Our Casualty, and Other Stories Part 9

At one station--it was then about 7 p.m. and quite dark--he discovered a forlorn boy--a second-lieutenant--who was trying to find room for himself and his belongings. Thompson hailed him. The next five minutes were pa.s.sed in fierce toil by all of us. But before the train started Thompson got the boy and his belongings into our compartment. In my opinion no second-lieutenants ought to be allowed to possess a suit-case as well as a valise. This boy also had three top-coats and a Jaeger rug.

We spent nearly half an hour settling down again after that. Then we dined, sharing the food--Thompson's food--with the second-lieutenant. He was a nice boy and very grateful. I thought him a little garrulous, but Thompson encouraged him to talk. He told us all about his job. It was his duty to go up in captive balloons and send down messages to the artillery. It was, by his account, a sea-sicky business, worse by several degrees than crossing the Channel in the leave boat. Thompson, who has a thirst for every kind of information, questioned and cross-questioned the boy. After dinner--dinner was Thompson's name for our meal--I prepared to go to sleep. Thompson arranged valises on the floor in such a way that I could stretch my legs. The boy went on talking. He told Thompson that he had dropped out of the ballooning business and that he was going to X. to submit to a special course of training. I forget what it was, bombing probably, or the use of trench mortars, possibly map reading or--a subject part of the school curriculum of our grandmothers--the use of globes. The army has a pa.s.sion for imparting knowledge of any kind to temporary lieutenants. I went to sleep while Thompson was explaining just where the boy's particular course of instruction was given, a camp some three or four miles out of X.

Thompson has an amazing knowledge of what naturalists would call the habitat of the various parts of the army.

At 3 a.m. I was awakened from my sleep. We had reached, an hour late, the junction at which we had to change. Thompson and the boy were both alert and cheerful. They had, I fancy, been talking all the time. Our junction proved to be a desolate, windswept platform, without a sign of shelter of any kind except a bleak-looking cabin, the habitation of the local R.T.O. Thompson roused him ruthlessly and learned that, with luck, we might expect our next train to start at six. I shivered. Three hours, the very coldest in the twenty-four, on that platform, did not strike me as a pleasant prospect Thompson used a favourite phrase of his.

"After all," he said, "it's war; what the French call _La Guerre_."

He professed to have discovered, not from the R.T.O. but from a sleepy French railway official, that the train, our train in which we were to travel, was somewhere in the neighbourhood, waiting for its engine. It did not come to us from anywhere else; but made its start, so to speak took its rise, at that junction. Thompson and our new friend, the boy, proposed to get into the train when they found it.

Thompson can speak French of a sort, but he does not understand the language as spoken by the French people. I did not believe that he had really found out about that train. I declined to join in the search.

He and the boy went off together. They came back in about half an hour.

They said they had found a train standing by itself in a field and that it must be ours because there was no other. The reasoning did not seen conclusive to me, but I agreed to go and sleep in whatever train they had found. I suggested that we should leave our luggage on the platform and pick it up when the train got there at 6 a.m.

"That," said Thompson, "is just the way luggage gets lost. Suppose--I don't say it's likely or even possible--but suppose the train we get into goes somewhere else. Nice fools we'd look, turning up in Paris or Ma.r.s.eilles without a brush or comb among us. No. Where I go I take my luggage with me."

Thompson was evidently not so sure about that train as he pretended to be. But I had reached a pitch of hopeless misery which left me indifferent about the future. It did not seem to me to matter much just then whether I ever got to X. or not. We had to make three trips, stumbling over railway lines and sleepers, in the dark, falling into wet ditches and slipping on muddy banks; but in the end we got all our luggage, including the boy's top-coats, into a train which lay lifeless and deserted in a siding.

This time Thompson and the boy slept. I sat up stiff with cold. At half-past five a French railway porter opened our door and invited us to descend, alleging that he wanted to clean the carriage. I was quite pleased to wake Thompson who was snoring.

"Get up," I said, "there's a man here who wants to clean the carriage and we've got to get out."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I get out," said Thompson.

The Frenchman repeated his request most politely. If the gentlemen would be good enough to descend he would at once clean the carriage.

Thompson fumbled in his pocket and got out an electric torch. At first I thought he meant to make sure that the carriage required cleaning.

Thinking things over I came to the conclusion that he felt he could talk French better if he could see a little. He turned his ray of light on the Frenchman and said slowly and distinctly:

"Nous sommes officiers anglais, et les officiers anglais ne descendent pas--jamais."

The Frenchman blinked uncertainly. Thompson added:

"Jamais de ma vie."

That settled the French porter. He was face to face with one of the national idiosyncrasies of the English, a new one to him and incomprehensible, but he submitted at once to the inevitable. He gave up all idea of cleaning the carriage and Thompson went to sleep again. The boy slept soundly through the whole business.

At half-past seven--the train had been jogging along since six--Thompson woke and said he thought he'd better shave. The proposal struck me as absurd.

"We can't possibly shave," I said, "without water."

Thompson was quite equal to that difficulty. The next time the train stopped--it stopped every ten minutes or so--he hopped out with a folding drinking cup in his hand. He returned with the cup full of hot water. He had got it from the engine driver. He and I shaved. The boy still slept, but, as Thompson pointed out, that did not matter. He was too young to require much shaving.

"Nice boy that," said Thompson. "Son of an archdeacon; was at Cambridge when the war broke out. Carries a photo of his mother about with him.

Only nice boys carry photos of their mothers. He has it in a little khaki-coloured case along with one of the girl he's going to marry--quite a pretty girl with tously hair and large eyes."

"Oh, he's engaged to be married, is he?"

"Of course he is. That sort of boy is sure to be. Just look at him."

As he lay there asleep his face looked extraordinarily young and innocent. I admitted that he was just the sort of boy who would get engaged to the first girl who took him seriously.

"Girl's out here nursing," said Thompson. "V.A.D. Evidently has a strong sense of duty or she wouldn't be doing it V.A.D.-ing isn't precisely a cushy job. He's tremendously in love."

"Seems to have confided most of his affairs in you," I said.

"Told me," said Thompson, "that the girl has just been home on leave. He hoped to get back, too, to meet her, thinks he would have got a week if he hadn't been ordered off on this course, bombing or whatever it is."

Thompson washed while he talked. It could scarcely be called a real wash, but he soaped his face, most of his neck and his ears with his shaving brush and then dipped his handkerchief in the drinking cup and wiped the soap off. He was certainly cleaner afterwards; but I felt that what was left of the water would not clean me.

Later on Thompson secured some rolls of bread, two jam pastries and six apples. The bread and pastry I think he bought The apples I am nearly sure he looted. I saw a large basket of apples in one of the waggons of a train which was standing in the station at which Thompson got out to buy our breakfast They were exactly like the apples he brought back.

We woke up the boy then. It did not matter whether he shaved or not; but at his age it is a serious thing to miss a chance of food.

About midday we arrived at a large town. Thompson learned from the R.T.O. who inhabited the railway station there that we could not get a train to take us any further till ten o'clock that night. He said again that was war, what the French call _guerre_, but he seemed quite pleased at the prospect of the wait He spoke of looking for a proper meal and a Turkish bath. The bath we did not succeed in getting; but we had an excellent luncheon: omelette, fried fish, some kind of stewed meat and a bottle of red wine. The boy stuck to us and told us a lot more about his girl. His great hope, he said, was that he would meet her somewhere in France. I could see that what he really looked forward to was a wound of a moderately painful kind which would necessitate a long residence, as a patient, in her hospital. He was, as Thompson said, a nice boy; but he talked too much about the girl. He was also a well-educated boy and anxious to make the best of any opportunities which came his way. He told us that there was an interesting cathedral in the town and proposed that we should all go and see it after lunch. Thompson is not an irreligious man. Nor am I. We both go to church regularly, though not to excess, but we do not either of us care for spending week day afternoons in a cathedral. Thompson still hankered after a Turkish bath. I had a plan for getting a bedroom somewhere and going to sleep. We sent the boy off to the cathedral by himself.

The Turkish bath, as I said, was un.o.btainable We walked through most of the streets of that town looking for it. Then Thompson proposed that we should have afternoon tea. That we got in a small room above a pastry cook's shop. The girl who served us brought us tea and a large a.s.sortment of sticky pastry. Thompson hates sticky pastry. There is only one kind of cake made in France which he will eat. I knew what it was, for I had often had tea with Thompson before. I should have recognized one if I had seen it; but I could not remember the French name for it Thompson insisted on describing its appearance to the girl. He gave his description in English and the girl looked puzzled. I tried to translate what he said into French and she looked still more puzzled.

Then from the far corner of the room came a pleasant voice.

"I think _brioche_ is the word you want." It was. I recollected it directly I heard it. I turned to thank our interpreter. She was a young woman in the uniform of a V.A.D. She was sitting at a table by herself, was, in fact, the only other occupant of the room. I thanked her.

Thompson joined in and thanked her effusively. There was not much light in the room and her corner was decidedly gloomy. Still, it was possible to see that she was a decidedly pretty girl. We both said that if there was anything we could do for her we should be very pleased to do it After the way she helped us out with the _brioche_ we could scarcely say less.

"Perhaps," she said, "you may be able to tell me when I will be able to get a train to----?"

She mentioned one of those towns of which the English have taken temporary possession, turning the hotels into hospitals, to the great profit of the original proprietors.

"Certainly," said Thompson. "There's a train at 9 p.m. But you'll be travelling all night in that. If I were you I'd stay here till to-morrow morning and then----"

"Can't," said the girl. "Properly speaking I'm due back to-day; but I missed the early train this morning and only got here an hour ago. The boat was horribly late."

"Ah," said Thompson, "you're coming back after leave, I suppose."

The girl sighed faintly.

"Yes." she said, "but I've had a fortnight's leave; I can't complain."

"I'll just write down that train for you," said Thompson.

He scribbled 9 p.m. on a piece of paper and carried it over to the girl.

It seemed to me an unnecessary thing to do. Nine is a simple number, easy to remember. Some thought of the same kind occurred to the girl.

She looked at Thompson, first with some surprise, and then, I thought, rather coldly. She was evidently not inclined to accept any further friendly offers from Thompson. He did not seem in the least abashed even when she turned her shoulder to us and looked the other way.

"Have you seen the cathedral here?" said Thompson.

The girl made no answer.

"I really think," said Thompson, "that you ought to pay a visit to the cathedral. You'll like it, you really will. And you've got hours before you. I don't see how you can fill in the time if you don't go to the cathedral."

"Thank you," said the girl without turning round.