How much heroism we had seen, how much human agony, ruin, hate, cruelty, love! There had been comradeship and laughter in queer places and perilous hours. Comradeship, perhaps that was the best of all: the unselfish comradeship of men. But what a waste of life! What a lowering of civilisation! Our heritage—what was it, after victory? Who would heal the wounds of the world?

Brand suddenly spoke, after our long tramp in the darkness, past windows from which came music, and singing, and shouts of laughter. He uttered only one word, but all his soul was in it.

“Peace!”

That night we went to see Eileen O’Connor and to enquire after the girl Marthe. Next day Pierre Nesle was coming to find his sister.