Bretherton

by Morris, W. F. ;

  The mess broke up early that night, and I crossed the green with the others and made the complete circuit of the village, dropping members of the mess at their respective billets. Then the C.O., the Adjutant, Pagan, and I walked back across the grass. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and there was a touch of frost in the air. Before us was the farmhouse with the moonlight glinting on its roof, and beyond, the dark wall of trees that bounded the village on every side. Above them rose the little spire of the village church like a black finger against the moonlit sky. Far away in the distance a long, low rumble of sound broke the stillness.

  “Fritz blowing up his dumps,” commented the C.O.

  We entered the cheery mess, had a last drink, and then taking our candles, mounted the broad, low-tredded stairs. I said good night to the C.O., the adjutant, and Pagan, and entered my room. It formed one corner of the house and had two heavily curtained windows at right angles to each other. Rarely have I seen such a picture of comfort. Private Twittey, my servant, had surpassed himself on Armistice night. A huge log fire blazed on the great hearth and sent cosy flickerings of light among the homely shadows of the big room. It turned one’s thoughts to Christmas Eve and Dickens. I undressed and climbed into the huge old four-poster bed, and there I lay in the most delicious comfort, watching the firelight flickering on the low-beamed ceiling. The hiss and crackle of the logs on the hearth was the only sound that broke the country stillness.

  This then, I thought, was the end of it all. This was the beginning of the long-hoped-for return to the life of simple comforts—a roof over one’s head, decently cooked food, and a bed; and I snuggled farther down beneath the billowing eiderdown. So content was I that I ceased to worry about poor old G. B. If he were a spy, I told myself, then he had gained the reward of all traitors: he was dead. And no one would suffer pain on that account; for no one but myself knew it. And if he were not a spy, again no one but myself had any reason to doubt him. And that was as it should be. All, then, was for the best in this strange new world of peace.

  I blinked drowsily at the firelight till I fell asleep.

  PART II

  THE OLD COMPANY

  CHAPTER IV

  I

  The year is 1915. It is three o’clock in the afternoon of Christmas Eve in the city of Amiens. The Rue des Trois Cailloux is thronged with people. Wizened Picardy farmers, rotund business men in pince-nez, harassed mothers with their broods, trim silken-legged workgirls with demure faces and laughing eyes, buxom countrywomen with baskets as bulging as their figures, struggle good-humouredly along the crowded pavements. Here and there is a fleck of horizon blue or the gold and scarlet kepi of a General of the Republic, and through the flowing throng runs a steady trickle of khaki like a clayey current in a dark river.

  In a crowded charcuterie the harassed shopkeeper is listening with true Gallic politeness to the linguistic efforts of a perspiring subaltern who has forgotten the French for the commodity he wishes to purchase, whilst the other customers loudly debate its probable nature and make more or less helpful suggestions. The teashops are already full, and through the windows one may see red-tabbed staff-captains and debonair subalterns, plate in one hand and poised fork in the other, selecting fancy cakes from the mounds of confectionery on the counter. Along the roadway moves an endless procession of staff cars, limbered waggons, farm buggies, motor-cycles, and mess-carts.

  One mess-cart with a canvas tilt stands outside a poulterer’s near the Place Gambetta. In the doorway of the shop a bustling Frenchwoman is assuring G. B. and myself that the turkeys we have ordered for the Company Christmas dinner will be ready in ten minutes.

  “Right-oh, Madame!” I am saying. “Dix minutes… bon! That’s a promise—c’est un promis. Come on, G. B.; while we are waiting we will call on Suzette and get the gramophone needles.”

  G. B. turned to the corporal standing by the mess-cart. “Stay here, Corporal, and see that nobody nips off with our birds; start loading up if they are ready before we get back. Come on, then, Baron; I want to fetch my camera from the shop by the cathedral.”

  We cruised off into the moving throng on the pavement and turned to the right into the gaily lighted arcade.

  “Damnation!” I muttered as we reached the door of the music-shop. “Some blighter has clicked with Suzette.”

  A tall gunner captain was leaning over the counter in an attitude that brought his khaki cap nearer to the dark head of pretty Suzette than his occupation of examining a record rendered absolutely necessary. We walked into the shop.

  “Sorry to butt in on your maiden romance and all that, Suzette,” I said. “But business before pleasure, live and let live, and what-not.” I addressed the tall officer leaning over the counter. “If you would lift your barrage for a minute, sir, just while Suzette gets me a box of needles.”

  The fellow grinned and murmured, “Carry on.”

  “Bon jour, M’sieu Bar-r-ron! Bon jour, M’sieu Geebee!” prattled Suzette in her pretty English.

  “Mal jour, Suzette!” I retorted. “It’s the plus maliest jour I’ve struck for many a day. My heart is broken—cassé, démolie. Give me my needles and let me take my hopeless passion to some lonely spot where I may die in peace.”

  “Oh là, là! Farceur!” she cried with a pretty French movement of her hands. “Mais oui! I ’ave a disc for you, M’sieu: that which you ’ave demande: ‘They deedn’t beeleeve me.’”

  “Didn’t they?” I said. “Showed their sense. Give it me, Suzette; I will wear it next my heart. Pay her, G. B., and take me away before I break down.”

  “What an ass you are, Baron!” laughed G. B. as we left the shop.

  Old G. B. himself was a bit of a misogynist, I fancy. But it was not for lack of attractiveness, for as we marched along I noticed a lot of demure little glances being thrown at his solemn old face, and I returned them on his behalf. It seemed a pity that they should waste their sweetness on the desert air, so to speak.

  We collected his camera from the pharmacien and returned to the poulterer’s to find the corporal just beginning to load up.

  “You get the papers, Baron,” suggested G. B. “And I will go on ahead. I have to see the A.S.C. at La Houssoye about that football match. I will wait for you there.”

  I crossed the road to the paper-shop and secured my copies of La Vie Parisienne after a fierce struggle with the other troops; then I fetched my motor-cycle. I was trickling slowly through the traffic round the lamps in the middle of the Place Gambetta when the machine beneath me seemed to give, and I found myself on the ground. The front forks had collapsed. I picked myself up and stood there cursing inwardly, for in my mind’s eye I saw that long road ahead and myself trudging along it. There was a chance, however, that the mess-cart had not yet gone. I called to a Tommy to look after my motor-cycle, dived through the crowd towards the Rue des Trois Cailloux, and overtook the mess-cart a few yards down the street.

  We removed the turkeys and piled them on the island beneath the lamps, much to the amusement of the crowd. Then we heaved the motor-cycle into the cart, covered it with a blanket, and replaced the turkeys. But the cart was now so full that the wooden seat would not fit across it, and we had to make ourselves as comfortable as we could on top of the birds. Enthroned thus we drove off down the street of the three pebbles amid some laughter and cheers.

  We were soon clear of the city and jogging contentedly along the straight Albert road. I sucked at my pipe and chuckled over La Vie, whilst the corporal and the mess cook sustained an argument respecting the charms of an artiste they had seen at the Chiswick Empire in 1914. We had not gone far before a moving black dot on the straight white road ahead resolved itself into G. B. careering towards us. He drew into the side of the road and sat astride his motor-cycle with his hands resting on his hips.

  “Where is your bus?” he asked.

  I pointed beneath the turkeys on which I was perched. “Cassé!” I grinned.

  “Glad you had enough sense to put it u
nderneath,” he remarked.

  “I have some rudiments,” I replied dryly. “Get along, G. B. and tell ’em I’m coming.”

  “Right-oh!” He paddled his Douglas round and with a wave of his hand purred up the road and out of sight.

  Dusk was falling as we passed through Pont Noyelles. I put away my papers and relighted my pipe. A ride through the gloaming on a slow-moving vehicle is a restful proceeding and good for one’s soul. We passed a few trudging peasants who gave us “Bon soir” and “Bon Noël,” and occasionally we met a long-maned farm-horse klippity-klopping homewards. A homing aeroplane droned over our heads and glided down to roost in a hollow on our left. The horse’s feet clicked noisily through the little street of La Houssoye, where the sound of a gramophone came from a lighted window and one could distinguish the dark shapes of A.S.C. lorries parked on the roadside. Occasionally on the right we saw a huddle of lights where some village lay in the Ancre Valley below us in the darkness.

  Just before we reached the lane leading to the village in which the company was billeted, we passed a dark shape in the shadow of the trees.

  “What’s that?” I asked the corporal.

  “French lorry, sir,” he answered. “They are making some earthworks over there and have brought up a load of pit-props.”

  “Pit-props!” I echoed. “Let’s have a look.”

  We pulled up, and I clambered down to the road.

  “How would they do for yule logs, Corporal?” I asked, as we stood peering into the back of the lorry, which was full of good-sized pit-props.

  “Fine, sir!” he answered with a grin.

  I glanced up and down the road; it was deserted.

  “Come on, then—lend a hand.”

  We managed to get three of the props into the mess-cart, though it was rather a tight fit, and the turkeys suffered somewhat. Then we climbed back to our precarious seats.

  “Bringing home the yule log—what!” I laughed.

  Wants a bit o’ music, sir,” said the mess cook. He produced a mouth-organ, and to the strains of “Good King Wenceslas” we turned from the main road into the steep track that led down to the village.

  II

  We pulled up before the cook-house in the playground of the village school. I collected the papers and my various purchases, and made my way to the mess.

  Approaching the mess in the dark was a hazardous undertaking, for one had to steer through a small archway between two barns and cross a farm courtyard by a narrow path bordered by a very large and juicy midden. One false step and one was in the slough of despond. A lighted window in the house acted as a beacon, however, and I passed the danger-zone in safety.

  The mess was in an inner room approached through the kitchen in which the family lived. With the exception of Monsieur, who was with his regiment, the family was in residence. Petit Jean was warming his small hands at the big coffin-shaped stove on which stood the inevitable coffee-pot, and Madame, with little Elise on her knee, was seated near by. I presented the two children with the gift of sweets we always brought them from Amiens, and then turned the handle of the door leading to the mess.

  The upper part of this door was glazed and covered with a short curtain which did in some degree muffle the babel of sound in the mess-room beyond; but the moment I turned the handle, a blast of noise rushed out and smote my ears as though I had opened the door on a gale. The gramophone was grinding out “Watch Your Step.” and to its accompaniment Pagan and Fanshawe of the Lancers were dancing with such gusto that every now and then the needle jumped and skipped several bars. G. B., seated at the sorry-looking piano in a corner of the room, was playing Bach’s Preludes as though he were alone on a mountain-top. Killick, O.C. Lancers, and Melford, our own C.O., were carrying on a conversation in the raised tones which the barrage of other sounds made necessary; and Groucher, the Second-in-Command, with a pile of coppers before him, was playing nap with Adams of the Motor-machine Guns and Hubbard, and quarrelling noisily over some point in the game. And seated by the fire and looking rather bewildered by all this racket was an officer in tartan trews whom I did not know.

  “Hullo, Baron, you’ve got back, then!” cried G. B., playing softly to himself.

  Then each demanded the purchases he had commissioned me to make for him, and I acquitted myself very creditably, I think, having forgotten not more than half a dozen; and when I had distributed copies of La Vie Parisienne as peace-offerings to the aggrieved, I peeled off my British-warm and turned to the examination of my mail. There were letters from home and parcels of socks, mufflers, Balaclava helmets, and other munitions of war from patriotic aunts; but what pleased me most was a large iced cake with “Cheerio, Dicky” on it in pistachio nuts, a present from Helen, David Gurney’s sister. I placed it triumphantly on the table.

  “Ah ha!” cried Pagan, breaking off his dance with Fanshawe to admire my cake. “The King—Baron, I mean—doth wake tonight and take his rouse, keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels! Fetch the pioneer sergeant and his axe, and let the wassailling begin.”

  Pagan had a passion for quoting Shakespeare, but apart from this disgusting habit he was rather an amusing fellow. In civilian life he was the junior partner of a large firm of woollen manufacturers, and though one of the smartest and most efficient subalterns in the Company, he delighted in making remarks calculated to shock the orthodox regular soldier. On one occasion when he and I were dining at Divisional Headquarters, Charteris, the A.D.C., a conceited young pup, asked in his supercilious manner what he did in civilian life. Pagan looked up innocently and replied without turning a hair, “I make woollen ‘combs.’” The glittering assembly of khaki, red, and gold gasped, but the General was delighted and laughed till the tears came into his eyes. At last he managed to say, still laughing at the sight of Charteris’s bewildered face, “Splendid, Pagan—splendid! Charteris doesn’t know what they are. His friends don’t wear ’em. They go in for georgette and chills on the liver.”

  Fanshawe of the Lancers was Pagan’s great friend. He was a tall, fair-haired, fresh-faced youth who looked as though he took a bath every half-hour. He wore the most highly polished riding-boots and the most glittering spurs, and he carried his revolver holster strapped cavalry fashion across the thigh of his perfectly cut fawn riding-breeches. He joined Pagan in admiring my cake and helped himself to a couple of pistachio nuts. And then, to my relief, a diversion was caused by the entrance of Harding, the medical officer, followed by a mess waiter with half a dozen magnums of champagne.

  At the sight of the champagne, Hubbard—called inevitably Mother Hubbard or simply Mother—left his noisy game of nap, and, seizing Harding by the waist, whirled him round, singing “Yankee Doodle” at the top of his voice. Harding was an American citizen who had been spending a holiday in England in ’14, and had joined up in the R.A.M.C.

  “Here’s to Clicquot, the merriest of widows,” cried Hubbard. “And to Uncle Sam, the best M.O. that ever pushed number nines down the throats of poor damn soldier-men.”

  I asked who was the fellow in tartan trews by the fire.

  “Dodd,” replied G. B. “Reinforcement in Evrington’s place.”

  I made myself agreeable to the newcomer, and then escaped to my room to change into slacks for mess.

  III

  We had scarcely finished the meal before some of the Motor-machine-gun people arrived to take us to the Divisional Follies, and we all crowded into a box-body, with the exception of Mother Hubbard, who was orderly dog and had to stay behind to look after the shop. Adams, O.C. Motor-machine-gun Battery, drove. He was a lean-faced man who, among other things, had been a trooper in the North-west Mounted. To his intimates he was known as Fanny Adams, or Sweet Fanny Adams. To him a motor-car had only one speed: the highest it was possible to get out of it. We shot like a rocket along the two odd miles of dark, tree-shaded road beside the stream, turned right-handed over the bridge and past the château gates, where the red and green light and pacing sentry proclai
med Divisional Headquarters, into the village street.

  The theatre was a brasserie decorated with flags and brightly lighted with electric light by the A.S.C. A stage had been rigged up at one end, and there was accommodation for two or three hundred people. It was really an extraordinarily good show—a pantomime, “Cinderella.” The scenery was highly ingenious, if a little crude. The songs went with a swing, and the repartee was sparkling and highly topical. Cinderella herself was a dainty, pathetic little figure whose occasional bursts of impudence were unorthodox perhaps, but most diverting. Certainly no one would have guessed that her piquant little face with its crown of golden curls was in reality that of a martial bombardier.

  After the show G. B. and I decided to walk back; there was really too much of a squash in the box-body. We were soon clear of the village and swinging along throughout the open country. It was a moonlight night and very quiet. But before we had covered half the distance a sudden continuous rumbling as though a number of lorries with square wheels were driving over a hollow stage broke forth, punctuated every now and then by a sound like that of a giant tea-tray being banged; and there were a lot of firework-like flashes, Verey light displays, and coloured rockets visible ahead in the direction of the line.

  “Sounds like a raid,” remarked G. B. “They are putting stuff into Méaulte,” he added, as another tea-tray was dropped somewhere, in the valley ahead.

  “It’s like old Fritz to start a strafe on Christmas Eve,” I growled. “He has as much imagination as a cow—the dirty dog!”

  “I don’t think one can blame him for this,” replied G. B. seriously. “After all, he is perfectly right. The more uncomfortable you can make your enemy, the sooner he is likely to throw in his hand. War isn’t a parlour game in which you all sit down to tea and carry on again afterwards. He knows more about it than we do, and he knows damn well one cannot win a war by knocking off on Sundays and Bank Holidays.”