Following a delay of some days, there had been a fairly heavy mail, and Peter took his letters to the little terrace by the sea outside the mess, and sat in the sun to read them. While he was so occupied Arnold appeared with a pipe, but, seeing him engaged, went back for a novel and a deck-chair. It was all very peaceful and still, and beyond occasional hammering from, the leisurely construction of the outer harbour wall and once or twice the siren of a signalling steamer entering the docks, there was nothing to disturb them at all. Perhaps half an hour passed, then Peter folded up some sheets, put them in his pocket, and walked moodily to the edge of the concrete, staring down, at the lazy slushing of the tide against: the wall below him.

He kicked a pebble discontentedly into the water, and turned to look, at Arnold. The older man was stretched out: in his chair smoking a pipe and regarding him. A slow smile passed between them.

“No, hang it all,” said Peter; “there’s nothing to smile about, Arnold, I’ve pretty well got to the end of my tether.”

“Meaning what exactly?” queried the other.

“Oh, well, you know enough already to guess the rest.... Look here, Arnold, you and. I are fairly good pals now, I’d just like to tell you exactly what I feel.”

“Sit down then, man, and get it out. There’s a chair yonder, and you’ve got the forenoon before ye. I’m a heretic and all that sort of thing, of course, but perhaps that’ll make it easier. I take it it’s a kind of heretic you’re becoming yourself.”

Peter pulled up a chair and got out his own pipe. “Arnold,” he said, “I’m too serious to joke, and I don’t know that I’m even a Christian heretic. I don’t know what I am and where I stand. I wish I did; I wish I even knew how much I disbelieved, for then I’d know what to do. But it’s not that my dogmas have been attacked and weakened. I’ve no new light on the Apostles’ Creed and no fresh doubts about it. I could still argue for the Virgin Birth of Christ and the Trinity, and so on. But it’s worse than that. I feel ...” He broke off abruptly and pulled at his pipe. The other said nothing. They were friends enough by now to understand each other. In a little while the younger man found the words he wanted.

“Look here, it’s like this. I remember once, on the East Coast, coming across a stone breakwater high and dry in a field half a mile from the sea. There was nothing the matter with the breakwater, and it served admirably for certain purposes a seat, for instance, or a shady place for a picnic. But it was no longer of any vital use in the world, for the sea had receded and left it there. Now, that’s just what I feel. I had a religion; I suppose it had its weaknesses and its faults; but most of it was good sound stone, and it certainly had served. But it serves no longer, not because it’s damaged, but because the need for it has changed its nature or is no longer there.” He trailed off into silence and stopped.

Arnold stirred to get out his pouch. “The sea is shifty, though,” he said. “If they keep the breakwater in decent repair, it’ll come in handy again.”

“Yes,” burst out Peter. “But, of course, that’s where illustrations are so little good: you can’t press them. And in any case no engineer worth his salt would sit down by his breakwater and smoke a pipe till the sea came in handy again. His job is to go after it.”

“True for ye, boy. But if the old plan was so good, why not go down to the beach and get on with building operations of the same sort?”

“Arnold,” said Peter, “you couldn’t have put it better. That’s exactly what I came here to do. I knew in London that the sea was receding to some extent, and I thought that there was a jolly good chance to get up with it again out here. But that leads straight to my second problem: I can’t build on the old plan, and it doesn’t seem any good. It’s as if our engineer found quicksands that wouldn’t hold his stone, and cross-currents that smashed up all his piles.... I mean, I thought I knew what would save souls. But I find that I can’t because my methods are I don’t know, faulty perhaps, out of date maybe possibly worse; and, what is more, the souls don’t want my saving. The Lord knows they want something; I can see that fast enough, but what it is I don’t know. Heavens! I remember preaching in the beginning of the war from the text ‘Jesus had compassion on the multitude.’ Well I don’t feel that He has changed, and I’m quite sure He still has compassion, but the multitude doesn’t want it. I was wrong about the crowd. It’s nothing like what I imagined. The crowd isn’t interested in Jesus any more. It doesn’t believe in Him. It’s a different sort of crowd altogether from the one He led.”

“I wonder,” said Arnold.

Peter moved impatiently. “Well, I don’t see how you can,” he said. “Do you think Tommy worries about his sins? Are the men in our mess miserable? Does the girl the good books talked about, who flirts and smokes and drinks and laughs, sit down by night on the edge of her little white bed and feel a blank in her life? Does she, Arnold?”

“I’m blest if I know; I haven’t been there! You seem to know a precious lot about it,” he added dryly.

“Oh, don’t rag and don’t be facetious. If you do, I shall clear. I’m trying to talk sense, and at any rate it’s what I feel. And I believe you know I’m right too.” Peter was plainly a bit annoyed.

The elder padre sat up straight at that, and his tone changed. He stared thoughtfully out to sea and did not smoke. But he did not speak all at once. Peter glanced at him, and then lay back in his chair and waited.

Arnold spoke at last: possibly the harbour works inspired him. “Look here, boy,” he said, “let’s get back to your illustration, which is no such a bad one. What do you suppose your engineer would do when he got down to the new sea-beach and found the conditions you described? It wouldn’t do much good if he sat down and cursed the blessed sea and the sands and the currents, would it? It would be mighty little use if he blamed his good stone and sound timber, useless though they appeared. I’m thinking he’d be no much of an engineer either if he chucked his job. What would he do, d’you think?”

“Go on,” said Peter, interested.

“Well,” said the speaker in parables, “unless I’m mighty mistaken, he’d get down first to studying the new conditions. He’d find they’d got laws governing them, same as the old different laws maybe, but things you could perhaps reckon with if you knew them. And when he knew them, I reckon he’d have a look at his timber and stone and iron, and get out plans. Maybe, these days, he’d help out with a few tons of reinforced concrete, and get in a bit o’ work with some high explosive. I’m no saying. But if he came from north of the Tweed, my lad,” he added, with a twinkle in his eye and a touch of accent, “I should be verrà surprised if that foreshore hadn’t a breakwater that would do its duty in none so long a while.”

“And if he came from south of the Tweed, and found himself in France?” queried Peter.

“I reckon he’d get down among the multitude and make a few inquiries,” said Arnold, more gravely. “I reckon he wouldn’t be in too great a hurry, and he wouldn’t believe all he saw and heard without chewing on it a bit, as our Yankee friends say. And he’d know well enough that there was nothing wrong with his Master, and no change in His compassion, only, maybe, that he had perhaps misunderstood both a little.”

A big steamer hooted as she came up the river, and the echoes of the siren died out slowly among the houses that climbed up the hill behind them.

Then Peter put his hand up and rested his head upon it, shading his face.

“That’s difficult and dangerous, Arnold” he said.

“It is that, laddie,” the other answered quickly. “There was a time when I would have thought it too difficult and too dangerous for a boy of mine. But I’ve had a lesson or two to learn out here as well as other folks. Up the line men have learnt not to hesitate at things because they are difficult and dangerous. And I’ll tell you something else we’ve learnt that it is better for half a million to fail in the trying than for the thing not to be tried at all.”

“Arnold,” said Peter, “what about yourself? Do you mind my asking? Do you feel this sort of thing at all, and, if so, what’s your solution?”

The padre from north of the Tweed knocked the ashes out of his pipe and got up, “Young man,” he said, “I don’t mind your asking, but I’m getting old, and my answering wouldn’t do either of us any good, if I have a solution I don’t suppose it would be yours. Besides, a man can’t save his brother, and not even a father can save his son .... I’ve nothing to tell ye, except, maybe, this: don’t fear and don’t falter, and wherever you get to, remember that God is there. David is out of date these days, and very likely it wasn’t David at all, but I don’t know anything truer in the auld book than yon verse where it says: ’Though I go down into hell, Thou art there also.’”

“I beg your pardon, padre,” said a drawling voice behind them. “I caught a word just now which I understand no decent clergyman uses except in the pulpit. If, therefore, you are preaching, I will at once and discreetly withdraw, but if not, for his very morals’ sake, I will withdraw your congregation that is, if he hasn’t forgotten his engagement.”

Graham jumped up. “Good Heavens, Pennell!” he exclaimed, “I’m blest if I hadn’t.” He pushed his arm out and glanced at his watch. “Oh, there’s plenty of time, anyway. I’m lunching with this blighter down town, padre, at some special restaurant of his,” he explained, “and I take it the sum and substance of his unseemly remarks are that he thinks we ought to get a move on.”

“Don’t let me stand in the way of your youthful pleasures,” said Arnold, smiling; “but take care of yourself, Graham. Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die; but don’t eat and drink too much in case you live to the day after.”

“I’ll remember,” said Peter, “but I hope it won’t be necessary. However, you never know ‘among the multitude,’ do you?” he added.

Arnold caught up the light chair and lunged out at him. “Ye unseemly creature,” he shouted, “get out of it and leave me in peace.”

Pennell and Peter left the camp and crossed the swing bridge into the maze of docks. Threading their way along as men who knew it thoroughly they came at length to the main roadway, with its small, rather smelly shops, its narrow side-streets almost like Edinburgh closes, and its succession of sheds and offices between which one glimpsed the water. Just here, the war had made a difference. There was less pleasure traffic up Seine and along Channel, though the Southampton packet ran as regularly as if no submarine had ever been built. Peter liked Pennell. He was an observant creature of considerable decencies, and a good companion. He professed some religion, and although it was neither profound nor apparently particularly vital, it helped to link the two men. As they went on, the shops grew a little better, but no restaurant was visible that offered much expectation.

“Where in the world are you taking me?” demanded Peter. “I don’t mind slums in the way of business, but I prefer not to go to lunch in them.”

“Wait and see, my boy,” returned his companion, “and don’t protest till it’s called for. Even then wait a bit longer, and your sorrow shall be turned into joy and that’s Scripture. Great Scott! see what comes of fraternising with padres! Now.”

So saying he dived in to the right down a dark passage, into which the amazed Peter followed him. He had already opened a door at the end of it by the time Peter got there, and was halfway up a flight of wood stairs that curved up in front of them out of what was, obviously, a kitchen. A huge man turned his head as Peter came in, and surveyed him silently, his hands dexterously shaking a frying-pan over a fire as he did so.

“Bon jour, monsieur,” said Peter politely.

Monsieur grunted, but not unpleasantly, and Peter gripped the banister and commenced to ascend. Half-way up he was nearly sent flying down again. A rosy-cheeked girl, short and dark, with sparkling eyes, had thrust herself down between him and the rail from a little landing above, and was shouting:

“Une omelette aux champignons. Jambon. Pommes sautes, s’il vous plait.”

Peter recovered himself and smiled. “Bon jour, mademoiselle,” he said, this time. In point of fact, he could say very little else.

“Bon jour, monsieur,” said, the girl, and something else that he could not catch, but by this time he had reached the top in time to witness a little ‘business’ there. A second girl, taller, older, slower, but equally smiling, was taking Pennell’s cap and stick and gloves, making play with her eyes the while. “Merci, chérie,” he heard his friend say and then, in a totally different voice: “Ah! Bon jour Marie.”

A third girl was before them. In her presence the other two withdrew. She was tall, plain, shrewd of face, with reddish hair, but she smiled even as the others. It was little more than a glance that Peter got, for she called an order (at which the first girl again disappeared down the stairs) greeted Pennell, replied to his question that there were two places, and was out of sight again in the room, seemingly all at once. He too, then, surrendered cap and stick, and followed his companion in.

There were no more than four tables in the little room two for six, and two for four or five. Most were filled, but he and Pennell secured two seats with their backs to the wall opposite a couple of Australian officers who had apparently just commenced. Peter’s was by the window, and he glanced out to see the sunlit street below, the wide sparkling harbour, and right opposite the hospital he had now visited several times and his own camp near it. There was the new green of spring shoots in the window-boxes, snowy linen on the table, a cheerful hum of conversation about him, and an oak-panelled wall behind that had seen the Revolution.

“Pennell,” he said, “you’re a marvel. The place is perfect.”

By the time they had finished Peter was feeling warmed and friendly, the Australians had been joined to their company, and the four spent an idle afternoon cheerfully enough. There was nothing in strolling through the busy streets, joking a little over very French picture post-cards, quizzing the passing girls, standing in a queue at Cox’s, and finally drawing a fiver in mixed French notes, or in wandering through a huge shop of many departments to buy some toilet necessities. But it was good fun. There was a comradeship, a youthfulness, carelessness, about it all that gripped Peter. He let himself go, and when he did so he was a good companion.

One little incident in the Grand Magasin completed his abandonment to the day and the hour. They were ostensibly buying a shaving-stick, but at the moment were cheerily wandering through the department devoted to lingerie. The attendant girls, entirely at ease, were trying to persuade the taller of the two Australians, whom his friend addressed as “Alex,” to buy a flimsy lace nightdress “for his fiancee,” readily pointing out that he would find no difficulty in getting rid of it elsewhere if he had not got such a desirable possession, when Peter heard an exclamation behind him.

“Hullo!” said a girl’s voice; “fancy finding you here!” He turned quickly and blushed. Julie laughed merrily.

“Caught out,” she said, “Tell me what you’re buying, and for whom. A blouse, a camisole, or worse?”

“I’m not buying,” said Peter, recovering his ease. “We’re just strolling round, and that girl insists that my friend the Australian yonder should buy a nightie for his fiancee. He says he hasn’t one, so she is persuading him that he can easily pick one up. What do you think?”

She glanced over at the little group. “Easier than some people I know, I should think,” she said, smiling, taking in his six feet of bronzed manhood. “But it’s no use your buying it. I wear pyjamas, silk, and I prefer Venns’.”

“I’ll remember,” said Peter. “By the way, I’m coming to tea again to-morrow.”

“That will make three times this week,” she said. “But I suppose you will go round the ward first.” Then quickly, for Peter looked slightly unhappy: “Next week I’ve a whole day off.”

“No?” he said eagerly “Oh, do let’s fix something up. Will you come out somewhere?”

Her eyes roved across to Pennell, who was bearing down upon them. “We’ll fix it up to-morrow,” she said. “Bring Donovan, and I’ll get Tommy. And now introduce me nicely.”

He did so, and she talked for a few minutes, and then went off to join some friends, who had moved on to another department. “By Jove,” said Pennell, “that’s some girl! I see now why you are so keen on the hospital, old dear. Wish I were a padre.”

“I shall be padre in ...” began Alex, but Peter cut him short.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “I’m tired of that! Come on out of it, and let’s get a refresher somewhere. What’s the club like here?”

“Club’s no good,” said Pennell. “Let’s go to Travalini’s and introduce the padre. He’s not been there yet.”

“I thought everyone knew it,” said the other Australian rather contemptuously, Peter thought. What with one thing and another, he felt suddenly that he’d like to go. He remembered how nearly he had gone there in other company. “Come on, then,” he said, and led the way out.

There was nothing in Travalini’s to distinguish it from many other such places indeed, to distinguish it from the restaurant in which Peter, Donovan, and the girls had dined ten days or so before, except that it was bigger, more garish, more expensive, and, consequently, more British in patronage. The restaurant was, however, separated more completely from the drinking-lounge, in which, among palms, a string-band played. There was an hotel above besides, and that helped business, but one could come and go innocently enough, for all that there was “anything a gentleman wants,” as the headwaiter, who talked English, called himself a Belgian, and had probably migrated from over the Rhine, said. Everybody, indeed, visited the place now and again. Peter and his friends went in between the evergreen shrubs in their pots, and through the great glass swing-door, with every assurance. The place seemed fairly full. There was a subdued hum of talk and clink of glasses; waiters hurried to and fro; the band was tuning up. British uniforms predominated, but there were many foreign officers and a few civilians. There were perhaps a couple of dozen girls scattered about the place besides.

The friends found a corner with a big plush couch which took three of them, and a chair for Alex. A waiter bustled up and they ordered drinks, which came on little saucers marked with the price. Peter lay back luxuriously.

“Chin-chin,” said the other Australian, and the others responded.

“That’s good,” said Pennell.

“Not so many girls here this afternoon,” remarked Alex carelessly. “See, Dick, there’s that little Levantine with the thick dark hair. She’s caught somebody.”

Peter looked across in the direction indicated. The girl, in a cerise costume with a big black hat, short skirt, and dainty bag, was sitting in a chair halfway on to them and leaning over the table before her. As he watched, she threw her head back and laughed softly. He caught the gleam of a white throat and of dark sloe eyes.

“She’s a pretty one,” said Pennell. “God! but they’re queer little bits of fluff, these girls. It beats me how they’re always gay, and always easy to get and to leave. And they get rottenly treated sometimes.”

“Yes I’m damned if I understand them,” said Alex. “Now, padre, I’ll tell you something that’s more in your way than mine, and you can see what you make of it. I was in a maison toleree the other day you know the sort of thing and there were half a dozen of us in the sitting-room with the girls, drinking fizz. I had a little bit of a thing with fair hair she couldn’t have been more than seventeen at most, I reckon with a laugh that did you good to hear, and, by gum! we wanted to be cheered just then, for we had had a bit of a gruelling on the Ancre and had been pulled out of the line to refit. She sat there with an angel’s face, a chemise transparent except where it was embroidered, and not much else, and some of the women were fair beasts. Well, she moved on my knee, and I spilt some champagne and swore ’Jesus Christ!’ I said. Do you know, she pushed back from me as if I had hit her! ‘Oh, don’t say His Name!’ she said. ’Promise me you won’t say it again. Do you not know how He loved us?’ I was so taken aback that I promised, and to tell you the truth, padre, I haven’t said it since. What do you think of that?”

Peter shook his head and drained his glass. He couldn’t have spoken at once; the little story, told in such a place, struck him so much. Then he asked: “But is that all? How did she come to be there?”

“Well,” Alex said, “that’s just as strange. Father was in a French cavalry regiment, and got knocked out on the Marne. They lived in Arras before the war, and you can guess that there wasn’t much left of the home. One much older sister was a widow with a big family; the other was a kid of ten or eleven, so this one went into the business to keep the family going. Fact. The mother used to come and see her, and I got to know her. She didn’t seem to mind: said the doctors looked after them well, and the girl was making good money. Hullo!” he broke off, “there’s Louise,” and to Peter’s horror he half-rose and smiled across at a girl some few tables away.

She got up and came over, beamed on them all, and took the seat Alex vacated. “Good-evening,” she said, in fair English, scrutinising them. “What is it you say, ’How’s things’?”

Alex pressed a drink on her and beckoned the waiter. She took a syrup, the rest martinis. Peter sipped his, and watched her talking to Alex and Pennell. The other Australian got up and crossed the room, and sat down with some other men.

The stories he had heard moved him profoundly. He wondered if they were true, but he seemed to see confirmation in the girl before him. Despite some making up, it was a clean face, if one could say so. She was laughing and talking with all the ease in the world, though Peter noticed that her eyes kept straying round the room. Apparently his friends had all her attention, but he could see it was not so. She was on the watch for clients, old or new. He thought how such a girl would have disgusted him a few short weeks ago, but he did not feel disgusted now. He could not. He did not know what he felt. He wondered, as he looked, if she were one of “the multitude,” and then the fragment of a text slipped through his brain: “The Friend of publicans and sinners.” “The Friend”: the little adjective struck him as never before. Had they ever had another? He frowned to himself at the thought, and could not help wondering vaguely what his Vicar or the Canon would have done in Travalini’s. Then he wondered instantly what that Other would have done, and he found no answer at all.

“Yes, but I do not know your friend yet,” he heard the girl say, and saw she was being introduced to Pennell. She held out a decently gloved hand with a gesture that startled him it was so like Hilda’s. Hilda! The comparison dazed him. He fancied he could see her utter disgust, and then he involuntarily shook his head; it would be too great for him to imagine. What would she have made of the story he had just heard? He concluded she would flatly disbelieve it....

But Julie? He smiled to himself, and then, for the first time, suddenly asked himself what he really felt towards Julie. He remembered that first night and the kiss, and how he had half hated it, half liked it. He felt now, chiefly, anger that Donovan had had one too. One? But he, Peter, had had two.... Then he called himself a damned fool; it was all of a piece with her extravagant and utterly unconventional madness. But what, then, would she say to this? Had she anything in common with it?

He played with that awhile, blowing out thoughtful rings of smoke. It struck him that she had, but he was fully aware that that did not disgust him in the least. It almost fascinated him, just as that was it Hilda’s disgust would repel him. Why? He hadn’t an idea.

“Monsieur lé Capitaine is very dull,” said a girl’s voice at his elbow. He started: Louise had moved to the sofa and was smiling at him. He glanced towards his companions, Alex was standing, finishing a last drink; Pennell staring at Louise.

He looked back at the girl, straight into her eyes, and could not read them in the least. The darkened eyebrows and the glitter in them baffled him. But he must speak, “Am I?” he said. “Forgive me, mademoiselle; I was thinking.”

“Of your fiancee is it not so? Ah! The Capitaine has his fiancee, then? In England? Ah, well, the girls in England do not suffer like we girls in France.... They are proud, too, the English misses. I know, for I have been there, to how do you call it? Folkestone. They walk with the head in the air,” and she tilted up her chin so comically that Peter smiled involuntarily.

“No, I do not like them,” went on the girl deliberately. “They are only half alive, I think. I almost wish the Boche had been in your land.... They are cold, la! And not so very nice to kiss, eh?”

“They’re not all like that,” said Pennell.

“Ah, non? But you like the girls of France the best, mon ami; is it not so?” She leaned across towards him significantly.

Pennell laughed. “Now, yes, perhaps,” he said deliberately; “but after the war ...” and he shrugged his shoulders, like a Frenchman.

A shade passed over the girl’s face, and she got up. “It is so,” she said lightly. “Monsieur speaks very true oh, very true! The girls of France now they are gay, they are alive, they smile, and it is war, and you men want these things. But after oh, I know you English you’ll go home and be how do you say? ’respectable,’ and marry an English miss, and have oh! many, many bébés, and wear the top-hat, and go to church. There is no country like England....” She made a little gesture. “What do you believe, you English? In lé bon Dieu? Non. In love? Ah, non! In what, then? Je ne saïs!” She laughed again. “What ’ave I said? Forgive me, monsieur, and you also, Monsieur lé Capitaine. But I do see a friend of mine. See, I go! Bon soir.”

She looked deliberately at Peter a moment, then smiled comprehensively and left them. Peter saw that Alex had gone already; he asked no questions, but looked at Pennell inquiringly.

“I think so, padre; I’ve had enough of it to-night. Let’s clear. We can get back in time for mess.”

They went out into the darkening streets, crossed an open square, and turned down a busy road to the docks. They walked quickly, but Peter seemed to himself conscious of everyone that passed. He scanned faces, as if to read a riddle in them. There were men who lounged by, gay, reckless, out for fun plainly, but without any other sinister thought, apparently. There were Tommies who saluted and trudged on heavily. There were a couple of Yorkshire boys who did not notice them, flushed, animal, making determinedly for a destination down the street. There was one man at least who passed walking alone, with a tense, greedy, hard face, and Peter all but shuddered.

The lit shops gave way to a railed space, dark by contrast, and a tall building of old blackened stone, here and there chipped white, loomed up. Moved by an impulse, Peter paused, “Let’s see if it’s open, Pennell,” he said. “Do you mind? I won’t be a second.”

“Not a scrap, old man,” said Pennell, “I’ll come in too.”

Peter walked up to a padded leather-covered door and pushed. It swung open. They stepped in, into a faintly broken silence, and stood still.

Objects loomed up indistinctly great columns, altars, pews. Far away a light flickered and twinkled, and from the top of the aisle across the church from the door by which they had entered a radiance glowed and lost itself in the black spaces of the high roof and wide nave. Peter crossed towards that side, and his companion followed. They trod softly, like good Englishmen in church, and they moved up the aisle a little to see more clearly; and so, having reached a place from which much was visible, remained standing for a few seconds.

The light streamed from an altar, and from candles above it set around a figure of the Mother of God. In front knelt a priest, and behind him, straggling back in the pews, a score or so of women, some children, and a blue-coated French soldier or two. The priest’s voice sounded thin and low: neither could hear what he said; the congregation made rapid responses regularly, but eliding the, to them, familiar words. There was, then, the murmur of repeated prayer, like muffled knocking on a door, and nothing more.

“Let’s go,” whispered Pennell at last.

They went out, and shut the door softly behind them. As they did so, some other door was opened noisily and banged, while footsteps began to drag slowly across the stone floor and up the aisle they had come down. The new-comer subsided into a pew with a clatter on the boards, but the murmured prayers went on unbroken.

Outside the street engulfed them. The same faces passed by. A street-car banged and clattered up towards the centre of the town, packed with jovial people. Pennell looked towards it half longingly. “Great Scott, Graham! I wish, now, we hadn’t come away so soon,” he said.