Chapter II: Part ONE: The North (1)

BELGIUM

MUD: and a thin rain coming down to make more mud.

Mud: with scraps of iron lying in it and the straggling fragment of a nation, lolling, hanging about in the mud on the edge of disaster.

It is quiet here. The rain and the mud muffle the voice of the war that is growling beyond the horizon. But if you listen you can hear cataracts of iron pouring down channels in the sodden land, and you feel the earth trembling.

Back there is France, just behind the windmill. To the north, the coast; a coast without a port, futile. On our right? That’s the road to Ypres. The less said about that road the better: no one goes down it for choice--it’s British now. Ahead of us, then? No, you can’t get out that way. No, there’s no frontier, just a bleeding edge, trenches. That’s where the enemy took his last bite, fastened his iron teeth, and stuffed to bursting, stopped devouring Belgium, left this strip, these useless fields, these crumpled dwellings.

Cities? None. Towns? No whole ones. Yes, there are half a dozen villages. But there is plenty of mud, and a thin silent rain falling to make more mud--mud with things lying in it, wheels, broken motors, parts of houses, graves.

This is what is left of Belgium. Come, I’ll show you. Here are trees drooping along a canal, ploughed fields, roads leading into sand dunes, roofless houses. There’s a farm, an old woman with a crooked back feeding chickens, a convoy of motor lorries round a barn; they squat like elephants. And here is a village crouching in the mud: the cobblestone street is slippery and smeared with refuse, and there is a yellow cat sitting in a window. This is the headquarters of the Belgian Army. You see those men, lolling in the doorways--uncouth, dishevelled, dirty? They are soldiers. You can read on their heavy jowls, in their stupified, patient, hopeless eyes, how boring it is to be a hero.

The king is here. His office is in the schoolroom down the street, a little way past the church, just beyond the dung heap. If we wait we may see him. Let’s stand with these people in the rain and wait.

A band is going to play to the army. Yes, I told you, this is the army--these stolid men standing aimlessly in the drizzle, and these who come stumbling along the slippery ditches, and those leaning in degraded doorways. They fought their way out of Liege and Namur, followed the king here; they are what is left of plucky little Belgium’s heroic army.

And the song of the nation that comes from the horns in the front of the wine shop, the song that sounds like the bleating of sheep, can it help them? Can it deceive them? Can it whisk from their faces the stale despair, the unutterable boredom, and brighten their disappointed eyes? They are so few, and they have nothing to do but stand in the rain waiting. When the band stops they will disappear into the estaminet to warm their stomachs with wine and cuddle the round-cheeked girls. What else can they do? The French are on one side of them, the British on the other, and the enemy in front. They cannot go back; to go back is to retreat, and they have been retreating ever since they can remember. They can retreat no farther. This village is where they stop. At one end of it is a pigsty, at the other end is a grave-yard, and all about are flats of mud. Can the noise, the rhythmical beating of the drum, the piping, the hoarse shrieking, help these men, make them believe, make them glad to be heroes? They have nowhere to go now and nothing to do. There is nothing but mud all about, and a soft fine rain coming down to make more mud--mud with a broken fragment of a nation lolling in it, hanging about waiting in it behind the shelter of a disaster that has been accomplished.

Come away, for God’s sake--come away. Let’s go back to Dunkerque. The king? Didn’t you see him? He came out of the schoolhouse some time ago and drove away toward the sand-dunes--a big fair man in uniform. You didn’t notice? Never mind. Come away.

BOMBARDMENT

The wide sweet heaven was filling with light: the perfect dome of night was changing into day. A million silver worlds dissolved from above the earth: the sun was about to rise in stillness: no wind stirred.

A speck appeared in the great immensity. It was an aeroplane travelling high through the mysterious twilight. The sound of the whirring of its engine was lost in the depthless air: like a ghost it flew through the impalpable firmament: it was the only thing that moved in heaven and earth.

The unconscious map lay spread out beneath it: the wide plain, the long white beach and the sea, lay there exposed to its speeding eye.

On the face of the plain were villages and cities; the dwellings of men who had put their trust in the heavens and had dared to people the earth.

The aeroplane turned in the sky and began circling over the town.

The town far below was asleep. It lay pillowed on the secure shore; violet shadows leaned against its pale buildings; there was no movement in its streets; no smoke from its chimneys. The ships lay still in the deep close harbour; their masts rose out of the green water like reeds thickly growing with the great funnels and turrets of warships like strange plants among them. The sea beyond the strong breakwater was smooth as a silver plate; there was no sound anywhere.

The aeroplane descended in slow spirals upon the town, tracing an invisible path through the pearly air. It was as if a messenger from heaven were descending upon the people of the town who dreamed.

Suddenly a scream burst from the throat of the church tower. For an instant the sky seemed to shiver with the stab of that wail of terror rising from the great stone throat. Surely the town would waken in a panic--and yet, no, nothing stirred. There was no sound or movement in any street and the sky gave back no sign.

The aeroplane continued to descend until it looked from the church tower like a mosquito; then there dropped something from it that flashed through the air, a spark of fire.

Silence had followed the scream.

The aeroplane, superbly poised now in the spotless sky, watched the buildings below it as if waiting for some strange thing to happen; and presently, as if exorcised by the magic eye of that insect, a cluster of houses collapsed, while a roar burst from the wounded earth.

The bombardment had commenced. The big gun hiding in the sand-dunes in Belgium had obeyed the signal.

Still, the neat surface of the wide city showed no change, save in that one spot where the houses had fallen. How slow to wake the town was! The daylight brightened, painting the surfaces of the buildings with pale rose and primrose. The clean empty streets cut the city into firm blocks of buildings; the pattern of the town spread out on the earth, with its neat edges marked by walls and canals, gleamed like a varnished map.

Then the siren in the church tower screamed again; its wail was followed by a second roar and a ragged hole yawned in the open square in the middle of the town.

The aeroplane circled smoothly, watching.

And at last signs of terror and bewilderment appeared in the human ant hill beneath it. Distracted midgets swarmed from the houses: this way and that they scurried, diving into openings in the ground: swift armoured beetles rushed through the streets; white jets of steam rose from the locomotives in the station yard: the harbour throbbed.

Again there was a great noise, and a cloud of debris was flung into the air as from a volcano, and flames leapt after it. A part of the wharf with a shed on it reeled drunkenly into the sea with a splash.

The white beach was crawling now with vermin; the human hive swarmed out on to the sands. Their eyes were fixed on the evil flying thing in the sky and at each explosion they fell on their faces like frantic worshippers.

The aeroplane cavorted, whirling after its tail in an ecstacy of self-gratification. Down among the sand-dunes it could see the tiny black figures of men at the anti-aircraft guns. These were the defenders of the town; they had orders to shoot to death a mosquito floating in boundless heaven. The little clouds that burst in the sunlight were like materialised kisses.

The face of the city had begun to show a curious change. Scars appeared on it like the marks of smallpox and as these thickened on its trim surface, it seemed as if it were being attacked by an invisible and gigantic beast, who was tearing and gnawing it with claws and teeth. Gashes appeared in its streets, long wounds with ragged edges. Helpless, spread out to the heavens, it grimaced with mutilated features.

Nevertheless the sun rose, touching the aeroplane with gold, and the aeroplane laughed. It laughed at the convulsed face of the town, at the beach crawling with vermin, at the ant people swarming through the gates of the city along the white roads; it laughed at the warships moving out of the harbour one by one in stately procession, the mouths of their guns gaping helplessly in their armoured sides. With a last flick of its glittering wings, it darted downward defiant, dodging the kisses of shrapnel, luring them, teasing them, playing with them: then, its message delivered, its sport over, it flew up and away in the sunshine and disappeared. A speck in the infinite sky, then nothing--and the town was left in convulsions.

THE CAPTIVE BALLOON

There is a captive balloon in the sky, just over there. It looks like an oyster floating in the sky.

They say that a man lives in the balloon. They say that from the balloon you can see the enemy’s trenches and the country behind that is held by the enemy, but from here we can see nothing, only trees and farmhouses and carts going along the road, and the captive balloon.

Aeroplanes sail over our heads sometimes. They gleam in the sun, they move past with a great whirring, they fly fearlessly toward the enemy’s country. They whirl about and disappear and come again, swooping down over us with arrogant wings. They are beautiful, proud and adventurous.

But the captive balloon is tied forever by a string to a cabbage field. It has been just over there ever since we have been here and that is a long time now. It never moves. It never comes down or goes up. It floats there while the biplanes and the monoplanes circle round it.

What does it do? It is an oyster in the sky, keeping an eye on the Germans.

THE SQUARE

Below my window in the big bright square a struggle is going on between the machines of war and the people of the town. There are the motor cars of the army, the limousines, and the touring cars and the motor lorries and the ambulances; and there are the little bareheaded women of the town with baskets on their arms who try to push the monsters out of their way.

The motors come in and go out of the four corners of the square, and they stand panting and snorting in the middle of it. The limousines are full of smart men in uniforms with silver hair and gold braid on their round red hats. The touring cars, too, are full of uniforms, but on the faces of the young men who drive them is a look of exhaustion and excitement. The motors make a great noise and a great smell and a great dust. They come into the square, hooting and shrieking; they draw up in the square with grinding brakes. The men in them get out with a flourish of capes: they stamp on the pavement with heavy boots; they salute one another stiffly like wooden toys, then disappear into the buildings where they hold murderous conferences and make elaborate plans of massacre.

The motor cars have all gone wrong. They are queer. They are not doing what they were designed to do when they were turned out of the factories. The limousines were made to carry ladies to places of amusement: they are carrying generals to places of killing. The limousines and the touring cars and the motor lorries are all debauched; they have a depraved look; their springs sag, their wheels waver; their bodies lean to one side. The elegant limousines that carry the generals are crusted with old mud; the leather cushions of the touring cars are in tatters; the great motor lorries crouch under vast burdens. They crouch in the square ashamed, deformed, very weary; their unspeakable burdens bulge under canvas coverings. Only the snobbish ambulances with the red crosses on their sides have self-assurance. They have the self-assurance of amateurs.

The business of killing and the business of living go on together in the square beneath the many windows, jostling each other.

The little women of the town are busy; they are dressed in black; they have children with them. Some lead children by the hand, others are big with children yet unborn. But all the women are busy. They ignore the motors; they do not see the fine scowling generals, nor the strained excited faces in the fast touring cars, nor the provisions of war under their lumpy coverings. They do not even wonder what is in the ambulances. They are too busy. They scurry across to the shops, instinctively dodging, and come out again with bundles; they talk to each other a little without smiling; they stare in front of them; they are staring at life; they are thinking about the business of living.

On Saturdays they put up their booths on the cobble stones and hold their market. The motors have to go round another way on market days. There is no room in the square for the generals, nor for the dying men in the ambulances. The women are there. They buy and sell their saucepans and their linen and their spools of thread and their fowls and their flowers; they bargain and they chatter; they provide for their houses and their children; they give oranges to their children, and put away their coppers in their deep pockets.

As for the men on the stretchers inside the smart ambulances with the bright red crosses, they do not know about the women in the square. They cannot hear their chattering, nor see the children sucking oranges; they can see nothing and hear nothing of the life that is going on in the square; they are lying on their backs in the dark canvas bellies of the ambulances, staring at death. They do not know that on Saturday mornings their road does not lie through the big bright square because the little women of the town are busy with their market.

SENTINELS

All these little men coming out of their boxes along the road--.

The boxes are oblong. They stand on end by the ragged ditches. The men pop out of the boxes into the middle of the road. They are blurred and shapeless. They wave dirty flags in weary warning. A motor car slows up and stops before the box. The languid menace of these figures stops it; their joyless power holds it with its engines panting.

The coats of the little men who come out of the boxes are too big for them; their rifles with the bayonets are too heavy. The light of the sky in the daytime is too strong, and the darkness of the night is too dark, and the many motors that pass the barriers are too many. The vague vast meaning of their minute task is too much for them.

It is stupid to live in an oblong box in a ditch, and to pop out at the sound of a motor and wave a flag and look at a piece of blue paper or a piece of pink paper with writing on it that is hard to read. There is a name written on the paper, but how is one to know whether the name written on the paper is the name that was given to the man in the motor by his parents when he was a baby in a cradle? How is one to know? It is one’s business to look at the paper and at the man’s face. What good does that do? What does it matter? It is one’s duty to look at the paper. It is one’s duty to look at the man. It is one’s duty to find out where he has come from and where he is going. La Panne, Dunkerque, Bourburg, Calais, Boulogne; Boulogne, Calais, Bourburg, Dunkerque, La Panne, it is always the same. It is always written there on the paper, with the stamp and the signature of some well-educated officer who sits in some warm room before piles of papers. These papers wander out from his room along the road.

It is always the same on the road. It is always the same. All these motor cars full of men keep coming along the road--the long road that leads to the war. Sometimes it is hot and there is sunlight and dust on the road, and the smell of petrol is strong; sometimes it is cold and the rain beats down from the sky; sometimes it is night and there is a lantern to wave instead of a flag, and there is the fear of falling asleep. But the road is always the same and the box by the road is always the same, and deep down there is the same truth always.

All these motors and all these scornful men that stop to show impatient papers will disappear up the road for ever. Even those who come down the road will go up again and will be destroyed and will never come back. So it is good to be in the box. As long as one is in the box one will not be destroyed. These fools who are angry because they are stopped on the road that leads to the war, they will be destroyed. The generals who do not look and the colonels who glance sideways, and the lieutenants who make bad jokes--the English and the French and the Belgians--they will all be destroyed.

They wear fine uniforms. Their faces are clean. They have been eating good food. They receive back their papers disdainfully. They wear gloves. They will be destroyed with their gold braid and their medals and the good food inside them.

Their motors dash off flinging mud into the face from their hind wheels. They disappear. The road is empty.

THE REGIMENT

There was no sign of horror in the heavens or upon the earth. The summer world was deep, immense, beautiful. High white clouds were moving slowly towards Belgium, moving without movement through a sky ineffably blue, superb castles of white vapour, floating towards a land called No Man’s Land, and their shadows were flung like banners far below over the green meadows and fields of yellow corn.

An aeroplane was visiting the romantic city of the sky. A fearless, capricious, gay glittering creature of pleasure, it flew through the glistening portals and disappeared, bent on mysterious adventure.

The smiling country was enjoying itself. The caress of the wind sent shudders of pleasure through the corn and a fluttering delight through the trees. Along the road banks scarlet poppies were winking their little black eyes. Like grizzled dwarfs squatting on pedestals in the fields, the windmills waved their arms in grotesque gaiety.

War had that day the aspect of a country fair. The armies were gipsy caravans vagabonding over the country. Swarms of little men were housekeeping in the open. Their camp fires, their pots and pans, and their garments hung out to dry on bushes, twinkled and fluttered through the furbelowed country side. Here and there near a stream, a cluster of tents, gaudily painted, suggested a circus.

The snug villages tucked between the fields of high golden corn and scattered clumps of woodland hummed like beehives, sheltering an army in their warm farmyards and barns and cottages, and the army in reserve waited comfortably, sharing the lovely day with the cattle, the great farm horses, the pigs and chickens.

Ten miles from the Belgian frontier a lowbrowed, moody town dozed on the banks of a canal. Folded close between its great gates, it was deep as a dark well in the midst of the bright flighty country. The dull ochre walls of the houses soaked up the sunlight. Their shutters were closed. The barges in the canal were motionless, their great bosoms sunk deep in the cool water. From the quiet streets and close-lidded houses the spirit of the place was being distilled in the sunlight. It was as if the sun were drawing the melancholy soul out of the weary, proud old body of the town. Reluctantly it gave up its secret. The memories of its troubled history and of how it had defended a passionate egoism on the threshold of an alien nation, spread upon the sunny air like a dark and bitter perfume.

A regiment was marching along the high road towards the town. In the distance, looking towards Belgium, you could see it coming down the white road. It was a shadow moving across the bright surface of the country against the wind and against the shadows of the clouds. It looked like the shadow of a snake.

There was, however, no snake visible in the lovely sky, and on a nearer view the shadow became a column of hunchbacks, a herd of deformed creatures driven on together, each one like another one.

It was a French territorial regiment. It had come out of the trenches that morning, and from the trenches it was marching toward the town.

It was a moving mass of men covered over with the cloth of fatigue. Over them was their suffocating weariness, and under them was the dust of the road. They moved along, bending forward as if the space between the weight that lay on them and the dusty road under them was not wide enough to hold them upright. They moved laboriously through the dust, as if they were dragging chains. But there was no sound from them save the dull sound of their feet tramping the road.

The regiment was a regiment of old men. Their faces were old and their clothes were old and their bodies were old, and the spirit in them was old. There was no youth in any one of them.

They marched steadily along the road. Their gait was the steady jolting gait of weary animals. They did not look quite like men. One could not be certain what kind of men they were. One could only be certain that they were not young. They had not quite the colour nor the shape of men. The war had spread over them its own colour. They were dark against the bright mirage of summer. They were of a deep, dull courageous hue. Their faces and their hands and their coats were all stained with the same stain, no longer blue, no longer brown. Fatigue and suffering and dirt had soaked through them and had made them this colour.

And they were all deformed, and certainly their deformity was the deformity of the war. They were not misshapen in different ways. They were all misshapen in the same way. Each one was deformed like the next one. Each one had been twisted and bent in the same way. Each one carried the same burden that bowed his back, the same knapsack, the same roll of blanket, the same flask, the same dangling box, the same gun. Each one dragged swollen feet in the same thick-crusted boots. The same machine had twisted and bent them all. They did not look quite like men, and yet they were men.

Nor did they behave like men. They did not look about them as they marched along the road. They did not talk as they marched close together. They did not stop marching, never for a moment did they stop marching. They did not shift their burdens to ease them. They did not notice the milestones as they passed. They paid no attention to the signposts at the cross roads. They did not wipe the sweat off their faces. They did not behave like men walking through pleasant country, and yet they assuredly were men.

I saw in their eyes that they were men. They marched with their eyes fixed on the rough bent backs of those in front, on the rough backs of their companions who were too old to be comrades. And in their deep fixed eyes, sunk under grizzled eyebrows, there was a strange expression, the expression of profound knowledge. They were old men and they knew. There were many things they did not know; they did not know where they were going; they did not know why they were going there; they did not know how far they had to go, or how long they would rest there; but two things they did know; they knew that they were not going home, and they knew that they were condemned to death. They knew this; they had always known. They understood and they did not complain. France was at war. They were old men. Their sons had been killed. They were taking the place of their sons.

There was no elasticity in them, nor any enthusiasm, nor any passion; but they were patient. Being old men, there was nothing they could not accept; there was nothing they could not endure. They had endured fatigue and cold and hunger and wet. They had endured so long that they had ceased to think about these things. Their weariness was a thing of such long standing that they thought of it no more. Their uncleanness had become a habit to them. Suffering was a part of their rations. They were acclimatised to misery. Death was a part of the equipment they carried always with them. The war had no interest for them nor any terror. They accepted the war. It was a thing to be endured. They were enduring it.

There was only one thing they wanted, and this thing they wanted without hope. They wanted to go home, and they knew they were not going home.

Out of the deep comfort of the warm dear holes they had dug for themselves in the land they loved, these old men had been called to war, the bleak desert of death. Each one had been torn up out of the deep place he had made. Like old trees, strong rooted, they had grown into the soil of France, and they had been torn up and carted away to die, and in the place each one had left there was a gaping hole.

They remembered their homes as they marched along the road. They did not look about them as they walked through the bright country that was enjoying itself, because this country was not their home and they were too tired to look up.

They were coming away from the trenches and they were tired. They were relieved of the strain of imminent death, but the relief made them only more tired. And what was the good of coming away from the trenches if they were not going home? Long ago they had gone into the trenches. They had crawled laboriously into them, their old bodies creaking, their gouty souls wincing, and they had learned how to live in those ditches. Carefully with great caution they had learned how to endure them. They had smoked innumerable pipes in them and had chewed loaves of bread; they had slept and waked and received letters from home. Then, with the same creaking of their joints they had come out of the trenches. Some of them had not come out, but those that were left had come out.

Now they were going along the road.

They did not know where they were going; they only knew that they were not going home. It was all the same to them as long as they could not go home.

The aeroplane, glittering in the sun, was still circling through the citadel of the sky. High it flew. It flew high! It flew higher again, and still higher.

The regiment was chained to the earth. The men were chained to the ground. They were heavy; they were fastened down. The mass of them jolted along, a dark weight scraping the road. Their flag alone was lifted. It moved fluttering above their heads, tattered and soiled. It was there for an emblem of hope. They ignored it. They did not see it. Long ago they had ceased to regard it.

So they marched toward the town.

In the centre of the big sleepy square of the town was a group of fine little men in costume. They were waiting for the regiment that was marching along the road, and they were waiting for the General who commanded the army, the General-in-Chief, their own General. These fine little men were officers. One could not be certain that they had anything to do with the war, but one could be certain that they were officers. Their trim figures, polished and clean and neatly put together and nicely covered in scarlet and blue cloth and brown leather, stood upright in the centre of the square. The wide expanse of cobblestones on which they stood glistened like a sheet of opaque glass. From the four sides of the square the wise houses watched under ruminating brows. It was difficult to tell what the houses thought of the officers in the square. It was difficult to tell what the officers were doing there in the middle of the square. Certainly they were waiting, but they seemed to be busily, nervously waiting. They could not keep still. They seemed conscious of the stare of the houses. They drew themselves up very straight. Their arms made quick gestures; their gloved hands twirled their moustaches; their neat heels tapped the pavement smartly. They bowed to one another elaborately.

There was variety among these officers. No one was like another one. Not one had gestures like another one. Not one had clothes like another one. Certainly they were individuals. One was a slim, graceful one; one was a flabby one; one was an elegant one; one a tall, very stiff one; one was a pot-bellied one. Each remained the same one he had been before the war. They were varnished over with a military varnish, but beneath the varnish appeared distinctly the small individuality of each one. It was curious to see such fine shiny men in the centre of the old haggard town.

The hard knobbled palm of the square held them up to the view of the sky.

Through the east gate of the town the regiment came into the town dragging its weight and its darkness, and it poured its darkness into the square. It poured through the gap of the street into the square, and it came to a stand. It was a dark mass of tenacity, inert, incurious, obstinate, one man beside another man, each one like the next one, close packed together between the pale dreaming houses.

The regiment brought truth into the square. It was a fact, a darkness, a weight filling one side of the square.

And with the regiment war appeared in the square.

The town shuddered under the tramping feet of the regiment.

The men of the regiment stood close packed together. The mass of their round metal helmets gleamed like a beach of smooth pebbles before the windows of the houses, and their bayonets shot up like a forest of knives flashing in the sunlight.

The town shuddered. But there was sympathy between the regiment and the town.

The town said to the regiment:

“You old ones, you are strangers; but we know you. You come from the war. You are welcome.”

The regiment said to the town:

“You are kind, but you’d do well to keep your welcome for those who can use it. We are old. We want nothing since we cannot go home.”

“Rest here awhile, old ones,” repeated the town.

“No, we cannot stay. We do not belong here. You are old, too, like us; but we are too tired to make friends with you, though we thank you.”

The group of officers said to the regiment:

“Look spry now. You’re to be inspected by the General, and we are to receive decorations.”

The regiment didn’t answer. It had nothing to say to the staff officers. It did not recognise them. Its own officers--yes; but these it did not know, and the staff officers were embarrassed by the obstinacy and the stupidity and weariness of the regiment. They fidgeted on the edge of its darkness.

While the regiment and the officers waited in the square for the General, the aeroplane flew down from the cloud castles in the sky and circled over the town crying gaily:

“Look at me. Look at me, you heavy old ones, I can fly.”

The officers looked up at the aeroplane. The regiment did not look up.

The officers said to themselves:

“That silly aeroplane is amusing itself, but we are going to receive decorations.”

The regiment remained silent. It took no notice.

A bugle sounded, heralding the approach of the General, but instead of the General a woman came into the square. She came in a motor with glass windows. Her shining car stopped in front of the regiment. She opened the door of the motor and put out her white foot and stepped down, and her delicate body dressed in the white uniform of a hospital was exposed to the view of the officers and the regiment. Her head was bound close with a white kerchief. A red cross burned on her forehead.

She was a beautiful animal dressed as a nun and branded with a red cross. Her shadowy eyes said to the regiment:

“I came to the war to nurse you and comfort you.”

The regiment said nothing. It did not know what to say. It was merely puzzled.

Her red mouth said to the officers:

“I am here for you.”

And the officers said:

“We know why you are here.”

The eyes of the officers followed the white shining woman as she moved through the sunlight, and they rested on her as she stood in a shadowed doorway.

The presence of the woman was a teasing current of delight touching the officers.

To the regiment the woman was a puzzle, but the old ones were too tired to bother about puzzles.

To the town she was a strange fantastic thing, like a white peacock.

The town said to itself: “This curious creature has gone astray. It has the appearance of being expensive. It must have escaped from its owner who, no doubt, prizes it highly; but that is none of our business.”

The clock in the church tower marked three o’clock.

Suddenly a cry burst from the regiment, and a shout burst from the trumpets and horns and drums of the regiment. It rang through the square shivering against the houses. The little people of the town came to their doorways. The rosy faces of the comfortable women and the round children spread round the square like a smile, and the hoarse passionate voice of the old rusty regiment rose bravely in welcome.

The General came.

He appeared at the far end of the square, a small solid figure standing alone. He existed apart, isolated. He stood at a distance, a solitary man, concentrating the attention of the town.

He came across the square alone, growing larger and larger as he came. He covered the ground with long strides. His gloved hand was on the hilt of his sword. When he reached the centre of the square, he wheeled and faced the regiment, a stone giant, solid as granite, commanding the attention of every man in the square. He ignored the officers and faced the regiment. And the town watching saw a curious thing. The bodies of the hunchbacks straightened under the eyes of the General. It was as if the iron arm of the stone man raised to salute them had lifted the weariness from the deformed shoulders of those old ones.

It was evident to the town that the General understood the regiment. It was evident that he knew what they knew. And with this dark knowledge he faced them. The trumpets and drums were hushed. A strange silence filled the square, and in silence the General summoned the regiment to meet his eyes. He took full in the face its dumb message. The weight he had lifted from it fell on him. The darkness drowning it flowed into him. He accepted it. He did not dodge it or bend under the weight of it. He stood rigid before the eyes of the regiment challenging its knowledge. The weary eyes of the old territorials were fixed on his white head and deep stony face. They searched him, and they saw that he knew what they knew, that there was nothing about the war that he didn’t know, and they were satisfied.

The General said to the regiment:

“You are mine. Your sons have been killed. France had need of you and you came. You must die for France as your sons died. You left your homes to come to the war. You will never go home again. You will go back to the trenches. It is I who will send you back there. Again and again you will go back to those ditches, by my orders, until you are killed as your sons were killed. You are mine for the war. I carry the weight of your obedience and your patience. You will be patient until death. I know you.”

The regiment answered the General:

“It is for our homes and for our sons. We are here because our sons are gone to protect the homes we cannot go back to. You are the one we obey.”

There was truth between the regiment and the General.

And the old town looking on, said:

“Clearly this is a great man. A hundred years ago there came here such a one as this, and he was a great man. We, too, are acquainted with war and with armies. We have seen thousands of little men, and we have seen some big men. We know that this is a great man.”

From the regiment the General turned to the officers and the town perceived that the relation of the General to his officers was a complex thing. It was as complicated as a formal dance or pantomime on a stage. The officers knew their steps. They had apparently rehearsed the performance. The General treated the officers with elaborate ceremony. He was there to decorate them. The decorating of the officers was a ceremony, and he performed the ceremony with the skill of an actor. It was a pretty play in which the General played the principal rôle. He played it with solemnity. He saluted each one in turn, the long one, and the pale one and the pot-bellied one. He drew his sword from its scabbard; it flashed in the sun as he laid it upon their shoulders. On the left shoulder and upon the right shoulder of the Colonel he laid his sword. He pinned a medal on the Colonel’s elegant chest and then he kissed him on the left cheek and on the right cheek. He did the same with each officer in turn. He called each one by name and addressed him in a loud voice of commendation. He laid on each one his sword and he kissed each one on both cheeks, and on the chest of each one he left a bit of ribbon and a bright medal.

The regiment in the background was the chorus for this pretty play. After each kiss and each decoration the trumpets and drums of the regiment cried aloud in congratulation.

Kisses and bits of ribbon and a graceful flashing sword, these little things passed between the General and his officers. No truth passed between them--nothing but a play.

And the play was ended.

And the General went away as he had come, taking with him the pride and the courage that he had brought into the square.

The face of the town grew dull as it watched him go. The women and the children disappeared into the dim houses. The white strange woman looked after him with vague, troubled eyes, not noticing the officers who advanced towards her, elaborately bowing.

The regiment lowered its bayonets at his going and bowed its shoulders. Its darkness grew more dark, and its weariness more heavy. When the General had gone it became again a shapeless mass of dark, weary hunchbacks.

The clock in the church tower marked five o’clock when the regiment left the square. It marched out of the town and along the road as it had come.

A regiment of old men.

They did not know where they were going. It did not matter to them where they were going. They did not look about them as they marched. They did not look before them, nor behind them. They did not look up at the cloudless sky, nor did they wonder where the clouds had gone. They did not remember the beautiful clouds of the morning that had sailed serenely over the enemy’s country. They did not remember the sympathy of the town, nor the complacency of that fine little group of officers, nor the glittering of the bright medals, nor the insolence of the white woman who watched. They did not very much remember the grandeur of the General, nor the pride they had known in the General. They remembered their homes. The sweat ran down their faces under their helmets. Their feet were heavy on the road. They marched steadily, jolting along, patient, weary animals who remembered.

There was no sign of horror upon the earth. There was not a cloud in the sky. The afternoon sunlight was golden over the land. The regiment passed like a shadow through the bright country and was lost to view.

THE BEACH

The beach was long and smooth and the colour of cream. The woman sitting in the sun stroked the beach with the pink palm of her hand and said to herself, “The beach is perfect, the sun is perfect, the sea is perfect. How pretty the little waves are, curling up the beach. They are perfectly lovely. They are like a lace frill to the beach. And the sea is a perfectly heavenly blue. It is odd to think of how old the beach is and how old the sea is, and how much older that old, old fellow, the fiery sun. The face of the beach is smooth as cream and the sea to-day is a smiling infant, twinkling and dimpling, and the sun is delicious; it is burning hot, like youth itself. It is good to be alive. It is good to be young.” But she could not say this aloud so she said to the man beside her in the wheel chair:

“How many millions of years has it taken to make the beach? How many snails have left their shells behind them, do you think, to make all this fine powdery sand? A million billion?” She let the sand run through her strong white fingers and smiled, blinking in the sun and looked away from the man in the invalid chair beside her toward the horizon.

The man wriggled and hitched himself clumsily up in his chair; an ugly grimace pulled his pale face to one side. He dared not look down over the arm of his wheel chair at the bright head of the woman sitting beside him. Her hair burned in the sunlight; her cheeks were pink. He stole a timid, furtive look. Yes, she was as beautiful as a child. She was perfectly lovely. A groan escaped him, or was it only a sigh?

She looked up quickly. “What is it, darling? Are you in pain? Are you tired? Shall we go back?” Her voice sounded in the immense quiet of the beach like a cricket chirping, but the word “darling” went on sounding and sounding like a little hollow bell while she searched his features, trying to find his old face, the one she knew, trying to work a magic on him, remove and replace the sunken eyes, the pinched nose, the bloodless wry mouth. “He’s not a stranger,” she said to herself. “He’s not.” And she heard the faint mocking echo, “Darling, darling,” ringing far away as if a bell-buoy out on the water were saying “Darling, darling,” to make the little waves laugh.

“It’s only my foot, my left foot. Funny, isn’t it, that it goes on throbbing. They cut it off two months ago.” He jerked a hand backward. “It’s damn queer when you think of it. The old foot begins the old game, then I look down and it’s not there any more, and I’m fooled again.” He laughed. His laughter was such a tiny sound in the great murmur of the morning that it might have been a sand-fly laughing. He was thinking, “What will become of us? She is young and healthy. She is as beautiful as a child. What shall we do about it?” And looking into her eyes he saw the same question, “What shall we do?” and looked quickly away again. So did she.

She looked past him at the row of ugly villas above the beach. Narrow houses, each like a chimney, tightly wedged together, wedges of cheap brick and plaster with battered wooden balconies. They were new and shabby and derelict. All had their shutters up. All the doors were bolted. How stuffy it must be in those deserted villas, in all those abandoned bedrooms and kitchens and parlours. Probably there were sand-shoes and bathing dresses and old towels and saucepans and blankets rotting inside them with the sand drifting in. Probably the window panes behind the shutters were broken and the mirrors cracked. Perhaps when the aeroplanes dropped bombs on the town, pictures fell down and mirrors and the china in the dark china closets cracked inside these pleasure houses. Who had built them?

“Cowards built them,” he said in his new bitter, rasping voice, the voice of a peevish, irritable sandfly. “Built them to make love in, to cuddle in, to sleep in, hide in. Now they’re empty. The blighters have left them to rot there. Rotten, I call it, leaving the swanky plage to go to the bad like that, just because there’s a war on. A little jazz now and a baccarat table would make all the difference, wouldn’t it? It would cheer us up. You’d dance and I’d have a go at the tables. That’s the casino over there, that big thing; that’s not empty, that’s crowded, but I don’t advise you to go there. I don’t think you’d like it. It’s not your kind of a crowd. It’s all right for me, but not for you. No, it wouldn’t do for you--not even on a gala night.

“They’ve a gala night in our casino whenever there’s a battle. Funny sort of place. You should watch the motors drive up then. The rush begins about ten in the evening and goes on till morning. Quite like Deauville the night of the Grand Prix. You never saw such a crowd. They all rush there from the front, you know--the way they do from the race-course--though, to be sure, it is not quite the real thing--not a really smart crowd. No, not precisely, though the wasters in Deauville weren’t much to look at, were they? Still, our crowd here aren’t precisely wasters. Gamblers, of course, down and outs, wrecks--all gone to pieces, parts of ’em missing, you know, tops of their heads gone, or one of their legs. When they take their places at the tables, the croupiers--that is to say, the doctors--look them over. Come closer, I’ll whisper it. Some of them have no faces.”

“Darling, don’t.” She covered her own face, closed her ears to his tiny voice and listened desperately with all her minute will to the large tranquil murmur of the sea. “Darling, darling,” far out the bell-buoy was sounding.

“Bless you,” said the thin, sharp, exasperated sandfly voice beside her. “Little things like that don’t keep us away. If we can’t walk in we get carried in. All that’s needed is a ticket. It’s tied to you like a luggage label. It has your name on it in case you don’t remember your name. You needn’t have a face, but a ticket you must have to get into our casino.”

“Stop, darling--darling, stop!”

“It’s a funny place. There’s a skating rink. You ought to see it. You go through the baccarat rooms and the dance hall to get to it. They’re all full of beds. Rows of beds under the big crystal chandeliers, rows of beds under the big gilt mirrors, and the skating rink is full of beds, too. The sun blazes down through the glass roof. It’s like a hot-house in Kew Gardens. There’s that dank smell of a rotting swamp, the smell of gas gangrene. Men with gas gangrene turn green, you know, like rotting plants.” He laughed. Then he was silent. He looked at her cowering in the sand, her hands covering her face, and looked away again.

He wondered why he had told her these things. He loved her. He hated her. He was afraid of her. He did not want her to be kind to him. He could never touch her again and he was tied to her. He was rotting and he was tied to her perfection. He had no power over her any more but the power of infecting her with his corruption. He could never make her happy. He could only make her suffer. His one luxury now was jealousy of her perfection, and his one delight would be to give in to the temptation to make her suffer. He could only reach her that way. It would be his revenge on the war.

He was not aware of these thoughts. He was too busy with other little false thoughts. He was saying to himself, “I will let her go. I will send her away. Once we are at home again, I will say good-bye to her.” But he knew that he was incapable of letting her go.

He closed his eyes. He said to himself “The smell of the sea is good, but the odour that oozes from the windows of the casino is bad. I can smell it from here. I can’t get the smell of it out of my nose. It is my own smell,” and his wasted greenish face twitched in disgust.

She looked at him. “I love him,” she said to herself. “I love him,” she repeated. “But can I go on loving him?” She whispered, “Can I? I must.” She said, “I must love him, now more than ever, but where is he?”

She looked round her as if to find the man he once had been. There were other women on the beach, women in black and old men and children with buckets and spades, people of the town. They seemed to be glad to be alive. No one seemed to be thinking of the war.

The beach was long and smooth and the colour of cream. The beach was perfect; the sun perfectly delicious; the sea was perfectly calm. The man in the wheel chair and the woman beside him were no bigger than flies on the sand. The women and children and old men were specks.

Far out on the sea there was an object; there were two objects. The people on the beach could scarcely distinguish them. They peered through the sunshine while the children rolled in the sand, and they heard the sound of a distant hammer tapping.

“They are firing out at sea,” said someone to someone.

How perfect the beach is. The sea is a perfectly heavenly blue. Behind the windows of the casino, under the great crystal chandeliers, men lie in narrow beds. They lie in queer postures with their greenish faces turned up. Their white bandages are reflected in the sombre gilt mirrors. There is no sound anywhere but the murmur of the sea and the whispering of the waves on the sand, and the tap tap of a hammer coming from a great distance across the water, and the bell-buoy that seems to say, “Darling, darling.”

MOONLIGHT