Chapter 10

"Hum! hum! I think we had better take his temperature," I said, as I held a clinical thermometer in the shape of a fountain-pen to the rosebud lips of the patient. "103, I think."

"Will you wite a pwescwiption?" asked Barbara anxiously.

"Certainly, an admirable suggestion, Barbara. Let me see, will this do, do you think?" I scribbled on my Field Note-book, tore out the page, and handed it to Barbara.

Brom. Potass. 3 grs. Hydrochl. 5 quarts. Quin. Sulph. 1 pt.

She scrutinised it closely. It puzzled her, though her bewilderment was nothing to the astonishment which that prescription would have excited in a member of the medical profession.

"Fank you," said Barbara, who was no less pleased than puzzled, and who tried to look as if she quite understood. Her little face, with its halo of golden curls, was turned up to mine, and she now regarded me with a respect for my professional attainments which was truly gratifying.

I was transcribing a temperature-chart for Barbara's patient when a tactless messenger came to say that my car was at the door. Barbara hung on my arm. "Will you come again, and take his tempewature--Pwomise?"

I promised.

XIX

AN ARMY COUNCIL

(_October 1914_)

All the morning I had travelled through the pleasant valleys of Normandy between chalk-hills crowned with russet beeches. The country had the delicacy of one of Corot's landscapes, and the skies were of that unforgettable blue which is the secret of France. The end of my journey found me at No. ---- General Hospital. The chaplain, an old C.F. attached to the Base Hospitals, who had rejoined on the outbreak of the war, and myself were the centre of a group of convalescents. They wore the regulation uniform of loose sky-blue flannels, resembling a fitter's overalls in everything except the extreme brilliance of the dye, with red ties tied in a sailor's knot. The badges on their caps alone betrayed their regiments. There were "details" from almost every regiment in the British Army, and one could hear every dialect from John o' Groat's to Land's End. Their talk was of the great retreat.

"Hell it was--fire and brimstone," said a R.F.A. man. "We limbered up, our battery did, and got the guns off in column of route, but we were more like a blooming ambulance than a battery. We had our limbers and waggons chock full o' details--fellers who'd been wounded or crocked up. And reservists wi' sore feet--out o' training, I reckon," he added magisterially.

"Never you mind about resarvists, my son," interjected a man in the Suffolks. "We resarvists carried some of the recroots on our backs for miles. We ain't no chickens."

"No, that we bain't," said a West-countryman. "I reckon we can teach them young fellers zummat. Oi zeed zome on 'em pretty clytenish[13] when they was under foire the fust time. Though they were middlin' steady, arterwards," he added indulgently as though jealous of the honour of his regiment.

"'Twere all a duddering[14] mix-up. I niver a zeed anything loike it afore. Wimmen an' childer a-runnin' in and out among us like poultry; we could'n keep sections o' fours nohow. We carried some o' the little 'uns. And girt fires a-burnin' at night loike ricks--a terrible blissey[15] on the hills. And 'twere that dusty and hot oi did get mortal drouthy in my drawt and a niver had a drop in my water-bottle; I'd gied it all to the childer."

"What about rations?" said the chaplain.

"Oh I were bit leery[16] i' my innerds at toimes, but oi had my emargency ration, and them A.S.C. chaps were pretty sprack;[17] they kep up wi' us most times. 'Twere just loike a circus procession--lorries and guns and we soldjers all a-mixed up. And some of the harses went cruel lame and had to be left behind."

"That they did," said a small man in the 19th Hussars who was obviously a Londoner. He was slightly bow-legged and moved with the deliberate gait of the cavalryman on his feet. "Me 'orse got the blooming 'ump with corns."

"Ah! and what do you think of the Uhlans?"

He sniffed. "Rotten, sir! They never gives us a chawnce. They ain't no good except for lootin'. Regular 'ooligans. We charged 'em up near Mons, our orficer goin' ahead 'bout eight yards, and when we got up to 'em 'e drops back into our line. We charges in a single line, you know, knee to knee, as close together as us can get, riding low so as to present as small a target as we can."

"And you got home with the Uhlans?" I asked.

"Once. Their lances ain't much good except for lightin' street-lamps."

"Street-lamps?" said the chaplain literally.

"Yuss. They're too long. The blighters 'ave no grip on them. We just parry and then thrust with the point; we've giv' up cutting exercises. If the thrust misses, you uses the pommel--so!" He executed an intimidating gesture with his stick.

"Well, ah've had ma bit o' fun," interjected a small H.L.I. man irrelevantly, feeling, apparently, it was his turn in the symposium, as he thrust a red head with a freckled skin and high cheek-bones into the group. "Ah ken verra weel ah got 'im. It was at a railway stashon where we surprised 'em. Ah came upon a Jerrman awficer--I thocht he were drunk--and he fired three times aht me with a ree-vol-ver. But ah got 'im. Yes, ah've had ma bit o' fun," he said complacently as he cherished an arm in a sling.

With him was a comrade belonging to the "Lilywhites," the old 82nd, now known as the first battalion of the South Lancs, with whom the H.L.I. have an ancient friendship. The South Lancs have also their antipathies--the King's Liverpools among them--but that is neither here nor there.

"It were just like a coop-tie crowd was the retreat," he drawled in the broad Lancashire dialect. "A fair mix-up, it were."

"What do you think of the Germans?"

There was a chorus of voices. "Not much"--"Blighters"--"Swine."

"Their 'coal-boxes' don't come off half the time," said the R.F.A. man professionally. "And their shrapnel hasn't got the dispersion ours has. Ours is a treat--like sugar-loaf." The German gunnery has become deadly enough since then.

"Their coal-boxes do stink though," said a Hoxton man in the Royal Fusiliers. "Reminds me of our howitzer shells in the Boer War; they used to let off a lot of stuff that turned yellow. I've seen Boers--hairy men, you know, sir--with their beards turned all yellow by them. Regular hair-restorers, they was."

"I remember up on the Aisne," continued the Hoxton man, who had an ingenuous countenance, "one of our chaps shouted 'Waiter,' and about fifty on 'em stuck their heads up above the trenches and said, 'Coming, sir.'"

There was a shout of laughter. The chaplain looked incredulous. "Don't mind him, he's pulling your leg, sir," said his neighbour. It is a pastime of which the British soldier is inordinately fond.

"They can't shoot for nuts, that's a fact," said a Rifleman. "They couldn't hit a house if they was in it. We can give them five rounds rapid while they're getting ready to fire one. Fire from the hips, they do. I never seen the likes of it." It was the professional criticism of the most perfectly trained body of marksmen in the world, and we listened with respect. "But they've got some tidy snipers," he added candidly.

"They was singing like an Eisteddfod," said a man in the South Wales Borderers, "when they advanced. Yess, they was singing splendid. Like a _cymanfa ganu_,[18] it wass. Fair play."

"And what do you boys do?" asked the chaplain. "Do you sing too?"

"Faith, I swore," said one of the Munsters, "I used every name but a saint's name." The speaker was a Catholic, and the chaplain was Church of England, or he might have been less candid.

"There was a mon in oor company," said the red-headed one, feeling it was his turn again, "that killed seven Jerrmans--he shot six and baynitted anither. And he wur fair fou[19] afterwards. He grat like a bairn."

"Aye, mon," said a ruddy man of the Yorks L.I., "ah knaw'd ah felt mysen dafflin[20] when ah saw me pal knocked over. He comed fra oor toon, and he tellt me hissen the neet afore: 'Jock,' 'e said, 'tha'll write to me wife, woan't tha?' And ah said, 'Doan't be a fule, Ben, tha'll be all right.' 'Noa, Jock,' he tellt me, 'ah knaw'd afore ah left heeam ah should be killt. Ah saw a mouldiwarp[21] dead afore oor door; me wife fair dithered[22] when she saw't.'"

The chaplain and myself looked puzzled. "It's a kind o' sign among the fouk in our parts, sir," he proceeded, enlightening our ignorance. "And 'e asked me to take his brass for the wife. But ah thowt nowt of it. And we lost oor connectin' files and were nobbut two platoons, and we got it somethin' cruel; the shells were a-skirling[23] like peewits ower our heids. And Ben were knocked over and 'e never said a ward. And then ah got fair daft."

There was silence for a moment.

"I found this," suddenly interrupted a despatch-rider. He was a fair-spoken youth, obviously of some education. He explained, in reply to our interrogatories, that he was a despatch-rider attached to a Signal Company of the R.E. He produced a cap, apparently from nowhere, by mere sleight of hand. It was greasy, weather-stained, and in no respect different from a thousand such Army caps. It bore the badge and superscription of the R.E. We looked at it indifferently as he held it out with an eleemosynary gesture.

"A collection will now be taken," said the Hoxton man with a grin.

But the despatch-rider did not laugh. "I found this cap," he said gravely, "on Monday, September 7th, in a house near La Ferté. We stopped there for four hours while the artillery were in action. We saw a broken motor bicycle outside a house to which the people pointed. We went in. We found one of our despatch-riders with an officer's sword sticking in him. Our section officer asked the people about it, and they told him that the despatch-rider arrived late one night, having lost his way and knocked at the door of the house. There were German officers billeted there. They let him in, and then they stuck him up against a wall and cut him up. He had fifteen sabre-cuts," he added quietly.

No one laughed any more. We all crowded round to look at that tragic cap. "The number looks like one--nought--seven--something," said the chaplain, adjusting his glasses, "but I can't make out the rest." "Poor lad," he added softly. No one spoke. But I saw a look in the eyes of the men around me that boded ill for the Hun when they should be reported fit for duty.

The English soldier hides his feelings as though he were ashamed of them. The sombre silence became almost oppressive in the autumnal twilight, and I sought to disperse it.

"I suppose you're pretty comfortable here?" I said, for the camp seemed to leave nothing to be desired.

But this was to open the sluices of criticism. The British soldier begins to "grouse" the moment he becomes comfortable--and not before. He will bear without repining everything but luxury.

"One and six a day we gets," cried one of them, "and what's this about this New Army getting four bob?"

"I think you're mistaken, my son," said the chaplain gently.

"Well, there's chaps in this 'ere camp, Army cooks they calls themselves, speshully 'listed for the war, and they gets six bob. And those shuvvers--they're like fighting cocks."

"Well, there seems nothing to complain of in the matter of supplies," I said. They had been having a kind of high tea on tables laid across trestles on the lawn, and one of them, using his knife as a bricklayer uses his trowel, was luxuriously spreading a layer of apple and plum jam upon a stratum of hard-boiled egg, which reposed on a bed-rock of bread and butter, the whole representing a most interesting geological formation and producing a startling chromatic effect.

"Why, sir, if you read the papers you wud 'a thocht it was a braw pic-nic." said the red-headed one. "You wud think we were growin' fat oot in the trenches. Dae ah look like it?"

My companion, the grey-headed chaplain, took the Highlander affectionately by the second button of his tunic and gave it a pull. "Not much space here, eh? I think you're pretty well fed, my son!"

A bugle-call rang out over the camp. "Bed-time," said a Guardsman, "time to go bye-bye. Parade--hype! Dis-miss! The orderly officer'll be round soon. Scoot, my sons."

They scooted.

The silvery notes of the bugle died away over the woods. Night was falling, and the sky faded slowly from mother-of-pearl to a leaden gray. We were alone. The chaplain gazed wistfully at the retreating figures, his face seemed suddenly shrunken, and I could see that he was very old. He took my arm and leaned heavily upon it. "I have been in the Army for the best part of my life," he said simply, "and I had retired on a pension. But I thank God," he added devoutly, "that it has pleased Him to extend my days long enough to enable me to rejoin the Forces. For I know the British soldier and--to know him is to love him. Do you understand?" he added, as he nodded in the direction the men had gone.

As I looked at him, there came into my mind the haunting lines of Tennyson's "Ulysses."

"Yes," I said, "I understand."

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Pale.

[14] Confusing.

[15] Blaze.

[16] Empty.

[17] Smart.

[18] Welsh for a singing meeting.

[19] Mad.

[20] Imbecile.

[21] A mole.

[22] Trembled.

[23] Screaming.

XX

THE FUGITIVES

"But pray that your flight be not in the winter."

Some four or five miles north of Bailleul, where the _douane_ posts mark the marches of the Franco-Belgian frontier, is the village of Locre. Here the clay of the plains gives way to a wooded ridge of low hills, through which the road drives a deep cutting, laying bare the age of the earth in a chronology of greensand and limestone. Beyond the ridge lies another plain, and there it was that on a clammy winter's day I came upon two lonely wayfarers. The fields and hedgerows were rheumy with moisture which dripped from every bent and twig. The hedges were full of the dead wood of the departed autumn, and on a decrepit creeper hung a few ragged wisps of Old Man's Beard. The only touch of colour in the landscape was the vinous purple of the twigs, and a few green leaves of privet from which rose spikes of berries black as crape. Not a living thing appeared, and the secret promises of spring were so remote as to seem incredible.

The man and woman were Flemish of the peasant class; the man, gnarled like an old oak, the purple clots in the veins of his wrists betraying the senility of his arteries; the woman, withered as though all the sap had gone out of her blood. She had a rope round her waist, to the other end of which a small cart was attached; under the cart, harnessed to the axle, two dogs panted painfully with their tongues out; behind the cart the man pushed. It contained a disorderly freight: a large feather-bed, a copper cauldron, a bird-cage, a mattock, a clock curiously carved, a spinning-wheel with a distaff impoverished of flax, and some kitchen utensils, which, as the woman stumbled and the cart lurched, clanked together.

As our car drew up, they stopped, the woman holding her hands to her side as though to recover breath.

"Who are you? Where do you come from?" said my companion, a French officer.

They stared uncomprehendingly.

He spoke again, this time in Flemish:

"_Van waar komt gy? Waar gaat gy heen?_"

The man pointed with his hand vaguely in the direction of the Menin ridge.

There followed a conversation of which I could make but little. But I noticed that they answered my companion in a dull, trance-like way, as though our questions concerned no one so little as themselves.

"They're fugitives," he repeated to me. "Been burnt out of their farm by the Bosches near the Menin ridge."

"Are they all alone?" I asked.

He put some further questions. "Yes, their only son was shot by the Germans when they billeted there."

"Why?"

"They don't know. The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock away. These few sticks are all they have left. Curious, isn't it," he added meditatively, "that you never see any Flemish fugitives without their feather-beds?" I had often noticed it. Also I had noticed the curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence. Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become equally dear when you have to leave them.

"But where are they going?"

The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed vacantly at the lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word. The canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of sunshine lit up the watery landscape. Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull thunder. The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration. The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the cart as though seeking support.

We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the spasms of his malady.

"He says he doesn't know," my companion translated. "He's never been outside his parish before. But he thinks he'll go to Brussels and see the King of the Belgians. He doesn't know the Germans are in Brussels. And anyhow he's on the wrong road."

"But surely," I hazarded, "the _maire_ or the _curé_ could have told him better."

"He says the Germans shot the _curé_ and carried off the _maire_. It's a way they've got, you know."

It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted sea. Their little world was in ruins. The bells that had called them to the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their hearth was cold and their habitation desolate. They had watched the heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields which they would never reap. There was an end to all their husbandry, and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate. This was the secret of their heavy lethargy.

My companion and I took counsel together. It were better, we agreed, to maintain them on the road to Bailleul. For we knew that, though Bailleul had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it, the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple. Many a time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would supply every excuse but the true one. And, therefore, to Bailleul we directed them to go.

But as I looked back I saw those bent and dwindling figures still standing in the mud. The woman continued to pluck at her dress; the man gazed at the horizon with the same dull vacancy. They had the weary humility of the figures in Millet's "Angelus," without their inspiration, and in their eyes was a dumb despair.

XXI

A "DUG-OUT"[24]

Driver George Hawkins, of the ----th Battery (K), was engaged in drying one of the leaders of the gun team. The leader, who answered, when he felt so inclined, to the name of "Tommy," had been exercised that morning in a driving rain, and Driver Hawkins was concerned lest Tommy should develop colic with all its acute internal inconveniences. He performed his ministrations with a wisp of straw, and seemed to derive great moral support in the process from the production of a phthisical expiration of his breath, between clenched teeth, resulting in a sibilant hiss. Like most ritualistic practices this habit has a utilitarian origin: it serves to keep the dust of grooming from entering the lungs. But in process of time it has acquired a touch of mysticism, and is supposed to soothe the horse and sustain the man. Had Hawkins not been absorbed in a localised attention to Tommy's fetlocks he would have observed that his charge had suddenly laid his ears back. But being something of a chiropodist he was studying the way Tommy put his foot to the ground, for he suspected corns. The next moment Driver Hawkins found himself lying in a heap of straw on the opposite side of the stable. Tommy had suddenly lashed out, and landed him one on the left shoulder. Driver Hawkins picked himself up, more grieved than hurt. He looked at Tommy with pained surprise.

"I feeds yer," he said reproachfully, "I waters yer, I grooms yer, I stays from my dinner to dry yer, and what do I get for it? Now I ask yer?" Tommy was looking round at him with eyes of guileless innocence.

"What do I get for it?" he repeated argumentatively. "I gets a blooming kick."

"Blooming" is a euphemism. The adjective Hawkins actually used was, as a matter of fact, closely associated with the exercise of the reproductive functions, and cannot be set down here.

"Beg pardon, sir," said Hawkins, saluting, as he caught sight of the Major and myself who had entered the stable at that moment. The Major was trying hard to repress a smile. "Go on with your catechism, Hawkins," he said. It was evident that Hawkins belonged to the Moral Education League, and believed in suasion rather than punishment for the repression of vice.

"I suppose you're fond of your horses, Hawkins?" I said unguardedly. But no R.F.A. driver wears his heart on his sleeve, and Hawkins's reply was disconcerting. "I 'ates 'em, sir," he whispered to me as the Major turned his back; "I'm a maid-of-all-work to them 'orses. They gives me 'ousemaid's knee, and my back do ache something cruel."

"He doesn't, though," said the Major, who had overheard this auricular confidence. We had left the stable. "Our drivers are mighty fond of their horses--and proud of them too. It's quite an infatuation in its way. But come and see the O.T.C. We've got them down here for the weekend, by way of showing them the evolutions of a battery. They've got their instructor, an N.C.O. who's been dug out for the job, and I've lent him two of the guns to put them through their paces. He's quite priceless--a regular chip of the old Army block."

"Now, sir," the sergeant was saying, "get them into single file." They were to change from Battery Column to Column of Route.

"Battery...!" began the cadet in a piping voice.

"As y' were," interjected the sergeant in mild expostulation. "You've got to get it off your chest, sir. Let them 'ear it. So!" And he gave a stentorian shout. It was a meritorious and surprising performance, for he was fat and scant of breath. The sedentary duties of hall-porter at the ---- Club, after twenty-one years' service in the Army, had produced a fatty degeneration which no studious arrangement of an Army belt could altogether conceal.

"Battery!" began the cadet, as he threw his head back and took a deep breath. "Advance in single file from the right. The rest mark time."

"Rest!" said the sergeant reproachfully. "There ain't no rest in the British Army. Rear, say, 'Rear,' sir."

"Rear, mark time!" said the cadet uncomfortably.

"Now," said the sergeant, as he wiped his brows, "double them back, sir."

"Battery, run!" said the cadet brightly.

"As y' were! How could yer, Mr. ----?" said the sergeant grievously. "The British Army never runs, sir! They doubles." The cadet blushed at the aspersion upon the reputation of the British Army into which he had been betrayed.

"Double--march!"

They doubled.

The sergeant now turned his attention to a party at gun drill. It was a sub-section, which means a gun, a waggon, and ten men. The detachment was formed up behind the gun in two rows, odd numbers in front, even numbers behind.

"Section tell off!"