by W. F. Morris
Pagan decided to remain where he was and lie still. The weeds hardly covered him, but they made a dark background against which it was very unlikely he would be noticed in the dim deceptive light of the stars.
The sounds of movement drew nearer, and he noted that Kleber seemed to be making a good deal more noise in descending the slope than he had done in going up it. And then the reason of this increase in sound became apparent, for suddenly Kleber spoke. He was not alone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
PAGAN strained his ears to locate exactly the direction from which the sounds were coming; for he realized that if his rather inadequate hiding place were upon the near side of that mysterious path down which Kleber and his companion were moving, they would come out upon the track somewhere away to his left and, assuming Kleber to be returning by the way he had come, would walk up it right past him; whereas if his hiding place were beyond the path, they would come out upon the track somewhere away to the right and walk away from him.
As the sounds grew nearer he located them definitely as coming from the left, and he turned his head and strained his eyes in that direction. Suddenly he was aware of a vague form, dimly discernible as a moving patch of darkness, in the gloom a few yards away. A moment later another vague form appeared beside it; and the two moved slowly towards him up the track, looming larger and less vague with every step. He hoped they would speak, but they came on in silence in single file, for the track was narrow.
Pagan lay motionless among the weeds, calculating the chances of his being seen. In any case it was too late now to move. Movement and sound were the two things that would betray his presence: without them he was comparatively safe. He lay with muscles taut and his breath coming lightly between parted lips.
The two figures came on slowly. They passed within a foot or two of where he lay among the weeds; and he saw them silhouetted from the hips upwards against the night sky across the valley. The broader and shorter figure in front wearing a hat was undoubtedly Kleber. The tall, powerful figure that came behind was bare-headed, and the dim silhouette of its head against the sky startled Pagan and set his heart pounding against his ribs. It was no human profile that he saw, but an irregular concave line.
The two figures passed slowly up the track and were lost in the darkness, but the sounds of their progress continued. These ceased suddenly, and the murmur of voices came again. Then the voices ceased and the sound of movement began again, growing fainter as it passed into the distance.
Pagan decided to follow. He raised himself upon one elbow, and he was drawing up his legs as a preliminary to thrusting them out upon the track when fresh sounds struck him motionless again. The sounds came from the same direction as before. They were sounds of footsteps upon the track, footsteps coming nearer. He lowered his elbow and dropped back to the more comfortable prone position. This could mean but one thing; Kleber had gone and that other figure was returning.
The sounds came gradually nearer. Pagan’s brain was working actively. Should he let the figure pass and then track it to its lair among this labyrinth of old dug-outs and trenches or should he confront it boldly and settle once and for all whether it were man or beast? That it might prove dangerous had to be considered, but an old war maxim ran in his head: the best form of defence is to attack.
The footsteps sounded very near now. Pagan prepared for action. He rose noiselessly upon one knee and transferred the torch to his left hand. A dim figure had emerged from the darkness and was coming slowly down the path towards him. It came closer—five yards, three yards, two.
Pagan rose quickly to his feet and switched on the torch. “Halt!” he cried in French; and then added, “My God!”
The figure had halted, and the bright wavering circle of light from the torch in Pagan’s uncertain hand revealed a rough tweed coat and neat collar and tie about a strong tanned human neck. But the face above was hardly human. There appeared to be no eyes. There was no nose; only a dark cavity. And the mouth was a slit through which white teeth glimmered like those of a snarling beast. All the rest was shapeless, livid corrugated flesh like purplish crepe rubber, and by contrast the neatly brushed fair hair above, added if possible to the ghastly affect. There was a long silence.
Pagan’s voice shook as he cried at last harshly, “Who are you?” He spoke in English under the sudden stress of emotion.
Some twitchings of two spots of naked flesh made it apparent that the creature had eyes after all, but they had been fast closed against the blinding glare. They opened slowly, and Pagan was startled to see how sparkling and blue they were, set in that dull livid, shapeless mass of flesh. They were keen, intelligent and above all, sad eyes that went far to restore his shaken confidence.
He pulled himself together and lowered the beam of light so as to lessen the glare. “Who are you and what are you up to?” he demanded again.
Then the creature spoke. “Who am I!” it echoed irritably. “What the hell has that to do with you? It seems much more to the point to ask who are you and what you are up to—unless it’s highway robbery!”
To Pagan’s surprise the language was English and the voice well-bred, thought a trifle indistinct, due no doubt to the twisted mouth. There was silence for a moment, and then the creature made as though to pass on down the track. But Pagan stood his ground.
“Who are you?” he repeated doggedly.
The creature halted again. Its blue eyes peered at Pagan’s shadowed face as though it were trying to make up its mind about him. “Why should I answer you?” it retorted at last.
Pagan shrugged his shoulders. “Because, because you …” he began; and then a lifelong habit asserted itself, “because you come in such a questionable shape.”
The other made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sigh, and a long silence followed. He looked away across the valley at the moonlit hill-top and then back again at Pagan. “Well I will answer your question,” he said at last. “Though I do not admit your right to ask it. Who am I? I am a fellow who, as you see, got a little damaged in the late war. And as for what I am doing here, well …” He paused and then continued with tragic nonchalance, “I prefer to live up here where there are no women and children to frighten.”
For some moments they stood there in silence facing one another in the gloom above the pool of light spilled upon the path by the torch in Pagan’s lowered hand.
When at last he spoke his voice was low and gentle. “I am afraid I have made rather an ass of myself, sir,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry. I had no intention of barging in on your private affairs like this. I had no idea, I am awfully sorry.”
“No matter. After all, how could you possibly have known!” answered the other in a more friendly tone. “Though your manner was a bit brusque, wasn’t it! I suppose you had heard tales of something queer up here and wanted to see for yourself. Yes, they call this the haunted battlefield, you know,” he went on with a half laugh. “And now you have seen the ghost!”
“Alas poor ghost,” murmured Pagan under his breath.
The other fumbled in his pocket and produced a pipe which he put into his twisted mouth. “Possibly you are one of the people Kleber was telling me stayed at his inn last night,” he said.
Pagan nodded. “As a matter of fact it was his rather curious behaviour that led me to play the part of Paul Pry and brought me up here again to-night. That is my only excuse, such as it is; and … well, I’m most awfully sorry.”
The other nodded. “Kleber is not very subtle, I’m afraid. But don’t let it worry you. I can see that you are not the sort of fellow to go shouting it from the housetops.” And then after a slight pause, he added, “I never thought to talk to one of my own kind again, and I find it rather good after all these years.”
Pagan nodded his head sympathetically. “Do you talk to no one then except Kleber?” he asked.
“Only Kleber,” repeated the other. “He is a good fellow but he has his limitations as a convers
ationalist.”
“But how long is it …” began Pagan. And then he stopped and added hastily, “There I go asking questions again. I’m sorry.”
The other made a sound that might have been a laugh. “Don’t apologise,” he said. “You have no idea how good it sounds to hear English again. It’s a long, long time now since I heard another Englishman speak it—not since that crump spoiled my beauty.” He laughed softly without bitterness. The trace of embarrassment which had at first characterized his manner seemed to be passing. “You would hardly believe it,” he went on. “And I can say it now without being suspected of vanity, but I was considered rather a handsome fellow in my time.”
Pagan nodded in embarrassed silence.
“Let’s see, how many years now is it since the great fracas?” went on the other. “I suppose you came in for that?”
“I did,” said Pagan.
“What division were you?”
Pagan told him. He nodded and went on reminiscently, “Oh yes. I ran across them on the Somme in ’sixteen; they were coming out from Trones wood: we were going in.”
“Sticky spot that,” commented Pagan.
“It was,” agreed the other. He was silent for a moment and then he said diffidently, “I say, I hope it doesn’t bore you to talk about those old times.”
“Not a bit,” returned Pagan. “I like it.”
“So do I,” confessed the other. “Only I don’t often get the chance nowadays,” he added simply.
Pagan directed the light of his torch upon the bank beside the track. “Suppose we sit down, then,” he suggested.
“If you are not in a hurry,” said the man. “But now that you have run me to earth, I was going to suggest that you came along to my quarters and had a powwow.”
“I would like to,” answered Pagan. “But I don’t want to pry into your affairs,” he added.
The other dismissed the remark with a wave of his hand. “We will go then, shall we? They are not luxurious, you know, but there is a pew at any rate.”
He led the way for a few yards down the track, and then halted. “If you lend me your torch, I will show you the way.”
Pagan handed over the torch, and his companion directed the beam on to a large clump of brambles. There was a small gap in the middle of the clump, and the man stepped from the track over the intervening brambles into it. Then he went down an invisible step so that only that part of his body above the waist was visible. He held the torch so that Pagan could see.
“Step across,” he said. “But not too far or you will fall in. There is a ledge here about a foot wide.”
Pagan stepped across as directed and found himself standing upon the brink of a narrow, half-filled trench.
“Now follow me and keep your head down,” said his companion. He bent low and disappeared beneath the brambles.
Pagan stepped into the shallow trench and followed, with head bent low, into the deeper part beneath the brambles. Presently it was possible to walk upright. The trench zigzagged up the hill, and was evidently an old communicating trench. Weeds and brambles grew right across the top in many places, and occasionally tangles of wire showed above against the sky.
The guide halted at last where the trench was roofed with two sheets of galvanized iron covered with weed-grown earth. He stooped and went through a low dug-out entrance in the side of the trench, and held the torch behind him so that the beam was directed upon the floor. Pagan followed along a short low passage to a curtain of sacking which the guide held aside. A yard beyond it, the beam of the torch shone upon a rough wooden door.
“A door in a dug-out is a refinement of luxury I have not met before,” commented Pagan.
“It is a post-war addition of my own,” explained the other. He pushed it open, disclosing a light beyond.
Pagan passed through into what was evidently a dug-out, though it was like no dug-out he had seen before.
Not a square inch of earth showed anywhere. All the walls were covered with creosoted planks, and on two walls the planks themselves were hidden behind dark green curtains of some thick rough material. The floor also was boarded and was in part covered with a worn green carpet. The planks forming the roof were creosoted a dark brown, but the two great timbers which stretched from side to side and carried the great weight of the earth above were beautifully carved along the edges with the old Norman dog-tooth pattern and painted a rich red, green, white, gold and black.
The furniture consisted of a rough bookcase containing a number of books, the greater part of which were paper covered Tauchnitz editions. A worn French, green plush arm-chair was placed beside a small deal table on which stood an oil lamp and a tin of tobacco. There was a smaller wicker chair beside the bookcase. A larger and more solid table on the other side of the dug-out contained some tools, such as chisels and gouges, some pots of paint, and a small block of wood, the upper part of which had been roughly carved to the shape of an Alsatian head-dress. Upon a shelf behind the table stood some more pots of paint and a beautifully carved and coloured model of an Alsatian cabin with a stork’s nest on the chimney.
“That is not your handiwork, is it!” exclaimed Pagan admiringly. He kept his eyes from the man’s dreadful face which seemed to draw them like a magnet.
“Yes, that is one of my efforts,” answered the man. “And this is another on the way,” he added with his hand on the half carved block of wood. “This is how I get my living. Kleber disposes of them for me to the shops. Tourists buy them, you know.”
“I bought one myself,” Pagan told him. “I don’t buy travel souvenirs as a rule, but I pride myself that I know a good piece of work when I see it.”
“Thanks,” said the other. “Sit down, won’t you. I will put some coffee on; I’m afraid that is the best I can do in the way of a drink.”
“There is nothing I should like better, if it isn’t an awful fag,” said Pagan. He glanced at his watch. “But I must not stay long.”
The owner of this strange home went behind the curtain that screened the end of the dug-out and returned with a primus stove and a kettle. Pagan unbuttoned his coat.
“Oh do take that off,” said the other. “I’m afraid my manners have gone to pot living alone.” He hung the coat on a nail behind the door and went back to the stove. But his eyes wandered wistfully over Pagan’s black bow and dinner jacket.
“It’s a long time since I wore a boiled shirt,” he murmured as he poured methylated spirit into the collar of the stove. “Reminds one of old times.” He struck a match and lighted the spirit. “Did you ever see Romance? he asked suddenly.
Pagan nodded. “I think everybody did; Doris Keane in Romance was one of the seven wonders of the war.”
The stranger began to pump the stove. “What is she in now?” he asked.
“Nothing as far as I know; I haven’t heard of her for years,” answered Pagan.
The other nodded his head. “Of course it is a long time ago now. I suppose all the old shows have gone — Chu-Chin-Chow, Zig Zag, To-night’s the Night … Vanity Fair?”
“All gone, I’m afraid,” answered Pagan gently.
The stove was roaring well now and the man sat down in the wicker chair. “I saw Chu-Chin-Chow seven times,” he said reminiscently. “Three times on one leave! And To-night’s the Night four times. Do you remember that song, ‘Any old night is a wonderful night if you’re there with a wonderful girl?’ It was too,” he added half to himself.
Pagan nodded. “Happy days,” he murmured.
There was silence for a moment or two, and then the stranger asked almost conventionally, “Any good shows on in Town now?”
“No—not like the old ones,” said Pagan. “At any rate they don’t seem as good as the old ones seemed.”
The other filled his pipe thoughtfully. “I’m rather glad of that,” he said slowly. Silence settled down again.
Pagan looked appreciatively round the dug-out. “You have made yourself very comfortable here,” he said.
>
“I’m glad you like it. I’m rather proud of it.”
“You have every reason to be,” Pagan told him. “This is an old Bosche dug-out, I suppose,” he added.
The other nodded. “Yes—all this side of the ridge was German.”
“But did you get your … your Blighty one down in this part of the world?” asked Pagan.
The man rose and began to make the coffee. “Oh no,” he answered. “This part of the line was always in the French area. I don’t think we ever had any troops down here. I ‘copped my packet’ as Tommy says, much further North.” He poured the coffee into two plain white cups of thick china, one of which he handed to Pagan. From behind the curtain he produced a box of sugar cubes.
“I expect you are wondering how I got down here.”
Pagan stirred his coffee. “I don’t want to pry,” he said; “but, well, naturally I am rather curious.”
The other nodded his head slowly. “It was rather curious.” Either by accident or design he sat where the direct light of the lamp did not fall upon him, and his head was turned so the full horror of his face was not visible. “If it would interest you.”
“It would very much,” Pagan told him.
II
The man took the tobacco tin from the table and filled his pipe. “It was during the big Bosche attack in the spring of eighteen. I don’t know whether you were in that?”
Pagan shook his head. “No, we missed it. We were just north of Arras at the time; we came in for it later on. But we heard the racket down south.”
“We just caught it,” said the other. “We had been in only a couple of days when it came. Misty weather; couldn’t see a damned thing. All the telephone cables were cut during the first half-hour of the barrage and nobody knew what was happening. I had a frightful lot of casualties in my Company and I couldn’t get in touch with Battalion. Heavy machine gunning going on behind us too. Then the crump came along that got me, and I suppose my fellows thought I was done for. Anyway I was too smashed up to remember that or what happened for some time afterwards. But I suppose what did happen was the Bosche pushed our fellows back and found me.” He sucked at his pipe. “You know what things are like during a push, and it must have been the merest fluke that they didn’t leave me there to make an end of it. Anyway, for some reason or other they didn’t; they brought me back to a hospital. And there again I was lucky—or unlucky.” He regarded the glowing bowl of his pipe and went on. “As you may imagine, the doctors had their hands pretty full at that time and they might reasonably have put on one side one who, like myself, was an enemy and a pretty hopeless case. Undoubtedly they would have done so, only the fellow in charge happened to be an enthusiast on his job—the worse a case was the better he liked it—and the moment I was brought in, he lost interest in all the rest. Here was something that would really test his skill, he thought, and, well, I became his pet case.