Servants Of The Guns Part 17

To us, accustomed to the diffidence of the English soldier in the presence of his officers, it was refreshing to watch Henry enter our room in the afternoon bearing on his shoulder the daily supply of coal.

He would lower the large bucket carefully to the ground and then wipe his huge hands on his baggy and discoloured red trousers with the air of a man who has done a hard job of work conscientiously and well. From a pocket, the bottom of which was apparently somewhere in the region of his knee, he would produce a half-smoked and much worn cigar, readjust any loose leaves that might be hanging from it, and then light it with all the care that a connoisseur bestows upon a corona. Having opened the door of the stove to satisfy himself that the fire was "marching well,"

he would draw up a stool and sit down amongst us for five minutes' rest.

Conversation with him was of course an unequal contest. Our French was weak--his, on the contrary, was powerful--in the sense that an express train is powerful, that is, rushing, noisy, and only to be stopped by signal. He was thirty-five, he told us, and it was obvious, from the way he referred to himself as a _pere de famille_ that he considered himself as a man well past the prime of life, looking forward hopefully to a complacent but always industrious old age. He came from Commines, which is north of Lille on the Belgian frontier, and he had worked all his life in a braces factory, for ten hours a day, six days a week, earning thirty to forty francs, which he considered good wages. On the outbreak of war his regiment had formed part of the garrison of Maubeuge, which place, in his opinion, was undoubtedly sold to the enemy. He had spent about a month at a prisoners' camp in Germany, and then had been sent to us with twenty other French soldiers who were to act as our servants and waiters. He confessed that he found the change agreeable because he was better fed and had some work to do. The idleness at the soldiers' camp had bored him. All of which led us to believe that he was that kind of man to whom work is a necessity. Facts proved otherwise.

He used to appear in our room in the morning at any time between seven and half-past. His first objective was the fire. It had happened once that the Russian officers who shared the room with us had in our absence banked the stove up so high over-night that it was still burning on the following morning; in consequence Henry had been saved the trouble of laying and lighting the fire afresh. Just as a terrier who has once seen a cat in a certain place will always take a glance there when pa.s.sing by, so Henry, hoping daily for a recurrence of such luck, made straight for the stove. He was invariably disappointed; but the action became a habit.

His next act was to go through the formality of waking us. His procedure was to stand at the foot of each bed in turn and place a gigantic hand on some portion of the occupant's anatomy. As soon as the sleeper stirred, Henry would mutter, "Sept heures vingt, mon capitaine" (or "mon lieutenant," as the case might be--he was most punctilious about rank), and pa.s.s on to the next bed. The actual time by the clock made no difference. He always said, "Sept heures vingt." All this, as I have stated, was pure formality. His real method of waking us was to make a deafening noise clearing out the grate and laying the fire. Having done this he abandoned us in favour of his own breakfast.

He reappeared about 9 a.m. to give the room what he called _un coup de balai_--his idiom for a superficial rite which he performed with a soft broom after scattering water freely about the floor. The resultant mess he picked up in his hands and put into the coal-box or pushed under a cupboard if he thought no one was looking. He spent the rest of his time till his dinner hour at eleven in cleaning the boots, making the beds, and pretending to dust things--all the while giving vent to his opinions on life in general and prison life in particular. In the afternoons we seldom saw him after two o'clock, by which time he had brought the coal and washed up the tea things, left dirty since the day before.

Henry possessed neither a handsome face nor a well-knit figure. When he stood upright--which he only did if he had some really impressive anathema to launch against the Germans--he was not more than five feet eight. His skimpy blue blouse disclosed the roundness of his shoulders and accentuated the abnormal length of his arms. The ends of his wide trousers were clipped tight round his ankles, so that his heavy hobnailed boots were displayed in all their vast unshapeliness. In walking he trailed his short legs along, giving one the impression that he had just completed a twenty-mile march and was about to go away and rest for some hours. When we first knew him he had had a scraggy beard of no particular colour, but he startled us one morning by appearing without it, grinning sheepishly, and exposing to view a weak chin which already had a tendency to multiply itself indefinitely. Except on Friday, which was his bath day, his long moustache draggled indiscriminately over the lower part of his face; but after his douche he used to soap the ends and curl them up, giving to his rather foolish countenance a ludicrous expression of semi-martial ferocity. On these occasions he seldom failed to pay us a visit in the evening, shaved, clean, and palpably delighted with himself.

The first time we saw him thus we asked him why he elected to wear his moustache like the Kaiser. For a moment he was disconcerted; then suddenly realising that a joke was intended, he threw back his head and emitted a series of startling guffaws. Being of a simple nature he was easily amused. Jokes about the war and the Germans, however, he considered to be in bad taste. His political philosophy was summed up in his simple phrase, "C'etaient _eux_" (the Germans) "qui ont voulu la guerre," and on this count alone they stood condemned eternally before G.o.d and man. Of history, diplomatic situations, international crises he took no heed. In his eyes the Germans were a race of impoverished brigands for ever casting greedy eyes upon the riches of peaceful France. He told me once in all sincerity that before the war he had never borne a grudge against any man, that he had been content to live at peace with all the world, but that now he was changed--he hated the Germans bitterly--"above all," he added, his voice quivering with impotent rage, "this fat pig of an under-officer who occupies himself with us orderlies. Nom d'un chien!" (his invariable expletive) "one can only think he is put over us on purpose to annoy us."

Poor Henry! I knew the gentleman to whom he referred--a fine type of the fat bully rejoicing in a position of power over unfortunate men who could in no way retaliate.

At first we had accepted Henry gladly as a kind of unconscious buffoon whose absurdities would enliven a few of our many dull hours. But in course of time we discovered other and more pleasing traits in him. He was a devout Catholic and, in his humble fashion, a staunch Republican.

One day I asked him why he attached so much importance to that form of government.

"Sous la republique, mon capitaine," he replied with dignity, "on est libre."

Free! free to work sixty hours a week for twenty years and then to march off to a war not of his making with but twelve francs in his pocket, leaving a wife and three children behind him to starve!

Like most Frenchmen of his cla.s.s Henry was thrifty to a degree; I doubt if he spent sixpence a week on himself. With the blind faith of a child he one day confided his savings to me because he was afraid the Germans might search him. By their regulations he was only allowed to have ten marks in his possession at once--the surplus he was supposed to deposit with the paymaster. But I really think he would rather have thrown the money away than done so. He kept a five-franc piece sewn in the lining of his trousers "in case," he informed me, "we get separated when the war is over. Of course you would send me the rest, but when I get back to France I must be able to celebrate my return."

Each week he used to add to the little h.o.a.rd which I kept for him, knowing not only the total but even what actual coins were there.

Upon occasions he could be courtesy itself. One day a Russian officer came into our room at a moment when Henry was standing idly by the table looking at the pictures in an English magazine. The Russian, mistaking him for a French officer, saluted, bowed, and held out his hand. An English private would have been embarra.s.sed--not so Henry. With that true politeness which always endeavours to prevent others from feeling uncomfortable he returned the salute and the bow and shook the proffered hand! Could tact have gone further?

On Christmas Day we gave him a box of fifty cigars. He was immensely touched and overwhelmingly grateful. Tears sprang to his eyes as he told us that he had never had so many cigars before--even in France.

"Avec ca," he exclaimed, fingering the box, "je serai content pour un an," and he insisted with charming grace, that we should each accept one then and there.

His musical talent was discovered when some one received a concertina from England. Coming into the room suddenly on the following morning I surprised Henry sitting upon my bed giving what was a quite pa.s.sable rendering of "Tipperary." In no way abashed, he remained where he was, only ceasing to play for a moment to tell me that the concertina was too small--a toy, in fact. The truth was, I rather think, that his enormous fingers found difficulty in pressing less than two stops at once. He admitted that he had a pa.s.sion for music, that he had learnt the harmonium from a blind man in Commines, and that he had had an accordion specially made for him in Belgium at a cost of 260 francs which had taken him years to save. He was inclined to turn up his nose at catchy airs and music-hall songs, preferring what he called _la grande musique_, by which I think he meant opera. Eventually he was given the concertina as a present and went off delighted--doing no more work that day.

The optimism with which Henry had begun his prison life gradually faded away. At one time he was certain that he would be home for Christmas, then for Easter; finally I think he had resigned himself to remaining where he was for life. It was his habit to believe implicitly every rumour that he heard; and since there were seldom less than fifty new ones current every day, he had a busy time retailing them, and was, in consequence, always either buoyed up with false hope or weighed down with unnecessary despair.

But it was at about the end of December that he began to get anxious and worried. Up till then he had been more or less content. His was not a super-martial spirit; he did not pine to be "at them" again nor did he chafe under the restrictions of a life of confinement. He confessed frankly that he was not anxious to fight again, but that when his day's work (!) was done he enjoyed sitting by the stove in the stable "avec les camarades" (the servants lived in the stables) "tandis que chacun raconte sa pet.i.te histoire de la guerre."

One day he told me what was on his mind. He had had no news of his family since leaving home five months before. At first he had not worried, knowing that letters took a long time. But an answer was overdue by this time--others had heard from home. "Every day," he said, "there are letters, but none for me." I could proffer sympathy but not, alas! advice, and I hadn't the heart to tell him that Commines was in the thick of the fighting, and had probably been blown to pieces long ago. His wife and children _might_ be safe, but they were almost certainly homeless refugees. From that day on he used often to come and talk to me about his happy life before the war, growing sadder and sadder as the weeks pa.s.sed and still he had no news.

I shall always remember Henry's pathetic little figure by the gate on the morning I left the prison, his baggy trousers more discoloured than ever, his enormous right hand at the salute, and his lips twisted into that wistful smile of his. I wonder what has happened to his wife and little daughters. I wonder if he or I or any one will ever know.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

_Of the contents of this book_, SNATTY _and_ FIVE-FOUR-EIGHT _appeared in_ BLACKWOOD'S, _and were both written before the war broke out--a fact which I mention with the selfish object of excusing myself for various technical errors therein_: HENRY _appeared in_ THE NEW STATESMAN. _My thanks are due to the editors of both these journals for kindly allowing me to republish the stories. The remainder have all appeared in_ THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE, _to the editor of which I am deeply indebted for his unfailing courtesy and a.s.sistance._

FLANDERS, _November, 1916_.