Captain Jim Part 37

There were no longer any seats in the church. They had all been broken up for camp-fires--even the oaken pulpit had gone. The great empty s.p.a.ce had been roughly cleared of fallen masonry, which had been flung in heaps against the wall; on the stone floor filthy straw was thinly spread. On the straw lay row upon row of wounded men--very quiet for the most part; they had found that it did not pay to make noise enough to annoy the guards who smoked and played cards in a corner.

The long day--how long only the men on the straw knew--was drawing to a close. The sun sank behind the western window, which the guns had spared; and the stained gla.s.s turned to a glory of scarlet and gold and blue. The shafts of colour lay across the broken altar, whence everything had been stripped; they bathed the shattered walls in a beauty that was like a cloak over the nakedness of their ruin. Slowly they crept over the floor, as the sun sank lower, touching the straw with rosy fingers, falling gently on broken bodies and pain-drawn faces; and weary eyes looked gratefully up to the window where a figure of Christ with a child in His arms stood glorious in the light, and blessed them with the infinite pity of His smile.

A little c.o.c.kney lad with a dirty bandage round his head, who had tossed in pain all day on the chancel steps, turned to the window to greet the daily miracle of the sunset.

"Worf waiting for, all the day, that is!" he muttered. The restlessness left him, and his eyes closed, presently, in sleep.

Slowly the glory died away, and as it pa.s.sed a little figure in a rusty black ca.s.sock came in, making his way among the men on the straw. It was the French priest, who had refused to leave his broken church: a little, fat man, not in the least like a hero, but with as knightly a soul as was ever found in armour and with lance in rest.

He pa.s.sed from man to man, speaking in quaint English, occasionally dropping gladly into French when he found some one able to answer him in his own language. He had nothing to give them but water; but that he carried tirelessly many times a day. His little store of bandages and ointment had gone long ago, but he bathed wounds, helped cramped men to change their position, and did the best he could to make the evil straw into the semblance of a comfortable bed. To the helpless men on the floor of the church his coming meant something akin to Paradise.

He paused near a little Irishman with a broken leg, a man of the Dublin Fusiliers, whose pain had not been able to destroy his good temper.

"How are you to-night, _mon garcon?_"

"Yerra, not too bad, Father," said the Irishman. "If I could have just a taste of water, now?" He drank deeply as the priest lifted his head, and sank back with a word of thanks.

"This feather pillow of mine is apt to slip if I don't watch it," he said, wriggling the back of his head against the cold stone of the floor, from which the straw had worked away. "I dunno could you gather it up a bit, Father." He grinned. "I'd ask you to put me boots under me for a pillow, but if them thieving guards found them loose, they'd shweep them from me."

"Ss-h, my son!" the priest whispered warningly. He shook up a handful of straw and made it as firm as he could under the man's head. "It is not prudent to speak so loud. Remember you cannot see who may be behind you."

"Indeed and I cannot," returned Denny Callaghan. "I'll remember, Father. That's great!" He settled his head thankfully on the straw pillow. "I'll sleep aisier to-night for that."

"And _Monsieur le Capitaine_--has he moved yet?" The priest glanced at a motionless form near them.

"Well, indeed he did, Father, this afternoon. He gev a turn, an' he said something like 'Tired People.' I thought there was great sense in that, if he was talkin' to us, so I was cheered up about him--but not a word have I got out of him since. But it's something that he spoke at all."

The _cure_ bent over the quiet figure. Two dark eyes opened, as if with difficulty, and met his.

"Norah," said Jim Linton. "Are you there, Norah?"

"I am a friend, my son," said the _cure_. "Are you in pain?"

The dark eyes looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then he murmured, "Water!"

"It is here." The little priest held the heavy head, and Jim managed to drink a little. Something like a shadow of a smile came into his eyes as the priest wiped his lips. Then they closed again.

"If they would send us a doctor!" muttered the _cure_, in his own language, longingly. "_Ma joi_, what a lad!" He looked down in admiration at the splendid helpless body.

"He won't die, Father, will he?"

"I do not know, my son. I can find no wound, except the one on his head--nothing seems broken. Perhaps he will be better to-morrow." He gave the little Irishman his blessing and moved away. There were many eager eyes awaiting him.

Jim was restless during the night; Denny Callaghan, himself unable to sleep, watched him muttering and trying to turn, but unable to move.

"I doubt but his back's broken," said the little man ruefully.

"Yerra, what a pity!" He tried to soothe the boy with kind words; and towards the dawn Jim slept heavily.

He woke when the sun was shining upon him through a rift in the wall.

The church was full of smothered sounds--stifled groans from helpless men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan gave an exclamation of relief.

"Hurroo! Are you better, sir?"

"Where am I?" Jim asked thickly.

"'Tis in a church you are, sir, though it's not much like it," said the little man. "The Germans call it a hospital. 'Tis all I wish they may have the like themselves, and they wounded. Are you better, sir?"

"I . . . think I'm all right," Jim said. He was trying to regain his scattered faculties. "So they've got me!" He tried to look at Callaghan. "What's your regiment?"

"The Dubs, sir. 'Tis hard luck; I kem back wounded from Suvla Bay and they sent me out to the battalion here; and I'd not been with them a week before I got landed again. Now 'tis a German prison ahead--and by all one hears they're not rest-camps."

"No," said Jim. He tried to move, but failed, sinking back with a stifled groan. "I wish I knew if I was damaged much. Are there any doctors here?"

"There was two, a while back. They fixed us up somehow, and we haven't seen a hair of them since. The guards throw rations--of a sort--at us twice a day. 'Tis badly off we'd be, if it weren't for the priest."

"Is he French?"

"He is--and a saint, if there ever was one. There he comes now."

Callaghan crossed himself reverently.

A hush had come over the church. The _cure_, in his vestments, had entered, going slowly to the altar.

Jim struggled up on his elbow. There was perfect silence in the church; men who had been talking ceased suddenly, men who moaned in their pain bit back their cries. So they lay while the little priest celebrated Ma.s.s, as he had done every morning since the Germans swept over his village: at first alone, and, since the first few days to a silent congregation of helpless men. They were of all creeds and some of no creed at all: but they prayed after him as men learn to pray when they are at grips with things too big for them. He blessed them, at the end, with uplifted hand; and dim eyes followed him as he went slowly from the church.

He was back among them, presently, in the rusty black ca.s.sock. The guards had brought in the men's breakfast--great cans of soup and loaves of hard, dark bread. They put them down near the door, tramping out with complete disregard of the helpless prisoners. The priest would see to them, aided by the few prisoners who could move about, wounded though they were. In any case the guard had no order to feed prisoners; they were not nurse-maids, they said.

"Ah, my son! You are awake!"

Jim smiled up at the _cure_.

"Have I been asleep long, sir?"

"Three days. They brought you in last Friday night. Do you not remember?"

"No," said Jim. "I don't remember coming here." He drank some soup eagerly, but shook his head at the horrible bread. The food cleared his head, and when the little _cure_ had gone away, promising to return as soon as possible, he lay quietly piecing matters together in his mind. Callaghan helped him: the Dublins had been in the line next his own regiment when they had gone "over the top" on that last morning.

"Oh, I remember all that well enough," Jim said. "We took two lines of trench, and then they came at us like a wall; the ground was grey with them. And I was up on a smashed traverse, trying to keep the men together, when it went up too."

"A sh.e.l.l was it?"

Jim shook his head.

"A sh.e.l.l did burst near us, but it wasn't that. No, the trench was mined, and the mine went off a shade too late. They delayed, somehow; it should have gone off if we took the trench, before they counter-attacked. As it was, it must have killed as many of their men as ours. They told me about it afterwards."

"Afterwards?" said Callaghan, curiously. He looked at Jim, a little doubtful as to whether he really knew what he was talking about.

"Did ye not come straight here then, sir?"

"I did not; I was buried," said Jim grimly. "The old mine went up right under me, and I went up too. I came down with what seemed like tons of earth on top of me; I was covered right in, I tell you, only I managed to get some of the earth away in front of my nose and mouth.

I was lying on my side, near the edge of a big heap of dirt, with my hands near my face. If I'd been six inches further back there wouldn't have been the ghost of a chance for me. I got some of the earth and mud away, and found I could breathe, just as I was choking.