Part 26

The two officers looked at Mademoiselle, an exceedingly pretty young girl, sitting composedly at a typewriter. There was a strip of plaster marring the smooth cheek, and at the cashier's words she looked round at the young officers, flashed them a cheerful smile, and returned to her hammering on the key-board.

"My word, Mademoiselle," said one of the officers. "Near thing, eh? I wonder you are not scared to carry on."

The girl turned a slightly puzzled glance on them.

"Monsieur means," explained the cashier friendlily to her, "is it that you have no fear--peur, to continue the affairs?"

Mademoiselle smiled brightly and shook her head. "But no," she said cheerfully, "it is nossings," and went back to her work.

"Jolly plucky girl, I think," said the officer. "Nearly as plucky as she is pretty. I say, old man, my French isn't up to handling a compliment like that; see if you can--"

He did not finish the sentence, for at that moment there was a faint far-off bang, and they sensed rather than felt a faint quiver in the solid earth beneath their feet. The cashier held up one hand and stood with head turned sideways in an attitude of listening.

"You hear?" he said, arching his eyebrows.

"What was it?" said the officer. "Sounded like a door banging upstairs."

"No, no," said the cashier. "They have commenced again. It is the same hour as last time, and the time before."

Mademoiselle had stopped typing, and the ledger clerk at the desk behind her had also ceased work and sat listening; but after a moment Mademoiselle threw a little smile towards them--a half-pleased, half-deprecating little smile, as of one who shows a visitor something interesting, something one is glad to show, and then resumed her clicking on the typewriter. The ledger clerk, too, went back to work, and the cashier said off-handedly: "It is not near--the station perhaps--yes!" as if the station were a few hundred miles off, instead of a few hundred yards. He finished rapidly counting his bundle of notes and handed them to the officer.

When the two emerged from the bank they found the street a good deal quieter than when they had entered it. They walked along towards the main square, noticing that some of the shopkeepers were calmly putting up their shutters, while others quietly continued serving the few customers who were hurriedly completing their purchases. As the two walked along the narrow street they heard the thin savage whistle of an approaching shell and a moment later a tremendous bang! They and everybody else near them stopped and looked round, up and down the street, and up over the roofs of the houses. They could see nothing, and had turned to walk on when something crashed sharply on a roof above them, bounced off, and fell with a rap on the cobble-stones in the street. A child, an eager-faced youngster, ran from an arched gateway and pounced on the little object, rose, and held up a piece of stone, with intense annoyance and disgust plainly written on his face, threw it from him with an exclamation of disappointment.

The two walked on chuckling. "Little bounder!" said one. "Thought he'd got a souvenir; rather a sell for him--what?"

In the main square, they found a number of market women packing up their little stalls and moving off, others debating volubly and looking up at the sky, pointing in the direction of the last sound, and clearly arguing with each other as to whether they should stay or move. A couple of Army Transport wagons clattered across the square. One driver, with the reins bunched up in his hand and the whip under his arm, was busily engaged striking matches and trying to light a cigarette; the other, allowing his horses to follow the first wagon, and with his mouth open, gazed up into the sky as if he expected to see the next shell coming. A few civilians scattered about the square were walking briskly; a woman, clutching the arm of a little boy, ran, dragging him, with his little legs going at a rapid trot. More civilians, a few men in khaki, and some in French uniform, were standing in archways or in shop-doors.

There was another long whistle, louder and harsher this time, and followed by a splintering crash and rattle. The groups in the doorways flicked out of sight; the people in the open half halted and turned to hurry on, or in some cases, without looking round, ran hurriedly to cover. Stones and little fragments of débris clacked down one by one, and then in a little pattering shower on the stones of the square. The last of the market women, hesitating no longer, hurriedly bundled up their belongings and hastened off. The two officers turned into a café with a wide front window, seated themselves near this at a little marble table, and ordered beer. There were about a score of officers in the room, talking or reading the English papers. All of them had very clean and very close-shaven faces, and very dirty and weather-stained, mud-marked clothes. For the most part they seemed a great deal more interested in each other, in their conversations, and in their papers, than in any notice of the bombardment. The two who were seated near the window had a good view from it, and extracted plenty of interest from watching the people outside.

Another shell whistled and roared down, burst with a deep angry bellow, a clattering and rending and splintering sound of breaking stone and wood. This time bigger fragments of stone, a shower of broken tiles and slates rattled down into the square; a thick cloud of dirty black smoke, gray and red tinged with mortar and brick-dust, appeared up above the roofs on the other side of the square, spread slowly and thickly, and hung long, dissolving very gradually and thinning off in trailing wisps.

In the café there was silence for a moment, and many remarks about "coming rather close" and "getting a bit unhealthy," and a jesting inquiry of the proprietor as to the shelter available in the cellar with the beer barrels. A few rose and moved over to the window; one or two opened the door, to stand there and look round.

"Look at that old girl in the doorway across there," said one. "You would think she was frightened she was going to get her best bonnet wet."

The woman's motions had, in fact, a curious resemblance to those of one who hesitated about venturing out in a heavy rainstorm. She stood in the doorway and looked round, drew back and spoke to someone inside, picked up a heavy basket, set it down, stepped into the door, glanced carefully and calculatingly up at the sky and across the square in the direction she meant to take, moved back again and picked up her basket, set it firmly on her arm, stepped out and commenced to hobble at an ungainly cumbersome trot across the square. She was no more than half-way across when the shriek of another shell was heard approaching. She stopped and cast a terrified glance about her, dumped the basket down on the cobbles, and resumed the shambling trot at increased speed. A soldier in khaki crossing the square also commenced to run for cover as his ear caught the sound of the shell; passing near the woman's basket, he stooped and grabbed it and doubled on with it after its panting owner.

A group of soldiers standing in the archway shouted laughter and encouragement, pretending they were watching a race, urging on the runners.

"Go on, Khaki! go on!--two to one on the fat girl; two to one--I lay the fie-ald." Their cries and clapping shut off, and they disappeared like diving ducks as the shell roared down, struck with a horrible crash one of the buildings in a side-street just off the square, burst it open, and flung upward and outward a flash of blinding light, a spurt of smoke, a torrent of flying bricks and broken stones. Through the rattle and clatter of falling masonry and flying rubbish there came, piercing and shrill, the sound of a woman's screams. They choked off suddenly, and for some seconds there were no sounds but those of falling fragments, jarring and hailing on the cobble-stones, of broken glass crashing and tinkling from dozens of windows round the square.

As the noises of the explosion died away, figures crowded out anxiously into the doorways again, and stood there and about the pavements, looking round, pointing and gesticulating, and plainly prepared to run back under cover at the first sign of warning. The half-dozen men who had cheered the race across the square emerged from the archway, looked around, and then set off running, keeping close under the shelter of the houses, and disappearing into the thick smoke and dust that still hung a thick and writhing curtain about the street-end in the corner of the square.

The two officers who had sat at the café window looked at one another.

"You heard that squeal?" said one.

"Yes," said the other; "I think we might trot over. You knowing a little bit about surgery might be useful."

"Oh, I dunno," said the first. "But, anyhow, let's go."

They paid their bill and went out, and as they crossed the square they met a couple of the soldiers who had disappeared into the smoke. They were moving at the double, but at a word from the officers they halted. Both wore the Red Cross badge of the Army Medical Corps on their arms, and one explained hurriedly that they were going for an ambulance, that there was a woman killed, one man and a woman and two children badly wounded. They ran on, and the two officers moved hastily towards the shell-struck house. The smoke was clearing now, and it was possible to see something of the damage that had been done.

The shell apparently had struck the roof, had ripped and torn it off, burst downwards and outwards, blowing out the whole face of the upper story, the connecting-wall and corner of the houses next to it, part of the top-floor, and a jagged gap in the face of the lower story. The street was piled with broken bricks and tiles, with splinters of stone, with uprooted cobbles, with fragments and beams, bits of furniture, ragged-edged planks, fragments of smoldering cloth. As the two walked, their feet crunched on a layer of splintered glass and broken crockery. The air they breathed reeked with a sharp chemical odor and the stench of burning rags.