"Bien, monsieur," said Julie, who had been watching the Major admiringly without comprehending a word of what he said. Women have a way of falling in love with the Major at first sight.
We stumbled along between the rails and over the sleepers, led by the Major, who carried a hurricane lamp, and by the help of its fitful rays we leapt across the pools of water left in every hollow. We pa.s.sed some cattle-trucks. The Major held up the lamp and scrutinised a legend in white letters--
Hommes 40. Chevaux 12.
"Reminds me of the Rule of Three," said the Major meditatively. "If one Frenchman is equal to three and one-third horses, how many Huns are equal to one British soldier?"
"They are never equal to him," said the subaltern brightly. "If it wasn"t for machinery we"d have crumpled them up long ago."
"True, my son," said the Major, "and well spoken."
The men were grouped round the cattle-trucks, each man with his kit and 120 rounds of ammunition. They had just been through a kit inspection, and the O.C. in charge of details had audited and found it correct by entering up a memorandum to that effect in each man"s pay-book. Though how the O.C. completes his inventory of a whole draft, and certifies that nothing from a housewife to thirty pairs of laces per man is missing, is one of those things that no one has ever been able to understand. Perhaps he has radiographic eyes, and sees through the opaque integument of a ground-sheet at one glance. Also the Medical Officer at the Base Depot had endorsed the "Marching Out States," after scrutinising, more or less intimately, each man"s naked body, with the aid of a tallow candle stuck in an empty bottle. A medical inspection of three hundred men with their shirts up in a dark shed is a weird and bashful spectacle. An N.C.O. was supervising the entraining at each truck; the escort was marching up and down the permanent way on the off-side. The R.T.O. handed the movement orders to the senior officer in command of drafts, and I saw that they were going to get a move on very soon.
We were now opposite a first-cla.s.s compartment, and a slim figure loomed up out of the darkness.
"Halloa! is that you, C----? I thought you were gone on ahead of us, my boy."
"So I was, sir, but some of my men are missing, and I"m sending a corporal to hunt them up. We"re off in a few minutes. I met young T---- just now. I"ve been trying to cheer him up," he added. It was evident that the subaltern was now understudying the Major in his star part of cheering other fellows up. "He"s feeling rather blue," he continued.
"Depressed at saying good-bye to his friends, you know."
"Oh, that"s no good. Tell him I"ve got a plum-pudding and a bottle of whisky among my kit. Yes, and a topping liqueur."
I looked at B----"s compartment. His servant, a sapper, was stowing the kit in the racks and under the seat, with the help of a portable acetylene lamp which burnt with a hard white light in the darkness, a darkness which you could almost feel with your hand.
"I say, B----," I asked as I contemplated a hay-stack of things, "what"s the regulation allowance for an officer"s luggage? I forget."
"One hundred pounds. Oh yes, you may laugh, old chap, but I got round the R.T. officer. Christmas! you know. And I can stow it in my billet.
Cheers the other fellows up, you know."
B----"s kit weighed, at a moderate computation, about a quarter of a ton, and included many things not to be found in the field-service regulations. But it would never surprise me if I found a performing elephant or a litter of life-size Teddy Bears in his baggage. He would gravely explain that it cheered the fellows up, you know.
"Major," I said, "you are a "carrier"!"
"Carter Paterson?" said the Major, with a glance at his luggage.
"No, I didn"t mean that. You are not as quick in the uptake as usual, especially considering your medical qualifications. What I meant was that you remind me, only rather differently, of the people who get typhoid and recover, but continue to propagate the germs long after they become immune from them themselves. You"re diffusing a gaiety which you no longer feel."
It was a bold shot, and if we hadn"t been pretty old friends it would have been an impertinence. The Major put his arm in mine and took me aside, so that the subaltern should not hear. "You"ve hit the bull"s-eye, old chap," he said, in a low voice. "But don"t give me away.
Come into the carriage."
He was strangely silent as we sat facing each other in the compartment, each of us conscious of a hundred things to say, and saying none of them. The train might start at any moment, and such things as we did say were trivial irrelevancies. Suddenly he pulled out a pocket-book, and showed me a photograph.
"My wife and Pat--you"ve never seen Pat, I think? We christened her Patricia, you know?"
It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls, aged, I should say, about two.
"Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter.
She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B---- studied it intently for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly he leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way. "I say, old chap, write to my wife!"
"But, my dear fellow, I"ve never met her except once. She must have quite forgotten who I am."
"I know. But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the top of my form. Merry and bright, you know."
We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised.
There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as C---- sprang in. I grasped B----"s hand, and jumped on to the footboard of the moving train.
"Good-bye, old chap."
"Good-bye, old man."
B---- had gone to the front. I never saw him again.
Three weeks later I was sitting at _dejeuner_ in the Metropole, when a ragam.u.f.fin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the leave-boat. I took up the _Times_ and looked, as one always looks nowadays, at the obituary column. I looked again. In the same column, one succeeding the other, I read the following:
Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur Hamilton C---- of the ---- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur C.
and of Mrs. C. of the Red House, Little Twickenham, aged 19.
Behold! I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke.
Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier under fire, Major Ronald B----, D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical Corps, aged 42.
Greater love hath no man than this.
II
THE FRONT
VII
THE TWO RICHEBOURGS
We had business with the _maire_ of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast.