Читать книгу No Man's Land - Herman Cyril McNeile - Страница 6

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The French officer in charge was polite, but firmly non-committal.

“There is a train which will leave here about midnight, we hope. If you can get a seat on it—well and good. If not——” he shrugged his shoulders superbly, and the conversation closed.

It was a troop train apparently, and in the course of time it would arrive at Marseilles—perhaps. It would not be comfortable. “Mais, que voulez-vous, M’sieur? c’est la guerre.”

At first he had not been genial; but when he had grasped the fact that mufti invariably cloaked the British officer, en permission, he had become more friendly.

He advised dinner; in these days, as he truly remarked, one never knows. Also, what was England going to do?

“Fight,” Draycott answered promptly, with an assurance he did not feel. “Fight, mon Colonel; ça va sans dire.”

“C’est bien,” he murmured, and stood up. “Vive l’Angleterre.” Gravely he saluted, and Draycott took off his hat.

“Mon Colonel, vive la France.” They shook hands; and having once again solemnly saluted one another, he took the Frenchman’s advice and went in search of dinner.

In the restaurant itself everything seemed normal. To the close observer there was possibly an undue proportion of women who did not eat, but who watched with hungry, loving eyes the men who were with them. Now and again one would look round, and in her face was the pitiful look of the hunted animal; then he would speak, and with a smile on her lips and a jest on her tongue she would cover a heart that seemed like to burst with the agony of it. Inexorably the clock moved on: the finger of fate that was to take him from her. They had quarrelled, sans doute—who has not? there had been days when they had not spoken. He had not been to her all that he might have been, but ... But—he was her man.

And now he was going; in half an hour her Pierre was going to leave her. For him the bustle and glamour of the unknown; for her—the empty chair, the lonely house, and her thoughts. Dear God! but war is a bad thing for the women who stop behind....

And on Draycott’s brain a tableau is stamped indelibly, just a little tableau he saw that night in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon. They came, the three of them, up the flight of steps from the seething station below, into the peace and quiet of the room, and a roar of sound swept in with them as the doors swung open. Threading their way between the tables, they stopped just opposite to where he sat, and instinctively he turned his head away. For her the half-hour was over, her Pierre had gone; and it is not given to a man to look on a woman’s grief save with a catching in the throat and a pricking in the eyes. It is so utterly terrible in its overwhelming agony at the moment, so absolutely final; one feels so helpless.

The little boy clambered on to a chair and sat watching his mother gravely; a grey-haired woman with anxious eyes held one of her hands clasped tight. And the girl—she was just a girl, that’s all—sat dry-eyed and rigid, staring, staring, while every now and then she seemed to whisper something through lips that hardly moved.

“Maman,” a childish voice piped out. “Maman.” He solemnly extended a small and grubby hand towards her.

Slowly her head came round, her eyes took him in—almost uncomprehendingly; she saw the childish face, the little dirty hand, and suddenly there came to her the great gift of the Healer.

“Oh! mon bébé, mon pauv’ p’tit bébé!” She picked him up off the chair and, clutching him in her arms, put her face on his head and sobbed out her heart.

“Come on.” Draycott got up suddenly and turned to the man he was dining with. “Let’s go.” They passed close to the table, and the fat waiter, wiping his eyes on a dinner napkin, and the grey-haired woman leaning gently over her, were talking in low tones. They seemed satisfied as they watched the sobbing girl; and they were people of understanding. “Pauvre petite,” muttered the waiter as they passed. “Mon Dieu! quelle vâche de guerre.”

“My God!” said Draycott, as they went down the steps. “I didn’t realise before what war meant to a woman. And we shall never realise what it means to our own women. We only see them before we go. Never after.”