Action Front Part 15

She had paused after each question and went on to the next, but seeing no sign of answering "Yes" she was baffled for a moment. But she felt that she could not go to her own bed to which she had been dismissed, could not go to the sleep she so badly needed, until she had found and answered the question in those pitiful eyes. She tried again.

"Is it about your regiment?" she asked, and the eyes snapped "Yes," and "Yes," and "Yes" again. She puzzled over that, and then went back to the doctor in charge of the other ward and brought back with her the man who "knew Wally." Mentally she clapped her hands at the light that leaped to the boy's eyes. She had told the man that it was something about the regiment he wanted to know; told him, too, his method of answering "Yes" and "No," and to put his questions in such, a form that they could be so answered.

The friend advanced to the bedside with clumsy caution.

"h.e.l.lo, Wally!" he said cheerfully. "They've pretty well chewed you up and spit you out again, 'aven't they? But you're all right, old son, you're going to pull through, 'cause the O.C. o' the Linseed Lancers[Footnote: Medical Service.] here told me so. But Sister here tells me you want to ask something about someone in the old crush." He hesitated a moment. "I can't think who it would be," he confessed. "It can't be his own chum, 'cause he 'stopped one,' and Wally saw it and knew he was dead hours before. But look 'ere," he said determinedly, "I'll go through the whole bloomin' regiment, from the O.C. down to the cook, by name and one at a time, and you'll tip me a wink and stop me at the right one. I'll start off with our own platoon first; that ought to do it," he said to the Sister.

"Perhaps," she said quickly, "he wants to ask about one of his officers. Is that it?" And she turned to him.

The eyes looked at her long and steadily, and then closed flutteringly and hesitatingly.

"We're coming near it," she said, "although he didn't seem sure about that 'Yes.'"

"Look 'ere," said the other, with a sudden inspiration, "there's no good o' this 'Yes' and 'No' guessin' game; Wally and me was both in the flag-wagging cla.s.s, and we knows enough to--there you are." He broke off in triumph and nodded to Wally's flickering eyelids, that danced rapidly in the long and short of the Morse code.

"Y-e-s. Ac-ac-ac."[Footnote: Ac-ac-ac: three A's, denoting a full stop.

In "Signalese" similar-sounding letters are given names to avoid confusion. A is Ac; T, Toe; D, Don; P, Pip; M, Emma, etc.]

"Yes," he said. "If you'll get a bit of paper, Sister, you can write down the message while I spells it off. That's what you want, ain't it, chum?"

The Sister took paper and pencil and wrote the letters one by one as the code ticked them off and the reader called them to her.

"Ready. Begins!" Go on, Miss, write it down," as she hesitated.

"Don-I-Don--Did; W-E--we; Toc-ac-K-E--take; Toc-H-E--the; Toc-R-E-N-C-H--trench; ac-ac-ac. Did we take the trench?"

The signaler being a very unimaginative man, possibly it might never have occurred to him to lie, to have told anything but the blunt truth that they did not take the trench; that the regiment had been cut to pieces in the attempt to take it; that the further attempt of another regiment on the same trench had been beaten back with horrible loss; that the lines on both sides, when he was sent to the rear late at night, were held exactly as they had been held before the attack; that the whole result of the action was _nil_--except for the casualty list.

But he caught just in time the softly sighing whispered "Yes" from the unmoving lips of the Sister, and he lied promptly and swiftly, efficiently and at full length.

"Yes," he said. "We took it. I thought you knew that, and that you was wounded the other side of it; we took it all right. Got a hammering of course, but what was left of us cleared it with the bayonet. You should 'ave 'eard 'em squeal when the bayonet took 'em. There was one big brute----"

He was proceeding with a cheerful imagination, colored by past experiences, when the Sister stopped him. Wally's eyes were closed.

"I think," she said quietly, "that's all that Wally wants to know.

Isn't it, Wally?"

The lids lifted slowly and the Sister could have cried at the glory and satisfaction that shone in them. They closed once softly, lifted slowly, and closed again tiredly and gently. That is all. Wally died an hour afterwards.

AN OPEN TOWN

_"Yesterday hostile artillery sh.e.l.led the town of_ ---- _some miles behind our lines, without military result. Several civilians were killed_."--EXTRACT FROM DESPATCH.

Two officers were cas.h.i.+ng checks in the Bank of France and chatting with the cas.h.i.+er, who was telling them about a bombardment of the town the day before. The bank had removed itself and its business to the underground vaults, and the large room on the ground floor, with its polished mahogany counters, bra.s.s grills and desks, loomed dim and indistinct in the light which filtered past the sandbags piled outside.

The walls bore notices with a black hand pointing downwards to the cellar steps, and the big room echoed eerily to the footsteps of customers, who tramped across the tiled floor and disappeared downstairs to the vaults.

"One sh.e.l.l," the cas.h.i.+er was saying, "fell close outside there," waving a hand up the cellar steps. "_Bang! cras.h.!.+_ we feel the building shake--so." His hands left their task of counting notes, seized an imaginary person by the lapels of an imaginary coat and shook him violently.

"The noise, the great c-r-rash, the shoutings, the little squeals, and then the peoples running, the gla.s.ses breaking--tinkle--tinkle--you have seen the smoke, thick black smoke, and smelling--pah!"

He wrinkled his nose with disgust. "At first--for one second--I think the bank is. .h.i.t; but no, it is the street outside. Little stones--yes, and splinters, through the windows; they come and hit all round, inside--rap, rap, rap!" His darting hand played the splinters' part, indicating with little pointing stabs the ceiling and the walls.

"Mademoiselle there, you see? yes! one little piece of sh.e.l.l," and he held finger and thumb to ill.u.s.trate an inch-long fragment.

The two officers looked at Mademoiselle, an exceedingly pretty young girl, sitting composedly at a typewriter. There was a strip of plaster marring the smooth cheek, and at the cas.h.i.+er's words she looked round at the young officers, flashed them a cheerful smile, and returned to her hammering on the key-board.

"My word, Mademoiselle," said one of the officers. "Near thing, eh? I wonder you are not scared to carry on."

The girl turned a slightly puzzled glance on them.

"Monsieur means," explained the cas.h.i.+er friendlily to her, "is it that you have no fear--_peur_, to continue the affairs?"

Mademoiselle smiled brightly and shook her head. "But no," she said cheerfully, "it is nossings," and went back to her work.

"Jolly plucky girl, I think," said the officer. "Nearly as plucky as she is pretty. I say, old man, my French isn't up to handling a compliment like that; see if you can--"

He did not finish the sentence, for at that moment there was a faint far-off _bang_, and they sensed rather than felt a faint quiver in the solid earth beneath their feet. The cas.h.i.+er held up one hand and stood with head turned sideways in an att.i.tude of listening.

"You hear?" he said, arching his eyebrows.

"What was it?" said the officer. "Sounded like a door banging upstairs."

"No, no," said the cas.h.i.+er. "They have commenced again. It is the same hour as last time, and the time before."

Mademoiselle had stopped typing, and the ledger clerk at the desk behind her had also ceased work and sat listening; but after a moment Mademoiselle threw a little smile towards them--a half-pleased, half-deprecating little smile, as of one who shows a visitor something interesting, something one is glad to show, and then resumed her clicking on the typewriter. The ledger clerk, too, went back to work, and the cas.h.i.+er said off-handedly: "It is not near--the station perhaps--yes!" as if the station were a few hundred miles off, instead of a few hundred yards. He finished rapidly counting his bundle of notes and handed them to the officer.

When the two emerged from the bank they found the street a good deal quieter than when they had entered it. They walked along towards the main square, noticing that some of the shopkeepers were calmly putting up their shutters, while others quietly continued serving the few customers who were hurriedly completing their purchases. As the two walked along the narrow street they heard the thin savage whistle of an approaching sh.e.l.l and a moment later a tremendous _bang_! They and everybody else near them stopped and looked round, up and down the street, and up over the roofs of the houses. They could see nothing, and had turned to walk on when something crashed sharply on a roof above them, bounced off, and fell with a rap on the cobble-stones in the street. A child, an eager-faced youngster, ran from an arched gateway and pounced on the little object, rose, and held up a piece of stone, with intense annoyance and disgust plainly written on his face, threw it from him with an exclamation of disappointment.

The two walked on chuckling. "Little bounder!" said one. "Thought he'd got a souvenir; rather a sell for him--what?"

In the main square, they found a number of market women packing up their little stalls and moving off, others debating volubly and looking up at the sky, pointing in the direction of the last sound, and clearly arguing with each other as to whether they should stay or move. A couple of Army Transport wagons clattered across the square. One driver, with the reins bunched up in his hand and the whip under his arm, was busily engaged striking matches and trying to light a cigarette; the other, allowing his horses to follow the first wagon, and with his mouth open, gazed up into the sky as if he expected to see the next sh.e.l.l coming. A few civilians scattered about the square were walking briskly; a woman, clutching the arm of a little boy, ran, dragging him, with his little legs going at a rapid trot. More civilians, a few men in khaki, and some in French uniform, were standing in archways or in shop-doors.

There was another long whistle, louder and harsher this time, and followed by a splintering crash and rattle. The groups in the doorways flicked out of sight; the people in the open half halted and turned to hurry on, or in some cases, without looking round, ran hurriedly to cover. Stones and little fragments of debris clacked down one by one, and then in a little pattering shower on the stones of the square. The last of the market women, hesitating no longer, hurriedly bundled up their belongings and hastened off. The two officers turned into a cafe with a wide front window, seated themselves near this at a little marble table, and ordered beer. There were about a score of officers in the room, talking or reading the English papers. All of them had very clean and very close-shaven faces, and very dirty and weather-stained, mud-marked clothes. For the most part they seemed a great deal more interested in each other, in their conversations, and in their papers, than in any notice of the bombardment. The two who were seated near the window had a good view from it, and extracted plenty of interest from watching the people outside.

Another sh.e.l.l whistled and roared down, burst with a deep angry bellow, a clattering and rending and splintering sound of breaking stone and wood. This time bigger fragments of stone, a shower of broken tiles and slates rattled down into the square; a thick cloud of dirty black smoke, gray and red tinged with mortar and brick-dust, appeared up above the roofs on the other side of the square, spread slowly and thickly, and hung long, dissolving very gradually and thinning off in trailing wisps.

In the cafe there was silence for a moment, and many remarks about "coming rather close" and "getting a bit unhealthy," and a jesting inquiry of the proprietor as to the shelter available in the cellar with the beer barrels. A few rose and moved over to the window; one or two opened the door, to stand there and look round.

"Look at that old girl in the doorway across there," said one. "You would think she was frightened she was going to get her best bonnet wet."

The woman's motions had, in fact, a curious resemblance to those of one who hesitated about venturing out in a heavy rainstorm. She stood in the doorway and looked round, drew back and spoke to someone inside, picked up a heavy basket, set it down, stepped into the door, glanced carefully and calculatingly up at the sky and across the square in the direction she meant to take, moved back again and picked up her basket, set it firmly on her arm, stepped out and commenced to hobble at an ungainly c.u.mbersome trot across the square. She was no more than half-way across when the shriek of another sh.e.l.l was heard approaching.

She stopped and cast a terrified glance about her, dumped the basket down on the cobbles, and resumed the shambling trot at increased speed.

A soldier in khaki crossing the square also commenced to run for cover as his ear caught the sound of the sh.e.l.l; pa.s.sing near the woman's basket, he stooped and grabbed it and doubled on with it after its panting owner.

A group of soldiers standing in the archway shouted laughter and encouragement, pretending they were watching a race, urging on the runners.

"Go on, Khaki! go on!--two to one on the fat girl; two to one--I lay the fie-ald." Their cries and clapping shut off, and they disappeared like diving ducks as the sh.e.l.l roared down, struck with a horrible crash one of the buildings in a side-street just off the square, burst it open, and flung upward and outward a flash of blinding light, a spurt of smoke, a torrent of flying bricks and broken stones. Through the rattle and clatter of falling masonry and flying rubbish there came, piercing and shrill, the sound of a woman's screams. They choked off suddenly, and for some seconds there were no sounds but those of falling fragments, jarring and hailing on the cobble-stones, of broken gla.s.s cras.h.i.+ng and tinkling from dozens of windows round the square.