He made some inarticulate sound, and she went on quickly and earnestly. “Life is so—so uncertain, Peter. I know a man who wanted to marry a girl at home on his last leave. Her people said it was too short—ten days. And so they didn’t and he went back and he was killed. Now she is heartbroken. Why shouldn’t we take happiness while we can? There is no certainty for anybody of anything—except the moment, and I am so greedy of life and joy and happiness. And we couldn’t love each other any more even if we were married.” Her eyes fell. “Peter, am I very wicked?”
“Wicked!” he exclaimed with an unsteady little laugh that was strangled by a gulp. “Berney, you’re . . . you’re an angel.” He knit his brows and rested his head on his hand like one crazed. “But I should be wicked,” he faltered like one repeating a lesson, “I . . . should be . . . wicked if . . . I let you . . . do it.” He raised his head suddenly and defiantly. “No, no, no, you must not do it. I’d be a cad to let you.”
She was silent, but her eyes were fixed on his, appealingly. “And besides,” he went on lamely, “it would not be any easier at the end.”
“But we should have had our fortnight,” she said, in a low voice.
He looked at her with imploring eyes. “Berney, Berney darling,” he cried miserably, like a drowning man. “I cannot argue about it. You would beat me in two minutes. God knows I’m holding out against myself only by a hair. I can’t hold out against you, too. But I know I ought not to consent, and I’m clinging to that blindly—clinging to my last shred of decency. If I loved you a little less I should have given in already. Berney—Berney, help me.”
She squeezed the hand that held hers. Her eyes were misty. They turned again abruptly to their food and ate fiercely and in silence.
IV
It was getting late when they left the restaurant, but they did not take the shortest way back to the l’Univers They moved slowly through the dark, narrow streets, and found themselves again on the quay by the canal. Both were silent with the thought of the parting that was so near. They sat down on the bench beneath the plane-tree.
“Peter,” she whispered. “You will see me off tomorrow?”
He nodded miserably.
“My train leaves a little after ten. You—you want me to go by it?”
He nodded without speaking.
“Two weeks,” she said softly, as though speaking to herself. “Two little weeks of happiness out of—perhaps a whole lifetime. It seems such a little to ask of life.”
He felt his strength of will slipping from him. He struggled blindly to resist, but with her arms around his neck, her body in his arms, and her cheek against his, it was a losing battle he fought, and he knew it. His denials became less vehement and ceased. He consented.
Now that the cloud of separation was lifted from their minds they were eager and radiant. They talked of practicalities. It was settled that he was to go to the l’Univers in the morning and have breakfast with her; then he would go out to the cellar and make ready for her. Meantime she would do some shopping and would jump a lorry so as to arrive in Albert in the neighbourhood of five o’clock. He would meet her there, and together they would walk back through the dusk to the cellar.
At the top of the deserted Rue Lammartine they parted. For a few wonderful moments he held her again in his arms, and then, with a whispered “Till tomorrow, Peter darling,” she crossed the Rue de Noyon and disappeared into the Hôtel de l’Univers opposite.
V
Back in his billet, he undressed and got into bed, but sleep did not come to him. He lay staring into the darkness, while his active brain rehearsed the events of the evening, and made plans for the morrow. Already with Berney he had superficially discussed practicalities and, in their joyous enthusiasm, they had joked and made light of difficulties; but now, as he lay alone in the darkness, without the intoxicating pressure of her hand on his arm, going soberly over the mundane essentials of bare existence in the devastated area, subconsciously the conviction grew that he was acting selfishly and like a cad. And as he lay tossing in the darkness, while the fight went on with the nagging voice that would not let him enjoy that which he so ardently desired, a new thought came to disturb his peace. It came as a suspicion and grew to be a certainty: she did not intend to go at the end of the fortnight. She intended to sacrifice herself for him and share his outlawry and hunted existence to the end.
Filled with a new strength and resolution he switched on the light and climbed out of bed. He filled four or five sheets of a ruled block with writing. Read them through, tore them up, and began again. The final draft covered less than a sheet. It read:
“Berney darling,—If we lived together for a thousand years we could not be happier than we have been tonight, or love each other more. It was only here, alone in my billet, that I realized what you intend, and what your sacrifice means. But even now I know that, were your dear eyes on mine and your lips pleading, I should give in. And so, like a coward I am running away. For your own sake I dare not see you before I go. When your dear eyes are reading this I shall have left Amiens, and it will be useless and only dangerous for us both to try to find me.
“Berney, you are angry with me, perhaps, but if ever you doubt my love, read again this letter. Darling, I am very, very sad, but very, very happy, and you must be very happy, too.
“In my thoughts I shall be with you always, always, darling, whatever happens.
“PETER.”
He went back to bed, but slept only fitfully. He had left a shutter open, and was up with the first streaks of dawn. He dressed hurriedly and without shaving. He packed his immediate necessities in a haversack, and his other kit in the valise. Then he put on his trench coat and went out. He found Bull shaving in his billet, and he gave him orders to get the valise out to the Albert road as soon as possible. Then he set off briskly through the town.
A sleepy old waiter in a baize apron was sweeping the doorway of the Hôtel de l’Univers. Rawley handed him the letter with instructions to give it to Miss Travers as soon as she came down. He walked on round the corner into the Place de la Gare and entered a café. The café was not yet officially open for the day, but the matronly proprietress took compassion on him and brought hot coffee and rolls. Opposite him was the great glass front of the station, and the slope that led down to it, and he wondered which pavement Berney would choose when she passed that way a few hours later. He envied the walls that would see her pass though he could not. But he wasted little time on vain sentimentalizing. He finished his breakfast and walked down the Boulevard Alsace towards the Albert road.
As he crossed the bridge over the river a lorry overtook him. It was going to Bapaume, the driver said, and Rawley climbed up beside him. At the T roads at the end of the Boulevard, Private Bull, a cigarette in his mouth, was sitting on the valise. The lorry stopped and the valise was taken on board. Rawley said goodbye to Bull, and the lorry rumbled on its way. An hour and a half later it rumbled through Albert and out along the Bapaume Road. He left it in a deserted spot in the neighbourhood of Poizières, and shouldering the valise, tramped towards the cellar. He was in no mood for Alf’s primitive conversation, and was relieved to find the cellar empty; but fearing that its owner would return shortly, he dumped the valise in a corner and went back up the steps.
CHAPTER XXIII
I
It was late afternoon when he returned from a long tramp across country. Alf had returned and was glad to see him. “I saw your posh kit, chum, so I knew you was back, and that it wasn’t just an afternoon tea call.”
“I’m back for keeps,” said Rawley. “There’s a spy hunt starting in Amiens tomorrow, and I thought it healthier to clear out before it began.”
“Too ruddy true,” agreed Alf. “But look ’ere, mate, you’ve turned up at an awkward moment.” He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “You see, it’s like this, I turned up as large as life at the M.T. Quarter’s stores to draw three days’ rations this morning—and the shysters ’ad
gorn. A bloke what I saw peelin’ pertiters said they went yesterday. Anyway, they’re gorn and,” he spread out his hands in exaggerated French gesture. “No more ruddy rations—compree?”
Rawley rubbed his stubbly chin. “Um! That’s awkward. I’ve brought nothing with me either—though there’s a whole canteen of stuff back in Amiens. I hope to get it out here in a few days, but I dare not go back for it now.” He sat down on the edge of Alf’s wire bed. “What other units are there in Albert now?”
“Only odds and ends. I tried to cadge a dixie of stew from the bloke what was peelin’ pertiters, but he wasn’t ’aving any. Yer see we ain’t got nothing in the ’ouse ’cept a couple o’ biscuits—mark IV bomb proof.”
“And I’ve got two francs left in the wide,” said Rawley, jingling the coins together.
“Well, we’ll ’ave to go on the scrounge again, I reckon,” said Alf. “And I know a place where we can scrounge all right. I’ve been lookin’ round all day trying to win a bite o’ something. I went right into Bapaume on a lorry, but there weren’t nothin’ there; but jes’ the other side I come across a camp. There weren’t no one in the camp ’cept a couple o’ P.B. blokes, and it looked to me as though the troops had jes’ gone out of it. Anyway, I come across a canteen. It was shut up, but I looked in the winders, and there was the stuff all piled in boxes ready to take away. I reckon them blokes got orders to move in a hurry, an’ they’re sendin’ a limber for that stuff tomorrow, so if we go up tonight, we’ll get there fust.”
Rawley grimaced. “My luxurious life in Amiens has spoiled me for this sort of thing,” he said with a wry smile. “Still, I suppose it has got to be done. A couple of P.B. men, you say?”
“There may be more, but I only saw a couple.”
“Can we get up to the place under cover?”
“Sure. There’s a deep ditch run right alongside the hut.”
“Full of mud, too, I expect,” commented Rawley.
“It ain’t too clean,” admitted Alf.
Rawley glanced down at his clean tunic. “If I spoil this, bang goes our chance of drawing rations again.”
Alf nodded. “We’d better take our posh togs off and put on our old civvies for this job,” he suggested.
II
They set out soon after dark, dressed in their disreputable peasant clothes. Each carried a sack slung across his shoulders, and Alf carried a rifle. A slight mist was rising, and as their clothes made it unsafe for them to use the road, the going across that uneven, shell-torn country was necessarily slow. They trudged along silently side by side. The mist thickened as time passed, and they had difficulty in distinguishing objects at five yards distance. The occasional muffled report of a gun gave them the direction of the Line, but they were uncertain of their exact whereabouts. They turned half-left, hoping to strike the road, but another hour went by and the same impenetrable grey vapour surrounded them, and there was the same uneven ground underfoot.
They had hoped to reach their objective a little before midnight, but midnight was now past and they had not yet located Bapaume. They rested on a hummock of chalk. “We are lost,” said Rawley. “We have been walking in circles probably. Our only chance is to find the main road; and when we do find it we had better go straight back, or we shall have daylight upon us. Then if the mist suddenly rises and we find ourselves in the middle of a camp, we shall be in the soup.”
They set off again at right angles to their former line of march. Another hour went by, but no road or identifiable landmark appeared. The fog seemed to have grown more dense. They came upon a narrow weed-grown track and halted. “Tracks lead to roads,” said Rawley. “But which way?” They listened for the rumble of gunfire eastwards, but the guns were silent or their voices were muffled by the fog. The mist drifted about them in clammy wreaths, and they seemed to be alone in a dead world. Now that the crunch of their boots was hushed, the silence was uncanny. “Fair give yer the creeps,” shivered Alf.
Rawley had no notion of direction, but he set off at a venture along the track. It led them down a steep slope, across a marshy flat, through some bricky hummocks, and ceased. The situation was becoming desperate. Both were dog-tired and hungry. Long since they had abandoned their object of finding the derelict canteen; they had but one desire: to find their way back to the safety of the cellar and sleep.
They trudged on, hoping against hope. They moved through a silent, invisible world, penned as it were in a tiny grey chamber that moved when they moved, and halted when they halted. They moved slowly and stumbled as they walked; it was agony to drag one leaden foot after another. They no longer kept a sharp look out into the mist ahead, although they knew that at any moment they might stumble upon a sentry. They were past caring; the longing to rest and sleep had numbed all other feelings.
A wire entanglement loomed dimly to their right, but in their exhausted condition they but glanced at it and did not notice that the pickets seemed to be unbent and the wire taut. A trench yawned at their feet, and they halted on its brink. The hope of finding a place where they could rest was uppermost in the minds of both. A yard to the left, the dark rectangle of a dug-out entrance shadowed the mist. They dropped clumsily into the trench and stumbled down the steps. Rawley swung his flash-lamp. The place was bare and the chalk walls leapt up dazzlingly white in the sudden glare. In a dazed way he was aware that the place seemed new. They dropped upon the floor, and in a few minutes were asleep.
III
Rawley was dragged back to consciousness by a feeling of being violently jolted. He had dreamt that he was sliding swiftly down a snowy slope in a large box, and just at the steepest part when the box was travelling at its swiftest an elephant had loomed suddenly in the fog right ahead. The resulting thud and jolt had awakened him. He sat up with a start. A noise like a few pebbles bouncing down steps came from the darkness, but the sounds ceased almost before he was aware of them. He rubbed his sleep-laden eyes and turned over. And then in the darkness and silence he became aware of another sound. It was a gentle throbbing, almost inaudible, undercurrent of sound like that of a smooth-running engine in a stationary motor car.
He scrambled to his feet and switched on his torch. Alf lay inert on the floor like a half-filled sack of corn, his head pillowed on one arm. Rawley switched off the light and tip-toed to the dug-out steps. That undercurrent of sound was louder now, and it came from above. He went slowly up the steps. Pebbles and loose earth crunched beneath his boots. The mist hung thickly in the trench above, but it was of a pale luminous colour that told that dawn had come. Up there above ground there was no mistaking the meaning of that continuous rumble of sound. It was the drumming of a heavy barrage. And were confirmation needed, a second later the scream of a shell tore the mist above his head, to be followed by the familiar bump and crashing roar of the explosion. He turned and clattered down the steps with the whine of flying fragments in his ears.
He roused Alf and spoke with suppressed excitement. “There’s a hell of a barrage going on up there.”
“What’s that got to do with us?” complained Alf sleepily.
“A lot,” retorted Rawley. “In the first place it means that it has come—the great Bosche attack, I mean. And in the second, there’s heavy stuff landing pretty close. That means we must have wandered a long way east; we’re among the troops, and the sooner we get out the better.”
He swung his torch round the dug-out and for the first time really noticed that it seemed to have been dug recently. But he said nothing, and they went up the steps. The rumble of the barrage went on ceaselessly. Alf was impressed by it. “Struth! Someone’s ’aving a ’appy birfday,” he exclaimed.
They moved along the trench through the mist. Alf stumbled over something, and they pulled up precipitately. The obstacle proved to consist of two boxes. One was an open box of S.A.A.—small arms ammunition—the other a small case of iron rations. A waterproof sheet and a half-filled bread sack lay beside them.
“Out of the trench,”
whispered Rawley. “It’s occupied.” He stuffed two or three tins of beef into his pockets and climbed out. Alf took a loaf and three or four of the linen bandoleers of ammunition and followed. “If there’s goin’ to be dirty work, we might as well ’ave some ammo,” he whispered as they went cautiously forward. They heard voices behind them and passed a belt of wire, but they knew their direction was right by the steady drum fire behind them.
Once they stopped and lay flat while a party of men went by. The column was invisible in the mist, but the rattle of equipment and the dull thud of feet sounded quite close. Shells detonated noisily at intervals. To their right they heard the crunch of wheels on a road. The light was increasing, and it was possible to distinguish objects fifteen or twenty yards distant. Sounds of movement came fitfully from all sides, and they halted with beating hearts at every tree stump or battered wall that loomed indistinctly in the mist.
“This is too dangerous,” said Rawley at last. “We may walk into a party at any moment, and if the mist rises we’re done. We must find somewhere to lie up. We have had a narrow escape as it is. That is the rear battle position we have just left. That dug-out was brand new. They are manning them now. Another ten minutes and we should have been caught.”
Weary though they were they went on quickly but with infinite caution. They stumbled suddenly among the brick rubble of an isolated cottage. Alf lay down on guard while Rawley prowled about. There seemed to be no cellar or hiding-place, but at last under one corner of the pile of splintered wood and plaster he discovered a small brick cubby-hole, half underground. It was half full of plaster and broken bricks, but empty would just be big enough for two men to crawl into. They cleared out the debris and crawled in.
They ate ravenously of the tinned beef and the loaf of bread. The sounds of battle went on, and they discussed in whispers the meaning of each distant fusillade of musketry or stutter of machine-gun fire. Occasionally the deafening roar of an aeroplane engine passed over their heads. But they had slept no more than an hour or two in the dug-out, and now that the immediate pangs of hunger were satisfied, fatigue exacted its due. They dropped again into a deep sleep.
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