CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Valley of Humiliation

I collected some baggage and a pile of newly arrived letters from my rooms in Westminster and took a taxi to my Park Lane flat.  Usually I had gone back to that old place with a great feeling of comfort, like a boy from school who ranges about his room at home and examines his treasures.  I used to like to see my hunting trophies on the wall and to sink into my own armchairs But now I had no pleasure in the thing.  I had a bath, and changed into uniform, and that made me feel in better fighting trim.  But I suffered from a heavy conviction of abject failure, and had no share in Macgillivray’s optimism.  The awe with which the Black Stone gang had filled me three years before had revived a thousandfold.  Personal humiliation was the least part of my trouble.  What worried me was the sense of being up against something inhumanly formidable and wise and strong.  I believed I was willing to own defeat and chuck up the game.

Among the unopened letters was one from Peter, a very bulky one which I sat down to read at leisure.  It was a curious epistle, far the longest he had ever written me, and its size made me understand his loneliness.  He was still at his German prison-camp, but expecting every day to go to Switzerland.  He said he could get back to England or South Africa, if he wanted, for they were clear that he could never be a combatant again; but he thought he had better stay in Switzerland, for he would be unhappy in England with all his friends fighting.  As usual he made no complaints, and seemed to be very grateful for his small mercies.  There was a doctor who was kind to him, and some good fellows among the prisoners.

But Peter’s letter was made up chiefly of reflection.  He had always been a bit of a philosopher, and now, in his isolation, he had taken to thinking hard, and poured out the results to me on pages of thin paper in his clumsy handwriting.  I could read between the lines that he was having a stiff fight with himself.  He was trying to keep his courage going in face of the bitterest trial he could be called on to face—­a crippled old age.  He had always known a good deal about the Bible, and that and the Pilgrim’s Progress were his chief aids in reflection.  Both he took quite literally, as if they were newspaper reports of actual recent events.

He mentioned that after much consideration he had reached the conclusion that the three greatest men he had ever heard of or met were Mr Valiant-for-Truth, the Apostle Paul, and a certain Billy Strang who had been with him in Mashonaland in ’92.  Billy I knew all about; he had been Peter’s hero and leader till a lion got him in the Blaauwberg.  Peter preferred Valiant-for-Truth to Mr Greatheart, I think, because of his superior truculence, for, being very gentle himself, he loved a bold speaker.  After that he dropped into a vein of self-examination.  He regretted that he fell far short of any of the three.  He thought that he might with luck resemble Mr Standfast, for like him he had not much trouble in keeping wakeful, and was also as ‘poor as a howler’, and didn’t care for women.  He only hoped that he could imitate him in making a good end.