Sylvia & Michael Part 36

He smiled compa.s.sionately for answer, and soon afterward, in a first-cla.s.s compartment to themselves, Michael and she left Nish.

"Really," Michael observed, "when the conditions are favorable, traveling as a prisoner of war is the most luxurious traveling of all.

I've never experienced the servility of a private courier, but it's wonderful to feel that other people are under an obligation to look after you. However, at present we have the advantages of being new toys.

Our friend from Sunbury-on-Thames may be as compa.s.sionate as he likes about England, but there's no doubt it confers on the possessor a quite peculiar thrill to own English people--even two such non-combatant creatures as ourselves. It's typical of the Germans' newness to European society that they should have thought the right way to treat English prisoners was to spit at them. I remember once seeing a grandee of Spain who'd been hired as secretary by a Barcelona Jew, and by Jove! he wasn't allowed to forget it. The Bulgarians, on the other hand, have a superficial air of breeding, which they've either copied from the Turks or inherited from the Chinese. Didn't you love the touch about the champagne lunch at Dedeagatch? There's a luxurious hospitality about that which you won't find outside the _Arabian Nights_ or Chicago.

Really the English nation should give thanks every Sunday, murmuring with all eyes on the east window and Germany: 'There, but for the grace of G.o.d blowing in the west wind, goes John Bull.' Yet I wonder if the hearts would be humble enough to keep the Pharisee out of the thanksgiving."

The train went slowly, with frequent stoppages, often in wild country far from any railway station, where in such surroundings its existence seemed utterly improbable. Occasionally small bands of _comitadjis_ would ride up and menace theatrically the dejected Serbian prisoners who were being moved into Bulgaria. There was a cold wind, and snow was lying thinly on the hills.

In the rapid dusk Michael fell asleep; soon after, the train seemed to have stopped for the night. Sylvia did not wake him up, but sat for two hours by the light of one candle stuck upon her valise and pored upon the moonless night that pressed against the window-panes of the compartment with scarcely endurable desolation. There was no sound of those murmurous voices that make mysterious even suburban tunnels when trains wait in them on foggy nights. The windows were screwed up; the door into the corridor was locked; in the darkness and silence Sylvia felt for the first time in all its force the meaning of imprisonment.

Suddenly a flaring torch carried swiftly along the permanent way threw shadowy grotesques upon the ceiling of the compartment, and Michael, waking up with a start, asked their whereabouts.

"Somewhere near Zaribrod, as far as I can make out, but it's impossible to tell for certain. I can't think what they're doing. We've been here for two hours without moving, and I can't hear a sound except the wind.

It was somebody's carrying a torch past the window that woke you up."

They speculated idly for a while on the cause of the delay, and then gradually under the depression of the silence their voices died away into occasional sighs of impatience.

"What about eating?" Sylvia suggested at last. "I'm not hungry, but it will give us something to do."

So they struggled with tinned foods, glad of the life that the fussy movement gave to the compartment.

"One feels that moments such as these should be devoted to the most intimate confidences," Michael said, when they had finished their dinner and were once more enmeshed by the silence.

"There's a sort of portentousness about them, you mean?"

"Yes, but as a matter of fact, one can't even talk about commonplace things, because one is all the time fidgeting with the silence."

"I know," Sylvia agreed. "One gets a hint of madness in the way one's personality seems to shrink to nothing. I suppose there really is somebody left alive in the world? I'm beginning to feel as if it were just you and I against the universe."

"Death must come like that sometimes," he murmured.

"Like what?"

"Like that thick darkness outside and oneself against the universe."

"I'd give anything for a guitar," Sylvia exclaimed.

"What would you play first?" he inquired, gravely.

She sang gently:

_"La donna e mobile qual piuma al vento,_ _Muta d'accento e di pensiero,_ _Sempre un amabile leggiadro viso,_ _In pianto o in riso, e menzognero--_

and that's all I can remember of it," she said, breaking off.

"I wonder why you chose to sing that."

"It reminds me of my father," she answered. "When he was drunk, fair cousin, he always used to sing that. What a charming son-in-law he would have made for our grandfather! Oh, are we ever going to move again?"

she cried, jumping up and pressing her face against the viewless pane.

"Hark! I hear horses."

Michael rose and joined her. Presently flames leaped up into the darkness, and armed men were visible in silhouette against the bonfire they had kindled, so large a bonfire, indeed, that, in the shadows beyond, the stony outcrop of a rough, steep country seemed in contrast to be the threshold of t.i.tanic chasms. A noise of shouting reached the train, and presently Bulgarian regulars, the escort of the prisoners, joined the merrymakers round the fire. Slow music rumbled upon the air, and a circle of men shoulder to shoulder with interwoven arms performed a stately, swaying dance.

"Or are they just holding one another up because they're drunk?" Sylvia asked.

"No, it's really a dance, though they may be drunk, too. I wish we could get this window open. It looks as if all the soldiers had joined the party."

The dance came to an end with shouts of applause, and one or two rifles were fired at the stars. Then the company squatted round the fire, and the wine circulated again.

"But where are the officers in charge?" Michael asked.

"Playing cards, probably. Or perhaps they're drinking with the rest.

Anyway, if we're going to stay here all night, it's just as well to have the entertainment of this _al fresco_ supper-party. Anything is better than that intolerable silence."

Sylvia blew out the stump of candle, and they sat in darkness, watching the fire-flecked revel. The shouting grew louder with the frequent pa.s.sing of the wine-skins; after an hour groups of _comitadjis_ and regulars left the bonfire and wandered along the permanent way, singing drunken choruses. What happened presently at the far end of the train they could not see, but there was a sound of smashed gla.s.s followed by a man's scream. Those who were still sitting round the fire s.n.a.t.c.hed up their weapons and stumbled in loud excitement toward the center of the disturbance. There were about a dozen shots, the rasp of torn woodwork, and a continuous crash of broken gla.s.s, with curses, cries, and all the sounds of quarrelsome confusion.

"The drunken brutes are breaking up the train," Michael exclaimed. "We'd better sit back from the window for a while."

Sylvia cried out to him that it was worse and that they were dragging along by the heels the bodies of men and kicking them as they went.

"Good G.o.d!" he declared, standing up now in horror. "They're murdering the wretched Serbian prisoners. Here, we must get out and protest."

"Sit down, fool," Sylvia commanded. "What good will your protesting do?"

But as she spoke she gave a shuddering shriek and held her hands up to her eyes: they had thrown a writhing, mutilated shape into the fire.

"The brutes! The filthy brutes!" Michael shouted, and, jumping upon the seat of the compartment, he kicked at the window-panes until there was not a fragment of gla.s.s left. "Shout, Sylvia, shout! Oh, h.e.l.l! I can't remember a word of their b.l.o.o.d.y language. We must stop them. Stop, I tell you. Stop!"

One of the prisoners had broken away from his tormentors and was running along the permanent way, but the blood from a gash in the forehead blinded him and he fell on his face just outside the compartment. Two _comitadjis_ banged out his brains on the railway line; with clasp-knives they hacked the head from the corpse and merrily tossed it in at the window, where it fell on the floor between Sylvia and Michael.

"My G.o.d!" Michael muttered. "It's better to be killed ourselves than to stay here and endure this."

He began to scramble out of the window, and she, seeing that he was nearly mad with horror at his powerlessness, followed him in the hope of deflecting any rash action. Strangely enough, n.o.body interfered with their antics, and they had run nearly the whole length of the train, in order to find the officers in charge, before a tall man descending from one of the carriages barred their progress.

"Why, it's you!" Sylvia laughed, hysterically. "It's my rose-grower!

Michael, do you hear? My rose-grower."

It really was Rakoff, decked out with barbaric trappings of silver and bristling with weapons, but his manners had not changed with his profession, and as soon as he recognized her he bowed politely and asked if he could be of any help.

"Can't you stop this ma.s.sacre?" she begged. "Keep quiet, Michael; it's no good talking about the Red Cross."

"It was the fault of the Serbians," Rakoff explained. "They insulted my men. But what are you doing here?"

The violence of the drunken soldiers and comitadjis had soon worn itself out, and most of them were back again round the fire, drinking and singing as if nothing had happened. Sylvia perceived that Rakoff was sincerely anxious to make himself agreeable, and, treading on Michael's foot (he was in a fume of threats), she explained their position.

Rakoff looked up at the carriage from which he had just descended.

"The officers in command are drunk and insensible," he murmured. "I'm under an obligation to you. Do you want to stay in Bulgaria? Have you given your parole?" he asked Michael.