The Peacemaker

by C. S. Forester

  Dorothy looked at her watch and stood up.

  ‘I’m going home,’ she said, still with that strange far-away look in her eyes.

  ‘But you can’t,’ said Mr. Laxton. He was not referring to physical obstacles; he only meant that it was morally impossible for a woman to leave an untasted loin of mutton and walk at a moment’s notice out of an inn in a Norwegian fishing village en route for a London suburb.

  ‘Rolfsen’s got a motor-boat,’ said Dorothy, to no one in particular, and looking at her watch again. ‘He’ll take me round to Leka if I pay him enough. It’s daylight nearly all night. With luck I’ll get the local steamer there—just. I’ll be in Oslo to-morrow. I’ll have to hurry.’

  With that, Dorothy proceeded to do just what Mr. Laxton had recently visualised as utterly impossible—she walked out of the room, leaving her mutton behind, and started for the beach.

  ‘Dorothy!’ said Mr. Laxton, plunging after her. ‘Dorothy! You can’t go like this!’

  Dorothy did not appear to hear him.

  ‘You haven’t got any luggage,’ said Mr. Laxton wildly. ‘Why, you haven’t even got a hat and coat.’

  For the first time Dorothy noticed him.

  ‘Then go and get my hat and coat,’ she snapped at him over her shoulder. ‘Quick! I’ll go and find Rolfsen.’

  Even a man who had commanded a brigade on the Western Front had to yield obedience under the double shock of surprise and this abrupt issuing of orders. Mr. Laxton turned back to find the hat and coat. When he reached the beach with them he found that Dorothy had already routed Rolfsen out from his home and had dragged him down to the little pier. She was saying ‘Leka, Leka,’ and pointing to the motor-boat, and displaying a sheaf of hundred-kronen notes. There was no need for any dumb show to indicate her desire for hurry; no one could look at her without being aware of it. Laxton could only stand by while Rolfsen gradually realised what Dorothy wanted. A light of intelligence dawned upon his stolid face. He nodded and smiled, took some of the notes and handed the rest back to her. Then he jumped with his clumsy boots into the rocking motor-boat and stood waiting for her. Dorothy took her hat and coat from her father and prepared to jump in. Laxton looked round him wildly, at the towering cliffs of the fjord, at the blue water and the blue sky, and the red evening sun, as if he doubted even the reality of these things.

  ‘Dorothy!’ he said. ‘You can’t go like this. What is it all about?’

  For answer Dorothy put her hand in Rolfsen’s and sprang down into the boat among the fish scales. Rolfsen addressed himself to starting up his motor, while the assembled village began to cast off the painters.

  ‘Dorothy!’ said Laxton, in one final appeal. Then he yielded to the current madness. ‘Look here, you can’t go by yourself. I’ll come with you.’

  For answer the motor burst into a roar.

  ‘I don’t want you,’ said Dorothy, clearly. Rolfsen leaped to the tiller, and the boat surged away from the pier. It roared down the bay, pitching as it met the ocean swell. Then it disappeared from sight as it rounded the headland, and Laxton was left alone on the pier, with a wondering village eyeing him, and a congealing loin of mutton still awaiting him up at the inn.

  Dorothy sat among the fish scales; her knuckles were white with the tightness of her grip upon the thwart.

  ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry,’ she said to herself, and the motor roared its encouragement. The wind even on this glorious day was cold out at sea, and soon there were splashes of spray coming in over the bow, but Dorothy noticed neither. All she could think of was Pethwick in London, with a problem of world-wide importance on his hands, facing enormous difficulties and enormous perils, without a friend at his side. She had forgotten his unfaithfulness; never once during that whole mad journey did she think about the Pethwick child that was soon to be born. She could only think of Pethwick encountering a rising tide of public indignation and public savagery. She did not even think about disarmament; it was only Pethwick. She must not leave him unbefriended in this crisis.

  ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry,’ she said.

  The blue sea changed to grey as the sun dipped lower. Rolfsen, at the tiller, lit his pipe and held his oilskin closer to him. The cliff’s of the coastline dwindled and diminished as the boat cut a chord across the shallow arc of the land, and the boat began to pitch more wildly still. Soon Dorothy was sick. She clutched the thwart and vomited hideously, but not even the miseries of sea-sickness could make her forget the need for speed, and Pethwick’s need of comfort and succour. The hours went by, and the cliffs began to grow larger again as the boat approached the land.

  Close on the port side they passed a long reef of rocks, over which the sea boiled in white fury, and then Rolfsen put the tiller over and headed direct for the shore, steering apparently for an unbroken line of cliffs. But in half an hour the mouth of a fjord became apparent, and ten minutes after that they were swinging round the headland.

  As they opened up the length of the fjord Rolfsen spoke for the first time and pointed ahead. It was the local steamer which he indicated; she had cast off from the pier and was heading down the bay. Dorothy beat her hands together frantically, and Rolfsen nodded reassurance. He turned the boat a trifle, and, leaping on the thwart, he bellowed like a bull across the quiet water. There was a bustle on deck, and five minutes later the boat surged up alongside the steamer, to where a rope ladder was waiting. With a kick and a struggle Dorothy scrambled on to the low deck, under the eyes of the Norwegian fisherwives and German tourists and the supercilious gaze of the inevitable couple of English people to be found on any deck anywhere in August.

  That was well so far, but when Dorothy reached Oslo in the afternoon there was delay. There was nothing—not even an aeroplane—to help her on her way to England until next morning. The travel agencies were sympathetic but firm. Dorothy had to spend the night in an hotel, trying to sleep, but failing, and catching herself saying to herself every five minutes, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry’—all unavailingly.

  The morning brought her a far more recent copy of The Times, Saturday’s edition, only two days old, and in it she read of the ‘Fresh Threats’ by the Peacemaker, and of the universal condemnation of the Peacemaker’s methods. She guessed that Pethwick must be in serious danger. He must be in need of counsel and advice and friendship. There was never a doubt in her mind but that he was playing a lone hand, pitting his own unaided efforts against the world. All her knowledge as a student of history told her of the fate of the men who had tried to impose reform by force—Joseph II, of Austria, was the one she had most clearly in mind—and she had no doubt, now, as to Pethwick’s ultimate failure. And his failure would put him in serious danger, danger of violence, of prison. He would be held up to the scorn and derision of the world, her father would dismiss him from the staff of the Liverpool School, and he would be plunged into poverty and starvation. Her only thought was that she must be by his side.

  The afternoon found her on board the steamer for England, dreadfully tired, horribly sea-sick, fretting herself to rags as the steamer ploughed its slow way through the fog, with the siren continuously sounding. When at last, after miserable delays, she set foot on English ground again, almost the first sight to meet her eyes were the ranged placards of the bookstall. ‘Peacemaker Causes Deaths,’ said one. ‘Find the Peacemaker!’ said another. She bought every paper she could find, and read them feverishly in the train from the Humber to London. The first headlines she read stared at her from the page in words of doom. ‘The Innocent Blood,’ she read. Then followed a lurid account of last night’s panic in the Tube trains; it described the murdered children and the injured women, the madness and the confusion which had overwhelmed London on Bank Holiday evening, the most important holiday in the working people’s year. No words could be too bad for the man who had caused all this damage; Dorothy glanced feverishly through column after column of fierce condemnation.

  Dorothy bitterly told herself, as she read, that the hidden powers opp
osed to disarmament were rallying, and directing this offensive upon the Peacemaker. She tried to assure herself that all this was merely so much propaganda, to be discounted as heavily as all propaganda should be discounted, but she found no comfort in that.

  The next newspaper was the one which had said ‘Find the Peacemaker!’ on its contents bill. The words were repeated as a headline on the front page. This paper called upon the people of England, and more especially the people of London, to hunt down this slayer of children who called himself the Peacemaker. Some historically well-read person on the staff instanced the case of Napoleon on the island of Lobau, at the crossing of the Danube, who paraded his whole army at the news that there were spies present, and ordered every man to look at the man on his right and the man on his left, and to call his officer if either appeared suspicious. Every spy in the ranks was at once detected by this means, and—as the article accentuated with bloodthirsty cunning—every spy was promptly shot

  The people of London must do the same. As the Peacemaker must be somewhere in London, let everyone consider deeply whether his neighbour on the right or his neighbour on the left might be he. Hotel proprietors, lodging-house keepers, house agents, all must make the same effort. The newspaper contemplated the consequent reign of terror which would probably take place with equanimity, much as a year or two before it had seen no harm in the possible institution of a dictatorship. The Peacemaker must be routed out, taken, and punished.

  The article went on to find satisfaction in the fact that this freak of the Peacemaker’s had exasperated everybody so much that the paper was confident that everyone would turn his hand to work. There must be associations formed, with proper organisation, for tracking down the Peacemaker and his associates if any. What should be done to the Peacemaker when found, the newspaper could safely leave to the judgment of the people. There was this point to be made quite clear, that the law of England contained no punishment fitting for the miscreant. It was quite possible that justice might in this case miscarry, and if the Peacemaker fell into the hands of the police he might get off with some absurd sentence like five years’. That would be intolerable; the newspaper yearned for the existence of laws like those of Henry VIII, which contemplated burning or boiling alive as usual events. Men who committed robbery with violence were to this day flogged as well as imprisoned. Ethically, the Peacemaker was as guilty as they; had he not tried by violence to rob the English people of their most sacred possession, constitutional government? Let everyone bear this well in mind.

  Dorothy put the newspaper down; she felt sick again, and not sea-sick or train-sick either. The very next newspaper she picked up was the evening paper under the same ownership as the one she had just been reading, and this, too, bore the headline ‘Find the Peacemaker.’ It announced with triumph that the suggestion made that morning to form organisations to hunt down the Peacemaker had met with enthusiastic praise. Already there were such organisations being formed; they quoted examples in the City, in Crouch End, in Acton. That showed that the heart of the English people was as sound as ever, and was not enfeebled by all this poisonous Pacifist stuff which had lamentably got into circulation lately. There could be no doubt that before very long the Peacemaker would be laid by the heels and would meet with his deserts, and England would have triumphantly freed herself from the suspicion, under which she laboured in the eyes of other nations, that she was tainted with the desire for disarmament, with Pacifism, and with similar Bolshevist doctrines.

  Dorothy’s mouth tightened into a hard line. She knew the day had come when the label ‘Pacifist’ could be applied to a man as a term of reproach, just as in other days it was usual to style one’s opponents as Papists, or Radicals, or Methodists, or Atheists, or Mormons, or Communists, or Bolshevists, or Pro-Germans, signifying that in that case all their opinions must be unsound, their sanity suspect, their probity doubtful, their parentage tainted, and their persons unclean.

  Yet Dorothy did not follow up this line of thought. The historical development of the movement in favour of disarmament meant little to her at the moment. All she wanted was to be at Pethwick’s side. She found herself sitting forward in the railway carriage, with the piled-up newspapers round her, her elbows on her knees, saying to herself, ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry.’ The rhythm of the train beat out a monotonous chorus.

  At the terminus she was the first out of the train, the first into a taxicab. She gave the driver Pethwick’s address. What she was going to do there she had not the least idea, but she would not endure a moment’s delay before seeing him. Her clothes were crushed and shabby with travel, and she felt filthy, but, although the idea occurred to her, she would not go home first to change. She tried ineffectively to brush herself clean with her hands as they drove through the streets.

  The taxicab slithered on the tramlines of the familiar High Street: it passed Lenham’s garage and the Library, and then Dorothy had to put her head out of the window to direct the driver to turn up Verulam Road. Verulam Road was thick with people, and as they reached the corner of Launceton Avenue Dorothy knew she had arrived too late.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It is ironical that a woman like Mary Pethwick should twice divert the course of the history of the world; that by one betrayal she should have brought the Peacemaker into being, and by another have annihilated him. Even Judas had only the one opportunity. But her husband had exasperated her beyond all endurance. On Bank Holiday he had been out until very late at night, and condescended to no attempt at explaining his absence at a moment when Mary would rather have been told the lie she was expecting than that she should be so ignored. And on the Tuesday following Bank Holiday, on August 8th, his behaviour was worse still. Immediately after reading The Times at breakfast he had plunged from the room.

  Mary had found him afterwards walking round the house, wandering from room to room, into her kitchen, up and down the hallway, up and down the stairs, until she was furious with him, and yet he had said no word to her. She had scolded him sharply for getting in her way, and elicited no reply. Then he went up into the spare bedroom, which was such an unusual thing for him to do that she followed him there, as was only to be expected, and demanded what in the world he wanted there. And then at last he had turned on her, with his face as white as a sheet and distorted with some emotion or other, and he had taken her by the shoulders as though to shake her. But on the instant he had calmed himself and had merely turned her round and pushed her gently out of the room, and not before she had caught sight of the brand-new suitcase which she had never seen before.

  The door was shut upon her before she could ask why or wherefore, and of course it was a point on which she demanded information. She could not be expected to tolerate the presence in the house of an unexplained suitcase, especially when her husband had earlier announced his unalterable decision to go to Paris soon. She tried to open the door and ask questions, but Pethwick held it against her, and when she pushed upon it he turned the key in the lock.

  Mary could not bear to be locked out of anywhere. The bare thought of it drove her perfectly frantic. She beat upon the door with her fists; she even went downstairs and brought up the coal hammer and battered ineffectually with that, chipping off the paint, and denting the wood, but not effecting an entrance. It was maddening that her husband should lock himself in there away from her, where she could not see what he was doing, and the more she went to the sideboard cupboard the more exasperated and tearful and frightened she became. In the end it was perfectly excusable, considering her condition, that she should put on her shabby hat and her unbrushed coat and go out to where she could find comfort, and where, sitting in the comfortable bar, she could whisper what she wanted to say to someone else, who at first smiled and did not believe her, but who, on her repeated and vehement assurances, gradually became convinced, and convinced to such an extent that in the end he rose up and went out through the swing doors to carry the word elsewhere.

  And the dark planning wh
ich had reached its maturity thus in Mary’s mind had been cunning and well timed. She had chosen the right recipient for the news, so that although the word was passed from mouth to mouth all through that long afternoon, no whisper reached the police. It was only when evening came that it even reached the newspaper men, and then it was too late.

  All through that afternoon Mary sat downstairs, only nearly drunk, while Pethwick remained locked in the spare bedroom, mourning the dead children, face to face with failure, trying most desperately hard to decide what he should do next. He had set his mind to the task, and he was not of the type which withdraws when the work is only half completed. But to carry on, in face of the rising tide of hatred—which even The Times indicated, although he had seen nothing of the inflammatory articles in the cheaper press—and with the knowledge that he had killed little children, seemed just as difficult. He was desperately miserable; he seemed quite unable to come to any decision or to form any plan. It was not until late in the day that in desperation, to distract his tortured mind, he laid out his apparatus on the floor, and got out his long sheaf of calculations and tried to concentrate upon continuing the mathematical side of his investigations. He hoped that an hour or two of higher mathematics would clear his brain, or would, at any rate, tire it so that this torturing river of thought would cease.

  Mary was ready to open the door to them when they came, half a dozen of them up the path to knock on the door and a dozen more waiting on the pavement outside. Only half of them were hooligans, street bookmakers’ runners, and suchlike; the others were high-spirited young men of unimpeachable record, and the youngest was Henry Laxton, junior, bronzed and fit from his period at the O.T.C. camp. They were not going to kill Pethwick; they only intended to take him out and duck him in the lake on the common, just to teach him a lesson before the police got hold of him.

  ‘I was expecting you, boys,’ said Mary, when she opened the door. ‘He’s upstairs—locked himself in this morning. That room.’