The Luck of Thirteen Part 23

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XVII

KRALIEVO

We roused ourselves at seven a.m. A damp, chilly fog was hanging low over the valley, it penetrated to the skin, and one shuddered. The railway was congested, but train arrived after train, open trucks all packed with men whose breath rose in steam, and whose clothes were sparkling with the dew. We stepped from the station door into a thick black "pease puddingy" mud, as though the Thames foresh.o.r.e had been churned up by traffic. Standing knee deep in the mud were weary oxen and horses attached to carts of all descriptions, with wheels whose rims, swollen by the mire, were sunk almost to the axles. Across the mud, surrounded by shaky red brick walls, the District Civil Hospital showed pale in the morning, and we made towards it, splashing.

We came to the lodge: an English girl was doing something to a kitchen stove. She stared at us.

"Hullo!"

"We've just come from Vrnjatchka Banja," we explained.

She took Jo to the hospital, while Blease and Jan dropped their heavy luggage and washed in a basin, provided by a Serb servant girl. Jo did not return. Jan went to the hospital to look for her.

Crowds of men were at the door, crowds in ragged and filthy uniforms, with bandages on arms, or foot, or brow, dirty stained bandages with bloodstains upon them. Some of the men were crouching on the ground, some were lying against the house, fast asleep. Somehow we got through them. The pa.s.sage was full of men, and men were asleep, festooned on the stone stairs. The smell was horrible. Beyond a swinging gla.s.s door Scottish women were hurrying to and fro bandaging the men as they entered, and pa.s.sing them out on the other side of the building. The Serbs waited with the stoicism of the Oriental, their long lean faces drawn with hunger, pain and fatigue. Now and again some man turned uneasily in his sleep and groaned. A detachment of "Stobarts" had found a lodging upstairs, in a bedroom with plank beds; amongst them we found some old friends.

Leaving them we went into the village to look for a meal, back through the mud. Soldiers, peasants, women, children, horse carts and bullock waggons, all were pushing here and there, broken down and deserted motor cars were standing in the middle of the road. In the great round central "Place" confusion was worse, animals, carts, and refugee bivouacks being all squashed together on the market place.

White-bearded officers with grey-green uniforms were gesticulating to white-bearded civilians outside the Cafe de Paris. A motor rushed up, disgorged three men in Russian uniform and fled. A small fat man vainly endeavouring to attract the attention of a staff officer grasped him by the arm; the staff officer shook him off angrily. Soldiers lounged against the walls and peered in through the dirty windows....

Within, the big dark room was crammed. Opening the door was like turning a corner of cliff by the seash.o.r.e. Almost all, at the tables, were men: officers, tradesmen, clerks, talking in eager tense words. We found three seats. n.o.body had anything to eat or drink. Three men came to the table next to us. They exhibited two loaves of bread to the others, and had the air of some one who had done something very clever. We were famished.

Suddenly half the cafe rose and rushed to a small counter almost hidden in the gloom of the far end. Coffee can be got, said some one. Blease, who could get out the easier, went to explore. In a short while he wandered back saying that he had got a waiter. A man came through selling apples. We bought some. At last the waiter came.

"Cafe au lait," said we.

"And bread," we added, as he turned away.

"Nema," he answered, looking back.

"Well eggs, then."

"Nema."

"What have you got?"

"We have nothing but meat."

"No potatoes?"

"No."

We got a sort of Serbian stew, the meat so tough that one had to saw the morsels apart with a knife and bolt them whole. As we were operating, a soldier leaned up against our table, and stared at our plates with a wistful longing. Jo caught his eye. She sc.r.a.ped together all our leavings; what misery we could have relieved, had we had money enough, in Serbia then.

We paid our bill with a ten dinar (franc) note. The waiter fingered it a moment.

"Haven't you any money?" he asked.

"That is money."

"Silver, I mean."

"No."

He hesitated a moment. Then went away, turning the note over in his hands. After a while he returned and gave us our change.

The day pa.s.sed in a queer sort of daze of doing things; between one act and another there was no definite sequence. The town itself was in a sort of suppressed twitter, everybody's movements seemed exaggerated, the eager ones moved faster, impelled by a sort of fear; the slow ones went slower, their feet dragging in a kind of despondency. At one time we found ourselves clambering up some steps to the mayor's office, in search of bread. By a window on the far side of the room was a man with a pale face, eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep, and light hair: Churchin. We ran to him.

"What are you doing here?" he said gloomily.

We explained.

"I don't think you can get any transport," he said; "but later I'll see if I can do anything."

We thanked him. "But transport or no transport, we are going." Jan showed him the bread order. He read it and pointed to the Nachanlik.

The Nachanlik read our order, scowled and pa.s.sed it on to another man, an officer. The officer read the order, looked us sulkily from head to foot, then he pushed the paper back to us.

"We have only bread for soldiers."

"But--we are an English Mission."

"Only for soldiers here. We have nothing to do with English Missions."

Fearing that we had come to the wrong place we retired.

At another time we were climbing up back stairs to what had been the temporary lodgings of the English legation. But it was empty and deserted; Sir Ralph Paget had not yet come.

There were bread shops, but they were all shut and guarded by soldiers.

Jan saw some bread in a window. He went into the dirty cafe, which was crowded with soldiers, some sitting on the floor and some on the tables.

"Whose bread?" asked he.

"Ours."

"Will you sell me a loaf?"

"We won't sell a crumb."

We bought some apples from a man with a Roman lever balance, and chewed them as we went along.

At the hospital the "Stobarts" were packing up. A motor was coming for them in the afternoon. We heard that Dr. May and the Krag people were at Studenitza, an old monastery, halfway along the road to Rashka. On the flat fields behind the station were another gang of "Stobarts," the dispensary from Lapovo. One Miss H---- was in trouble, for thieves had pushed their arms beneath the tent flaps in the night and had captured her best boots.