"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know lots of officers up there. I"ll introduce you," he added patronisingly.
Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards.
"Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of _The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_, _The c.o.c.k-House at Fellsgarth_, and Newbolt"s _Pages from Froissart_. Peter was rather eclectic in his tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents of Peter"s pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys"
jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental inventory of them:
(1) A b.u.t.ton of the Welsh Fusiliers.
(2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground.
(3) A miniature aeroplane--the wings rather crumpled as though the aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent.
(4) A knife.
(5) Several pieces of string.
(6) A coloured "alley."
(7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien.
(8) A top.
(9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull"s-eyes, and acid drops.
For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty"s Army it was certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives enc.u.mber officers at the Front.
The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated airman.
"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.
"It"s me, Captain S----," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend ----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He"s attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather a personage.
The Captain and I discussed the merits of the new Lewis machine-gun, while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and monoplanes.
"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views.
He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked.
Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the public service--the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian Police. Wherever there"s a bit of a sc.r.a.p, whether it"s Dacoits or Pathans, wherever there"s a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether it"s plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of Peter"s family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in the R.F.A., saved a battery at X---- Y----. Another is the chief of the most mysterious of our public services--a man who speaks little and listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle d.i.c.k"s got eyes like gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public Uncle d.i.c.k, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know such a bird of pa.s.sage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored expression. Uncle d.i.c.k, although Peter does not know it, is the counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most, although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it _The Man behind the Scenes_.
Such was Peter"s family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he feared G.o.d, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had promised Peter that he would let him see the new Lewis machine-gun. It is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of Peter"s private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful.
"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked.
"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"--Peter now calls other boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as "n.i.g.g.e.rs"--"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must send them something."
He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That"s from Jackson minor," he said. "Cheek, isn"t it?"
I began reading the letter aloud.
DEAR OLD PAN--You must be having a ripping time. I see your letter is headed "The Front" ...
I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably.
... so I suppose you"ve seen a lot. The whole school"s fritefully bucked up about you, and we"re one up on Fenner"s....
"What"s Fenner"s?" I said to Peter.
"Oh, that"s another school at Beckenham. They"re stinkers. Put on no end of side because some smug of theirs won a schol" at Uppingham last term.
But we beat them at footer."
We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I showed him the envelope of your letter with "Pa.s.sed by the Censor"
on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said, "That"s proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you"ll get the V.C. or something--the Head"ll be sure to give us a half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head"s newspaper when he leaves it lying about--you know how he sw.a.n.ks about it--said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was rot, and that it meant they"d given him a lot of other chaps to command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you can"t bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.
"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.
"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round.
He was very red.
"I didn"t mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says at the end."
I read on--this time in silence:
I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don"t get torpeedod--we hope they"ll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never saw one. We"ve given up German this term--beastly language; it"s just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never know what he"s driving at.
Then followed a sentence heavily underlined:
_By the way I"ll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last term if you"ll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it"s got some blood on it, German blood I mean_.--Yours to a cinder,
ARTHUR JACKSON.
I handed this priceless missive back to Peter.
"Cheek, isn"t it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a bayonet!"
"But if you put "the Front" at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you can"t be surprised at his asking for one, you know."
Peter blushed.