V
ANDREWS felt an arm put round his shoulder.
“Ah’ve been to hell an’ gone lookin’ for you, Andy,” said Chrisfield’s voice in his ear, jerking him out of the reverie he walked in. He could feel in his face Chrisfield’s breath, heavy with cognac.
“I’m going to Paris tomorrow, Chris,” said Andrews.
“Ah know it, boy. Ah know it. That’s why I was that right smart to talk to you… You doan want to go to Paris… Why doan ye come up to Germany with us? Tell me they live like kings up there.”
“All right,” said Andrews, “let’s go to the back room at Babette’s.”
Chrisfield hung on his shoulder, walking unsteadily beside him. At the hole in the hedge Chrisfield stumbled and nearly pulled them both down. They laughed, and still laughing staggered into the dark kitchen, where they found the red-faced woman with her baby sitting beside the fire with no other light than the flicker of the rare flames that shot up from a little mass of wood embers. The baby started crying shrilly when the two soldiers stamped in. The woman got up and, talking automatically to the baby all the while, went off to get a light and wine.
Andrews looked at Chrisfield’s face by the firelight. His cheeks had lost the faint childish roundness they had had when Andrews had first talked to him, sweeping up cigarette butts off the walk in front of the barracks at the training camp.
“Ah tell you, boy, you ought to come with us to Germany… nauthin’ but whores in Paris.”
“The trouble is, Chris, that I don’t want to live like a king, or a sergeant or a major-general… I want to live like John Andrews.”
“What yer goin’ to do in Paris, Andy?”
“Study music.”
“Ah guess some day Ah’ll go into a movie show an’ when they turn on the lights, who’ll Ah see but ma ole frien’ Andy raggin’ the scales on the pyaner.”
“Something like that… How d’you like being a corporal, Chris?”
“O, Ah doan know.” Chrisfield spat on the floor between his feet. “It’s funny, ain’t it? You an’ me was right smart friends onct… Guess it’s bein’ a non-com.”
Andrews did not answer.
Chrisfield sat silent with his eyes on the fire.
“Well, Ah got him… Gawd, it was easy,” he said suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
“Ah got him, that’s all.”
“You mean…?”
Chrisfield nodded.
“Um-hum, in the Oregon forest,” he said.
Andrews said nothing! He felt suddenly very tired. He thought of men he had seen in attitudes of death.
“Ah wouldn’t ha’ thought it had been so easy,” said Chrisfield.
The woman came through the door at the end of the kitchen with a candle in her hand. Chrisfield stopped speaking suddenly.
“Tomorrow I’m going to Paris,” cried Andrews boisterously. “It’s the end of soldiering for me.”
“Ah bet it’ll be some sport in Germany, Andy… Sarge says we’ll be goin’ up to Coab… what’s its name?”
“Coblenz.”
Chrisfield poured a glass of wine out and drank it off, smacking his lips after it and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
“D’ye remember, Andy, we was both of us brushin’ cigarette butts at that bloody trainin’ camp when we first met up with each other?”
“Considerable water has run under the bridge since then.”
“Ah reckon we won’t meet up again, mos’ likely.”
“Hell, why not?”
They were silent again, staring at the fading embers of the fire. In the dim edge of the candlelight the woman stood with her hands on her hips, looking at them fixedly.
“Reckon a feller wouldn’t know what do with himself if he did get out of the army, now, would he, Andy?”
“So long, Chris. I’m beating it,” said Andrews in a harsh voice, jumping to his feet.
“So long, Andy, ole man… Ah’ll pay for the drinks.” Chrisfield was beckoning with his hand to the red-faced woman, who advanced slowly through the candlelight.
“Thanks, Chris.”
Andrews strode away from the door. A cold, needle-like rain was falling. He pulled up his coat collar and ran down the muddy village street towards his quarters.
VI
IN the opposite corner of the compartment Andrews could see Walters hunched up in an attitude of sleep, with his cap pulled down far over his eyes. His mouth was open, and his head wagged with the jolting of the train. The shade over the light plunged the compartment in dark-blue obscurity, which made the night sky outside the window and the shapes of trees and houses, evolving and pirouetting as they glided by, seem very near. Andrews felt no desire to sleep; he had sat a long time leaning his head against the frame of the window, looking out at the fleeing shadows and the occasional little red-green lights that darted by and the glow of the stations that flared for a moment and were lost in dark silhouettes of unlighted houses and skeleton trees and black hillsides. He was thinking how all the epochs in his life seemed to have been marked out by railway rides at night. The jolting rumble of the wheels made the blood go faster through his veins; made him feel acutely the clattering of the train along the gleaming rails, spurning fields and trees and houses, piling up miles and miles between the past and future. The gusts of cold night air when he opened the window and the faint whiffs of steam and coal gas that tingled in his nostrils excited him like a smile on a strange face seen for a moment in a crowded street. He did not think of what he had left behind. He was straining his eyes eagerly through the darkness towards the vivid life he was going to live. Boredom and abasement were over. He was free to work and hear music and make friends. He drew deep breaths; warm waves of vigor seemed flowing constantly from his lungs and throat to his finger tips and down through his body and the muscles of his legs. He looked at his watch: “One.” In six hours he would be in Paris. For six hours he would sit there looking out at the fleeting shadows of the countryside, feeling in his blood the eager throb of the train, rejoicing in every mile the train carried him away from things past. Walters still slept, half slipping off the seat, with his mouth open and his overcoat bundled round his head. Andrews looked out of the window, feeling in his nostrils the tingle of steam and coal gas. A phrase out of “Haner Lad” came to his head: “Ambrosial night, Night ambrosial unending.” But better than sitting round a camp fire drinking wine and water and listening to the boastful yarns of long-haired Achæans, was this hustling through the countryside away from the monotonous whine of past unhappiness, towards joyousness and life.
Andrews began to think of the men he had left behind. They were asleep at this time of the night, in barns and barracks, or else standing on guard with cold damp feet, and cold hands which the icy rifle barrel burned when they tended it. He might go far away out of sound of the tramp of marching, away from the smell of overcrowded barracks where men slept in rows like cattle, but he would still be one of them. He would not see an officer pass him without an unconscious movement of servility, he would not hear a bugle without feeling sick with hatred. If he could only express these thwarted lives, the miserable dullness of industrialized slaughter, it might have been almost worth while-for him; for the others, it would never be worth while. “But you’re talking as if you were out of the woods; you’re a soldier still, John Andrews.” The words formed themselves in his mind as vividly as if he had spoken them. He smiled bitterly and settled himself again to watch silhouettes of trees and hedges and houses and hillsides fleeing against the dark sky.