One Man's Initiation-1917 Part 10

"Put that light out. Name of G.o.d, do you want to have them start chucking sh.e.l.ls into here?" comes a voice shrill with anger. The brisk trot of the officer's horse is lost in the clangour.

The door of the hut slams to and only a thin ray of orange light penetrates into the blackness of the road, where with jingle of harness and clatter of iron and tramp of hoofs, gun after gun, caisson after caisson, waggon after waggon files by. Now and then the pa.s.sing stops entirely and matches flare where men light pipes and cigarettes. Coming from the other direction with throbbing of motors, a convoy of camions, huge black oblongs, grinds down the other side of the road. Horses rear and there are shouts and curses and clacking of reins in the darkness.

Far away where the lowering clouds meet the hills beyond the village a white glare grows and fades again at intervals: star-sh.e.l.ls.

"There's a most tremendous concentration of sanitary sections."

"You bet; two American sections and a French one in this village; three more down the road. Something's up."

"There's goin' to be an attack at St. Mihiel, a Frenchman told me."

"I heard that the Germans were concentrating for an offensive in the Four de Paris."

"d.a.m.ned unlikely."

"Anyway, this is the third week we've been in this b.l.o.o.d.y hole with our feet in the mud."

"They've got us quartered in a barn with a regular brook flowing through the middle of it."

"The main thing about this d.a.m.ned war is ennui--just plain boredom."

"Not forgetting the mud."

Three ambulance drivers in slickers were on the front seat of a car. The rain fell in perpendicular sheets, pattering on the roof of the car and on the puddles that filled the village street. Streaming with water, blackened walls of ruined houses rose opposite them above a rank growth of weeds. Beyond were rain-veiled hills. Every little while, slithering through the rain, splashing mud to the right and left, a convoy of camions went by and disappeared, truck after truck, in the white streaming rain.

Inside the car Tom Randolph was playing an accordion, letting strange nostalgic little songs filter out amid the hard patter of the rain.

"_Oh, I's been workin' on de railroad All de livelong day; I's been workin' on de railroad Jus' to pa.s.s de time away._"

The men on the front seat leaned back and shook the water off their knees and hummed the song.

The accordion had stopped. Tom Randolph was lying on his back on the floor of the car with his arm over his eyes. The rain fell endlessly, rattling on the roof of the car, dancing silver in the coffee-coloured puddles of the road. Their boredom fell into the rhythm of crooning self-pity of the old c.o.o.n song:

"_I's been workin' on de railroad All de livelong day; I's been workin' on de railroad Jus' to pa.s.s de time away._"

"Oh, G.o.d, something's got to happen soon."

Lost in rubber boots, and a huge gleaming slicker and hood, the section leader splashed across the road.

"All cars must be ready to leave at six to-night."

"Yay. Where we goin'?"

"Orders haven't come yet. We're to be in readiness to leave at six to-night...."

"I tell you, fellers, there's goin' to be an attack. This concentration of sanitary sections means something. You can't tell me ..."

"They say they have beer," said the aspirant behind Martin in the long line of men who waited in the hot sun for the cope to open, while the dust the staff cars and camions raised as they whirred by on the road settled in a blanket over the village.

"Cold beer?"

"Of course not," said the aspirant, laughing so that all the brilliant ivory teeth showed behind his red lips. "It'll be detestable. I'm getting it because it's rare, for sentimental reasons."

Martin laughed, looking in the man's brown face, a face in which all past expressions seemed to linger in the fine lines about the mouth and eyes and in the modelling of the cheeks and temples.

"You don't understand that," said the aspirant again.

"Indeed I do."

Later they sat on the edge of the stone wellhead in the courtyard behind the store, drinking warm beer out of tin cups blackened by wine, and staring at a tall barn that had crumpled at one end so that it looked, with its two frightened little square windows, like a cow kneeling down.

"Is it true that the ninety-second's going up to the lines to-night?"

"Yes, we're going up to make a little attack. Probably I'll come back in your little omnibus."

"I hope you won't."

"I'd be very glad to. A lucky wound! But I'll probably be killed. This is the first time I've gone up to the front that I didn't expect to be killed. So it'll probably happen."

Martin Howe could not help looking at him suddenly. The aspirant sat at ease on the stone margin of the well, leaning against the wrought iron support for the bucket, one knee clasped in his strong, heavily-veined hands. Dead he would be different. Martin's mind could hardly grasp the connection between this man full of latent energies, full of thoughts and desires, this man whose shoulder he would have liked to have put his arm round from friendliness, with whom he would have liked to go for long walks, with whom he would have liked to sit long into the night drinking and talking--and those huddled, pulpy ma.s.ses of blue uniform half-buried in the mud of ditches.

"Have you ever seen a herd of cattle being driven to abattoir on a fine May morning?" asked the aspirant in a scornful, jaunty tone, as if he had guessed Martin's thoughts.

"I wonder what they think of it."

"It's not that I'm resigned.... Don't think that. Resignation is too easy. That's why the herd can be driven by a boy of six ... or a prime minister!"

Martin was sitting with his arms crossed. The fingers of one hand were squeezing the muscle of his forearm. It gave him pleasure to feel the smooth, firm modelling of his arm through his sleeve. And how would that feel when it was dead, when a steel splinter had slithered through it? A momentary stench of putrefaction filled his nostrils, making his stomach contract with nausea.

"I'm not resigned either," he shouted in a laugh. "I am going to do something some day, but first I must see. I want to be initiated in all the circles of h.e.l.l."

"I'd play the part of Virgil pretty well," said the aspirant, "but I suppose Virgil was a staff officer."

"I must go," said Martin. "My name's Martin Howe, S.S.U. 84."

"Oh yes, you are quartered in the square. My name is Merrier. You'll probably carry me back in your little omnibus."

When Howe got back to where the cars were packed in a row in the village square, Randolph came up to him and whispered in his ear:

"D.J.'s to-morrow."

"What's that?"