He had discarded his clerical disguise but there was something about his melancholy air and his precision of speech which made the landlord, who had never had contact before with an intellectual Jew, put him down as a “spoilt priest.” He had heard about this inn from a garrulous fellow in the packet-boat; it was kept by a distant connection of this man’s wife, and though he had not himself visited the place, he never lost an opportunity of putting in a good word for it.
Here Ambrose settled, in the only bedroom whose windows were unbroken. Here he intended to write a book, to take up again the broken fragments of his artistic life. He spread foolscap paper on the dining-room table and the soft, moist air settled on it and permeated it so that when, on the third day, he sat down to make a start, the ink spread and the lines ran together, leaving what might have been a brush stroke of indigo paint where there should have been a sentence of prose. Ambrose laid down the pen and because the floor sloped where the house had settled, it rolled down the table, and down the floor-boards and under the mahogany sideboard, and lay there among napkin rings and small coins and corks and the sweepings of half a century. And Ambrose wandered out into the mist and the twilight, stepping soundlessly on the soft, green turf.
In London Basil set Susie to work. She wanted to be taken out in the evenings too often and in too expensive a style. He set her to work with needle and silk and embroidery scissors, unpicking the As from the monograms on Ambrose’s crêpe-de-Chine underclothes and substituting on their place a B.
VI
Like horses in a riding school, line ahead to the leading mark, changing the rein, circling to the leading mark on the opposite wall, changing rein again, line ahead again, orderly and regular and graceful, the aeroplanes maneuvered in the sharp sunlight. The engines sang in the morning sky, the little black bombs tumbled out, turning over in the air, drifting behind the machines, breaking in silent upheavals of rock and dust which were already subsiding when the sound of the explosions shook the hillside where Cedric Lyne sat with his binoculars, trying to mark their fall.
There was no sign of Spring in this country. Everywhere the land lay frozen and dead, deep snow in the hills, thin ice in the valleys; the buds on the thorn were hard and small and black.
“I think they’ve found A Company, Colonel,” said Cedric.
Battalion headquarters were in a cave in the side of the hill; a shallow cave made by a single great rock which held up the accumulations of smaller stone which in years had slid down from above and settled round it. The Colonel and the adjutant and Cedric had room to sit here; they had arrived by night and had watched dawn break over the hills. Immediately below them the road led further inland, climbing the opposing heights in a series of bends and tunnels. At their feet, between them and the opposite escarpment, the land lay frozen and level. The reserve company was concealed there. The headquarter troops formed a small protective perimeter round the cave. Twenty yards away under another rock two signalers lay with a portable wireless set.
“Ack, Beer, Charley, Don… Hullo Lulu, Koko calling; acknowledge my signal; Lulu to Koko—over.”
They had marched forward all the preceding night. When they arrived at the cave Cedric had first been hot and sweaty, then, after they halted in the chill of dawn, cold and sweaty. Now with the sun streaming down on them he was warm and dry and a little sleepy.
The enemy were somewhere beyond the further hills. They were expected to appear late that afternoon.
“That’s what they’ll do,” said the Colonel. “Make their assault in the last hour of daylight so as to avoid a counter-attack. Well, we can hold them forever on this front. I wish I felt sure of our left flank.”
“The Loamshires are falling back there. They ought to be in position now,” said the adjutant.
“I know. But where are they? They ought to have sent over.”
“All this air activity in front means they’ll come this way,” said the adjutant.
“I hope so.”
The high school finished its exercise, took up formation in arrow shape and disappeared droning over the hills. Presently a reconnaissance plane appeared and flew backwards and forwards overhead searching the ground like an old woman after a lost coin.
“Tell those bloody fools to keep their faces down,” said the Colonel.
When the aeroplane had passed he lit his pipe and stood in the mouth of the cave looking anxiously to his left.
“Can you see anything that looks like the Loamshires?”
“Nothing, Colonel.”
“The enemy may have cut in across them yesterday evening. That’s what I’m afraid of. Can’t you get Brigade?” he said to the signaling corporal.
“No answer from Brigade, sir. We keep trying. Hullo Lulu, Koko calling, acknowledge my signal, acknowledge my signal; Koko to Lulu—over…”
“I’ve a good mind to push D Company over on that flank.”
“It’s outside our boundary.”
“Damn the boundary.”
“We’d be left without a reserve if they come straight down the road.”
“I know, that’s what’s worrying me.”
An orderly came up with a message. The Colonel read it and passed it to Cedric to file. “C Company’s in position. That’s all our forward companies reported. We’ll go round and have a look at them.”
Cedric and the Colonel went forward, leaving the adjutant in the cave. They visited the company headquarters and asked a few routine questions. It was a simple defensive scheme, three companies up, one in reserve in the rear. It was suitable ground for defense. Unless the enemy had infantry tanks—and all the reports said he had not—the road could be held as long as ammunition and rations lasted.
“Made a water recce?”
“Yes, Colonel, there’s a good spring on the other side of those rocks. We’re refilling bottles by relays now.”
“That’s right.”
A Company had been bombed, but without casualties, except for a few cuts from splintered rock. They were unshaken by the experience, rapidly digging dummy trenches at a distance from their positions to draw the fire when the aeroplanes returned. The Colonel returned from his rounds in a cheerful mood; the regiment was doing all right. If the flanks held they were sitting pretty.
“We’re through to Lulu, sir,” said the signaling corporal.
The Colonel reported to brigade headquarters that he was in position; air activity; no casualties; no sign of enemy troops. “I’ve no contact on the left flank… yes, I know it’s beyond the brigade boundary. I know the Loamshires ought to be there. But are they? our… Yes, but that flank’s completely in the air, if they don’t turn up…”
It was now midday. Battalion headquarters ate some luncheon—biscuits and chocolate; the adjutant had a flask of whisky. No one was hungry but they drank their bottles empty and sent the orderlies to refill them at the spring B Company had found. When the men came back the Colonel said, “I’m not happy about the left flank. Lyne, go across and see where those bloody Loamshires are.”
It was two miles along a side track to the mouth of the next pass, where the Loamshires should be in defense. Cedric left his servant behind at battalion headquarters. It was against the rules, but he was weary of the weight of dependent soldiery which throughout the operations encumbered him and depressed his spirits. As he walked alone he was exhilarated with the sense of being one man, one pair of legs, one pair of eyes, one brain, sent on a single intelligible task; one man alone could go freely anywhere on the earth’s surface; multiply him, put him in a drove and by each addition of his fellows you subtract something that is of value, make him so much less a man; this was the crazy mathematics of war. A reconnaissance plane came overhead. Cedric moved off the path but did not take cover, did not lie on his face or gaze into the earth and wonder if there was a rear gunner, as he would have done if he had been with headquarters. The great weapons of modern war did not count in single lives; it took a whole section to make a target worth a burs
t of machine-gun fire; a platoon or a motor lorry to be worth a bomb. No one had anything against the individual; as long as he was alone he was free and safe; there’s danger in numbers; divided we stand, united we fall, thought Cedric, striding happily towards the enemy, shaking from his boots all the frustration of corporate life. He did not know it, but he was thinking exactly what Ambrose had thought when he announced that culture must cease to be conventual and become cenobitic.
He came to the place where the Loamshires should have been. There was no sign of them. There was no sign of any life, only rock and ice and beyond, in the hills, snow. The valley ran clear into the hills, parallel with the main road he had left. They may be holding it, higher up, he thought, where it narrows, and he set off up the stony track towards the mountains.
And there he found them; twenty of them under the command of a subaltern. They had mounted their guns to cover the track at its narrowest point and were lying, waiting for what the evening would bring. It was a ragged and weary party.
“I’m sorry I didn’t send across to you,” said the subaltern. “We were all in. I didn’t know where you were exactly and I hadn’t a man to spare.”
“What happened?”
“It was all rather a nonsense,” said the subaltern, in the classic phraseology of his trade which comprehends all human tragedy. “They bombed us all day yesterday and we had to go to ground. We made a mile or two between raids but it was sticky going. Then at just before sunset they came clean through us in armored cars. I managed to get this party away. There may be a few others wandering about, but I rather doubt it. Luckily the Jerries decided to call it a day and settled down for a night’s rest. We marched all night and all to-day. We only arrived an hour ago.”
“Can you stop them here?”
“What d’you think?”
“No.”
“No, we can’t stop them. We may hold them up half an hour. They may think we’re the forward part of a battalion and decide to wait till tomorrow before they attack. It all depends what time they arrive. Is there any chance of your being able to relieve us?”
“Yes. I’ll get back right away.”
“We could do with a break,” said the subaltern.
Cedric ran most of the way to the cave. The Colonel heard his story grimly.
“Armored cars or tanks?”
“Armored cars.”
“Well, there’s a chance. Tell D Company to get on the move,” he said to the adjutant. Then he reported to brigade headquarters on the wireless what he had heard and what he was doing. It was half an hour before D Company was on its way. From the cave they could see them marching along the track where Cedric had walked so exuberantly. As they watched they saw the column a mile away halt, break up and deploy.
“We’re too late,” said the Colonel. “Here come the armored cars.”
They had overrun the party of Loamshires and were spreading fanwise across the low plain. Cedric counted twenty of them; behind them an endless stream of lorries full of troops. At the first shot the lorries stopped and under cover of the armored cars the infantry fell in on the ground, broke into open order and began their advance with parade-ground deliberation. With the cars came a squadron of bombers, flying low along the line of the track. Soon the whole battalion area was full of bursting bombs.
The Colonel was giving orders for the immediate withdrawal of the forward companies.
Cedric stood in the cave. It was curious, he thought, that he should have devoted so much of his life to caves.
“Lyne,” said the Colonel. “Go up to A Company and explain what’s happening. If they come in now from the rear the cars may jink round and give the other companies a chance to get out.”
Cedric set out across the little battlefield. All seemed quite unreal to him still.
The bombers were not aiming at any particular target; they were plastering the ground in front of their cars, between battalion headquarters and the mouth of the valley where A Company were dug in. The noise was incessant and shattering. Still it did not seem real to Cedric. It was part of a crazy world where he was an interloper. It was nothing to do with him. A bomb came whistling down, it seemed from directly over his head. He fell on his face and it burst fifty yards away, bruising him with a shower of small stones.
“Thought they’d got him,” said the Colonel. “He’s up again.”
“He’s doing all right,” said the adjutant.
The armored cars were shooting it out with D Company. The infantry spread out in a long line from hillside to hillside and were moving steadily up. They were not firing yet; just tramping along behind the armored cars, abreast, an arm’s length apart. Behind them another wave was forming up. Cedric had to go across this front. The enemy were still out of effective rifle range from him, but spent bullets were singing round him among the rocks.
“He’ll never make it,” said the Colonel.
I suppose, thought Cedric, I’m being rather brave. How very peculiar. I’m not the least brave, really; it’s simply that the whole thing is so damned silly.
A Company were on the move now. As soon as they heard the firing, without waiting for orders, they were doing what the Colonel intended, edging up the opposing hillside among the boulders, getting into position where they could outflank the out-flanking party. It did not matter now whether Cedric reached them. He never did; a bullet got him, killing him instantly while he was a quarter of a mile away.
Epilogue
Summer
Summer came and with it the swift sequence of historic events which left all the world dismayed and hardly credulous; all, that is to say, except Sir Joseph Mainwaring whose courtly and ponderous form concealed a peppercorn lightness of soul, a deep unimpressionable frivolity, which left him bobbing serenely on the great waves of history which splintered more solid natures to matchwood. Under the new administration he found himself translated to a sphere of public life where he could do no serious harm to anyone, and he accepted the change as a well-earned promotion. In the dark hours of German victory he always had some light anecdote; he believed and repeated everything he heard; he told how, he had it on the highest authority, the German infantry was composed of youths in their teens, who were intoxicated before the battle with dangerous drugs; “those who are not mown down by machine guns die within a week,” he said. He told, as vividly as if he had been there and seen it himself, of Dutch skies black with descending nuns, of market women who picked off British officers, sniping over their stalls with sub-machine guns, of waiters who were caught on hotel roofs marking the rooms of generals with crosses as though on a holiday postcard. He believed, long after hope had been abandoned in more responsible quarters, that the French line was intact. “There is a little bulge,” he explained. “All we have to do is to pinch it out,” and he illustrated the action with his finger and thumb. He daily maintained that the enemy had outrun his supplies and was being lured on to destruction. Finally when it was plain, even to Sir Joseph, that in the space of a few days England had lost both the entire stores and equipment of her regular army and her only ally; that the enemy were less than twenty-five miles from her shores; that there were only a few battalions of fully armed, fully trained troops in the country; that she was committed to a war in the Mediterranean with a numerically superior enemy; that her cities lay open to air attack from fields closer to home than the extremities of her own islands; that her sea-routes were threatened from a dozen new bases, Sir Joseph said, “Seen in the proper perspective I regard this as a great and tangible success. Germany set out to destroy our army and failed; we have demonstrated our invincibility to the world. Moreover, with the French off the stage, the last obstacle to our proper understanding with Italy is now removed. I never prophesy but I am confident that before the year is out they will have made a separate and permanent peace with us. The Germans have wasted their strength. They cannot possibly repair their losses. They have squandered the flower of their army. They have enlarged their boundaries b
eyond all reason and given themselves an area larger than they can possibly hold down. The war has entered into a new and more glorious phase.”
And in this last statement, perhaps for the first time in his long and loquacious life, Sir Joseph approximated to reality; he had said a mouthful.
A new and more glorious phase: Alastair’s battalion found itself overnight converted from a unit in the early stages of training into first line troops. Their 1098 stores arrived; a vast profusion of ironmongery which, to his pride, included Alastair’s mortar. It was a source of pride not free from compensating disadvantages. Now, when the platoon marched, Alastair’s pouches were filled with bombs and his back harnessed to the unnaturally heavy length of steel piping; the riflemen thought they had the laugh of him.