CHAPTER XVI

THE ROOKY

What awaits you, boy, out yonder, where the great guns rip and thunder, There's a menace in their message, guns that called you from afar, But where'er your fortune guide you may no woe or ill betide you-- Heaven speed you, little soldier, gaily going to the war.

(_From "Soldier Songs."_)

The stifling heat of the summer day had given place to the coolness of night and a big moon rode gallantly amidst the stars of the dark blue eastern sky. A searchlight felt the country with a long, pale arm, lighting up the road, village and wood for miles around; a galaxy of starshells stood over the firing line where the meteoric flashes of bursting shells rioted along the horizon of war.

Back in a village by La Bassée canal lights shone in the windows of houses and through the chinks of shutters. The poplars which lined the village streets showed black and solitary against the red-brick cottages, their shadows stretched straight along the pavement spreading out to an intricate tracery of tremulous boughs which moved backwards and forwards as the soft night breeze caught them.... The moonlight rippled over the roofs, the walls, and the grey, dusty road; the canal lapped sleepily against its banks; soldiers walked up and down the streets smoking, laughing and chatting; women came out from the cottages bearing pails which they placed under the pumps and filled with water. All was peaceful here, only twice had the village been struck by shells and then the roofs of two houses had been shattered. In twenty-four hours, however, the willing hands of the villagers had made the roofs whole again.

In the attic of a dwelling that stood by the riverside, a party of soldiers, three in all, were billeted. The boys were in a gay, good humour, for the day had been pay day and two bottles of champagne had been bought and the second bottle had just been opened.

Bowdy Benners was there, sitting on a bundle of straw under the niche in which a candle was placed, surveying the newly-drawn cork with a lazy smile, his hands under his thighs and his short, powerful legs stretched out in front to their fullest extent. He was dressed in shirt, trousers and socks, his braces were tied round his waist, his hairy chest was bare, and his identity disc tied round his massive neck with a piece of twine was almost hidden in the hair.

Opposite him sat Harry Bubb, nothing the worse after his tater and vaseline meal. A bright sparkle was in his alert eyes, his legs were crossed and the fingers of his left hand kept strumming idly on the floor. His right hand gripped a mess-tin which he pushed towards the champagne bottle in a slow, guileless manner as if he was doing it knowingly.

Flanagan was there, stripped to the waist and rubbing his body with a towel. He had been out through the village and had just come back, sweating profusely. He had eaten at a café round the corner and made a study of "the movements of masticating jaws" as he expressed it.

"It's damned interesting to watch people eat," he said. "Some eat slowly as if deliberating whether they should swallow the food or spit it out, some eat quickly, trippingly as it were, and some gorge. Those who eat slowly keep their mouths shut, those who eat quickly show their teeth all the time, and those who gorge simply gorge. We were sitting at a long table and I was at the end of the seat. I had a look along the line of moving jaws rising and falling, at the man next to me having a canter...."

"A canter?" queried Bubb.

"Yes, a canter round his teeth with his tongue," said Flanagan; "and at the man opposite whose moving jaw shook his ears until I thought they would fall off!"

Flanagan got no further with his chatter. The door opened, Sergeant Snogger entered followed by a stranger, and glanced keenly about him.

"Watch that candle," he said; "it will fall down on the straw and burn the whole damned place out if you are not careful. And that window, what about it? The light's showing froo and you'll have a shell across 'ere if you're not careful. You're not at 'ome now, boys."

"'Aven't been in Blighty for eighteen months, sarg," said Bubb blandly.

"I've got a new mate for you fellows," said the sergeant, paying no heed to Bubb's remark. "'E 'as just come out an 'e's for this 'ere section.... And another thing," he said, "I s'pose you think yourselves lucky gettin' your pay to-day and gettin' a good night's sleep to-night after fillin' your guts with grub and fizz. Don't you, now?"

"Yes, of course," Bubb assented.

"Well, you're damned unlucky," said the sergeant. "We've got ter go up ter the trenches ter-night."

"Blimey!" "Damn!" "Curse it!" Three voices yelled.

"We're startin' off as soon as we can, so get ready," said the sergeant. "Every man wipe 'is wifle wiv a woily wag 'fore 'e goes, for 'e may need it 'fore 'e comes back.... Buck to when you give me a wet and get ready."

They gave the sergeant a drink and started to pack up their things. Only when they had finished and sat down to wait for the call to move had they time to pay any attention to the new mate, the boy who had just come out from home.

He had helped them at the making up of their kits, oiled their rifles and rushed out to the baker's shop near at hand and bought two loaves to take up to the trenches. When he returned, the others were sitting on the floor waiting for him.

He came in with a brisk step, placed the loaves on the floor and looked at his mates. In carriage he had a certain individual grace, and his face, good-looking and youthful, wore an expression of intense expectation. A traveller within sight of a long-sought objective might look as that boy did. His age might be about nineteen, he looked seventeen. When he saw the men looking at him, he smiled awkwardly and blushed as if he had been found guilty of a mean action.

"Well, wot d'yer fink of it?" asked Bubb.

"Of this place?" asked the boy.

"No, not of this place, but the 'ole blurry business," said Bubb; "o' this 'ere war."

"I don't know what to think of the war, but I love being out here," said the boy, putting his hand in his pocket and bringing out a packet of cigarettes. "I couldn't get out before; my mother spoke to the authorities back in England, and I couldn't get away until I was nineteen."

"And ye're glad to be out 'ere?" asked Bubb in an incredulous voice, then added: "Of course you are. I was dyin' ter get out 'ere myself.... But I know where I'd like ter get now.... Thanks, matey."

Spudhole put the cigarette in his mouth and the newcomer lit it with a match. He gave the others cigarettes also and lit the last three with the same match; the stranger was the third smoker. This was not discovered until it was done.

"Devil blow me blind!" exclaimed Bowdy Benners. "He lit his cig----" Then he stopped, and a moment's silence ensued.

"It's always unlucky," said Spudhole. "D'ye mind old Stumpy...."

"Hold your row, you old woman!" Benners exclaimed.

"The superstition is a modern one," said Flanagan, blowing the smoke of a cigarette through his nostrils. "Invented, I suppose, by Bryant and May's to increase the output of matches."

"But wot about old Stumpy?" asked Bubb.

"Stumpy be damned!" exclaimed Benners, who was seldom moved to such a state of excitement. "Hold your jaw, Spudhole."

"So we're going up to the trenches to-night," said the newcomer in an eager voice.

"Yes, we're going up," said Flanagan moodily. "It's always going up. I suppose you'll be quite pleased going into action for the first time."

"Delighted," said the boy, and his hearers chuckled at the frank admission.

"It's young blood and not knowin' things that makes you say that," said Bubb, shaking his head with an air of wisdom at which his mates would have laughed if their rest had been assured for another week. But now as they sat there waiting for the signal to move up to the fighting line which they knew so well, it was a different matter....

The talk turned to England; the newcomer, whose name was Frank Reynolds, had much to tell about home, his people, his life at school, and above all, about his life in the Army. He was the only child of a head clerk in a London Bank, his father had died recently, and now only the mother remained at home. She lived in Hampstead, and was rather well to do, having money left to her by a rich relative. She was very fond of her boy and would send him parcels twice a week.

"No cigarettes, though," said Reynolds. "She doesn't know that I smoke, and I daren't tell. It would hurt her.... I learned to smoke since I joined the Army; just about three cigarettes a day."

"I could smoke that many when drinking my tea," said Bubb.

Conversation ceased at that moment, for the whistle was blown in the street and the soldiers were forming up preparatory to moving off to the trenches.

The battalion set off and marched along the road by the river, company after company, with little connecting files in between. Not the slightest breeze was awake, the river was silent, and the tall, graceful poplars which lined their route looked blacker and straighter than usual. They seemed to have gone to sleep even as they stood. The whole world was in repose, the battalion's movement was a sacrilege against the gods of the still night.

The very trenches were quiet now, the artillery riot had died down and only a few starshells rose into the mysterious heights of the eastern sky. The company in front set up a brisk pace which required long, quick strides to follow. Benners' section turned off from the river and marched up a steep incline to the top of a low hill opening out on a wide, far-reaching plain, which under the pale moonlight, looked more immense, and merged as it seemed into the distant sky.

Here and there a tall chimney stack stood high in air, dark shadows clinging to its base in startling contrast to the moonlight which rippled like molten silver over the top. A thin, white mist trailed across the meadows in long, formless streaks, bunching in the hollows and breaking away on the open. The air was full of the smell of water and mist and growing grass, in short, of the atmosphere of a summer night.

Smoking was not allowed. The enemy's trenches, miles away though they were, looked down on the road, and the glowing cigarette ends might be noticed. Then the road would be shelled....

Spudhole and Reynolds marched side by side, with Flanagan and Bowdy Benners immediately in front. From time to time they spoke of one thing and another, more especially about their hard luck in not getting a month's rest which had been promised to them for some time. They had expected to go back on the following morning, but instead it looked as if they were going to spend the morrow and a few other morrows in the trenches.

"Just our luck," said Flanagan. "It's always the same, always and eternally the same damned grind."

"Why do they send up green lights?" asked Reynolds in a whisper, and added, "They do look pretty."

"Pretty!" laughed Bubb. "If you was up in the trenches now you'd 'ear some pretty langwidge. They're signals for the artillery to bust up a dug-out or two, them green lights."

"Who's sending them up?" asked Reynolds.

"Us, maybe," said Bubb, "and again maybe it's not us. No one ever knows wot's wot in this 'ere job. It's always a muddle."

"But it's quiet enough now," said Reynolds. "How far are we from the trenches?"

"About three miles."

The battalion entered a village and marched up a wide street towards the full moon. The companies in front looked like dark, compact, heavy masses which did not seem to move but which could not be overtaken. A pump on the pavement was running and the water glittered like burnished silver as it fell to the cobbles. A shutter hung loose on a window and a woman came out and tried to fasten it, moving quietly as if afraid to make a noise. Reynolds was surprised to find a woman up so late; it was almost midnight now....

"This place is quiet enough," said Reynolds, speaking to Bubb. "One wouldn't think that the place was so near the trenches.... Do they ever fire at this village?"

"Sometimes," said Bubb, "at the other end. There!"

The deep, bass note of a bursting explosive swept through the village, awaking myriad long-drawn echoes, and died away.

"Shelling in front," said Flanagan in a trenchant whisper.

"I hope it's not the road," said Bubb.

"I don't think it's the road," said Bowdy Benners. "It sounded to the left a bit. But you can't tell with the echoes."

But further conversation was then impossible; the battalion formed into two files and plodded ahead.... Round the next corner Frank Reynolds came in touch with the war. A limber lay in the middle of the street shattered to pieces, the two ponies and the driver dead, and a sluggish trail of something dark crawling away from the scene of the wreck. Instinctively the boy knew that he was looking on blood and a queer sensation gripped the pit of his stomach. At the same moment he thought of the woman who was trying to close the shutters two hundred yards away and a feeling of shame swept through his heart.

"Am I afraid?" he asked himself. "And a woman going on with her work beside me just as if nothing was happening."

The R.A.M.C. were already at work, not in the vicinity of the limber, for there all help was useless, but on the pavement under the shadow of the poplars where four or five men were lying down, wounded and groaning.

Here the village had suffered, the houses were crumpled and shattered, the tiles had been flung off the rafters, the walls were smashed, the trees on the pavement were cut to splinters. Big holes showed in the streets and over all the ruin and destruction the moon shone calmly and the stars glimmered. But the atmosphere of the night had changed; a strange pungent odour filled the air, and Reynolds knew that he was smelling the battlefield.

"I must not tell mother about this," he said. "If she knew she couldn't sleep a wink at night.... I never thought.... I suppose there will be worse sights"