Part 16

He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans--they had been surprised by a shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in their hands, monsieur, just as you see us--and they hadn't got a scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre."

"Yes," said the sous-officier, "I have seen them like that. I remember I found a big Bosche--six feet four he must have been--sitting dead in a house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff--yes! comme une poupee. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not one! And do you know what he had on--a woman's chemise! Ecoutez!" he added suddenly, and he held up a monitory hand.

Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the measure--who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a trumpet. The door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas "crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his heels.

Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice:

Allons! enfants de la Patrie!

A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops, with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum, more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed! To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying men with its viaticum. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to the side of men:

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre: S'ils tombent, nos jeunes heros, La terre en produit de nouveaux Contre vous tout prets a se battre. Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons: Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.

As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of joy:

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

It was the note of the conqueror.

FOOTNOTES:

German swine! Stinking Prussians!

You speak German!

Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

XVI

PETER

My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite. The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous stones, was unmistakable.

"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, the upturned faces of the men.

"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that vade mecum (price one penny) of the British soldier: French, and how to speak it. It was night, not day, but that didn't matter.

"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.

"Good-night"--"Good-night, old chap"--"Good-night, my son"--the men shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely saluted.

"It's Peter," said T----; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."

"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.

"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's shoulder from the window.

"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They saluted me! Did you see?" he said, turning to me.

"I did, Major Peter."

"You're kidding!"

"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to salute you too, now."