NO MAN'S LAND (A WW1 Saga). H. C. McNeile / Sapper
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Название: NO MAN'S LAND (A WW1 Saga)
Автор: H. C. McNeile / Sapper
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027200702
isbn:
This time—Victory. Wipe it out—that stain."
They had failed, true; but there were others who would succeed; and it was their presence that made one feel the unconquerable spirit of France.
III
The French officer in charge was polite, but firmly non-committal.
"There is a train which will leave here about midnight, we hope. If you can get a seat on it—well and good. If not——" he shrugged his shoulders superbly, and the conversation closed.
It was a troop train apparently, and in the course of time it would arrive at Marseilles—perhaps. It would not be comfortable. "Mais, que voulez-vous, M'sieur? c'est la guerre."
At first he had not been genial; but when he had grasped the fact that mufti invariably cloaked the British officer, en permission, he had become more friendly.
He advised dinner; in these days, as he truly remarked, one never knows. Also, what was England going to do?
"Fight," Draycott answered promptly, with an assurance he did not feel.
"Fight, mon Colonel; ça va sans dire."
"C'est bien," he murmured, and stood up. "Vive l'Angleterre." Gravely he saluted, and Draycott took off his hat.
"Mon Colonel, vive la France." They shook hands; and having once again solemnly saluted one another, he took the Frenchman's advice and went in search of dinner.
In the restaurant itself everything seemed normal. To the close observer there was possibly an undue proportion of women who did not eat, but who watched with hungry, loving eyes the men who were with them. Now and again one would look round, and in her face was the pitiful look of the hunted animal; then he would speak, and with a smile on her lips and a jest on her tongue she would cover a heart that seemed like to burst with the agony of it. Inexorably the clock moved on: the finger of fate that was to take him from her. They had quarrelled, sans doute—who has not? there had been days when they had not spoken. He had not been to her all that he might have been, but . . . But—he was her man.
And now he was going; in half an hour her Pierre was going to leave her. For him the bustle and glamour of the unknown; for her—the empty chair, the lonely house, and her thoughts. Dear God! but war is a bad thing for the women who stop behind. . . .
And on Draycott's brain a tableau is stamped indelibly, just a little tableau he saw that night in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon. They came, the three of them, up the flight of steps from the seething station below, into the peace and quiet of the room, and a roar of sound swept in with them as the doors swung open. Threading their way between the tables, they stopped just opposite to where he sat, and instinctively he turned his head away. For her the half-hour was over, her Pierre had gone; and it is not given to a man to look on a woman's grief save with a catching in the throat and a pricking in the eyes. It is so utterly terrible in its overwhelming agony at the moment, so absolutely final; one feels so helpless.
The little boy clambered on to a chair and sat watching his mother gravely; a grey-haired woman with anxious eyes held one of her hands clasped tight. And the girl—she was just a girl, that's all—sat dry-eyed and rigid, staring, staring, while every now and then she seemed to whisper something through lips that hardly moved.
"Maman," a childish voice piped out. "Maman." He solemnly extended a small and grubby hand towards her.
Slowly her head came round, her eyes took him in—almost uncomprehendingly; she saw the childish face, the little dirty hand, and suddenly there came to her the great gift of the Healer.
"Oh! mon bébé, mon pauv' p'tit bébé!" She picked him up off the chair and, clutching him in her arms, put her face on his head and sobbed out her heart.
"Come on." Draycott got up suddenly and turned to the man he was dining with. "Let's go." They passed close to the table, and the fat waiter, wiping his eyes on a dinner napkin, and the grey-haired woman leaning gently over her, were talking in low tones. They seemed satisfied as they watched the sobbing girl; and they were people of understanding. "Pauvre petite," muttered the waiter as they passed. "Mon Dieu! quelle vâche de guerre."
"My God!" said Draycott, as they went down the steps. "I didn't realise before what war meant to a woman. And we shall never realise what it means to our own women. We only see them before we go. Never after."
IV
Half an hour later he encountered Monsieur le Colonel once again, and suggested that they should split a bottle of wine together if he could spare the time. It was then nine o'clock, and the three hours till midnight loomed uninviting. His only hope, as he told him, was that the train at present standing at the platform was not going to be typical of the one he was to embark on. It seemed to be of endless length, and presented a most enticing spectacle. Four fortunates in each compartment had got the racks, otherwise the passengers stood: on the footboards, in the corridors, on the seats. If any one opened a door the pressure was such that at least six people fell on to the platform, and in one carriage a small poilu was being squeezed through the open window. In the end he went—suddenly like a cork out of a bottle, and the human mass closed up behind him.
Draycott laughed, the Colonel laughed, and went on laughing. He laughed unrestrainedly, even as a man who enjoys a secret jest. At last, with some difficulty, he controlled his mirth.
"Monsieur," he remarked gravely, but with twinkling eyes, "I fear your hopes are ill-founded. This is the midnight train."
"Under those circumstances," Draycott murmured, with a ghastly attempt at mirth, "the wine is off. I must go and secure my sleeping-berth."
Have you ever seen a fly-paper which has come "to the end of a perfect day"? Lumps of glutinous flies drop off on one's head, and still it seems as full as ever. It was the same with that train. Lumps of Frenchmen, permanently welded together, fell out periodically, unstuck themselves, and departed, only to return in a few moments with the long thin loaves of France and bottles of wine. Sometimes they got in again, sometimes they didn't—but they were happy, those poilus. What matter anything, bar killing the Boche? And that was the only thing in the air that night. . . .
In every carriage it was the same, until suddenly there came salvation. A horse-box, with two horses in it and some grooms singing the Marseillaise, loomed out of the darkness, and into it the fed-up wanderer hurled his bag. Yet again did he embrace every one, including the horses; and then, overcome with his labours, he sank into a corner and laughed. And it was only when they had been under way for two hours that he remembered his two other bags, sitting alone and forlorn at the Gare de Lyon. . . .
It was a great journey that. The heat was sweltering, and they stopped at every station between Paris and Marseilles—generally twice, because the train was too long for the platform. And at every station the same programme was repeated. Completely regardless of the infuriated whistles and toots of the French conductors, absolutely unmindful of the agonised shouts of "En voiture, en voiture! Montez, messieurs, le train part," the human freight unloaded itself СКАЧАТЬ