at all. He tucked his napkin into the top of his vest and took up the soup ladle (the tureen sat between them in the center of the table) and offered it to the other. “Faites-moi Thonneur, monsieur,” he said. The other bowed stiffly, accepting the ladle. The small man lifted the cover from the tureen. “Vous venez examiner ce scene de nos victoires, monsieur?” he said, helping himself in turn. The other looked at him. “Monsieur l’Anglais a peut-etre beaucoup des amis qui sont tombes en voisinage.”
“I speak no French,” the other said, eating.
The little man did not eat. He held his yet unwetted spoon above his bowl. “What agreeable for me. I speak the Engleesh. I am Suisse, me. I speak all langue.” The other did not reply. He ate steadily, not fast. “You ave return to see the grave of your galant countreemans, eh? You ave son here, perhaps, eh?”
“No,” the other said. He did not cease to eat.
“No?” The other finished his soup and set the bowl aside.
He drank some wine. “What deplorable, that man who ave,” the Swiss said. “But it is finish now. Not?” Again the other said nothing. He was not looking at the Swiss. He did not seem to be looking at anything, with his gaunt eyes, his rigid moustaches upon his rigid face. “Me, I suffer too. All suffer. But I tell myself, What would you? It is war.”
Still the other did not answer. He ate steadily, deliberately, and finished his meal and rose and left the room. He lit his candle at the bar, where the host, leaning beside a second man in a corduroy coat, lifted a glass slightly to him. “Au bon dormir, monsieur,” the host said.
The traveler looked at the host, his face gaunt in the candle, his waxed moustaches rigid, his eyes in shadow.
“What?” he said. “Yes. Yes.” He turned and went toward the stairs. The two men at the bar watched him, his stiff, deliberate back.
Ever since the train left Arras, the two women had been watching the other occupant of the carriage. It was a third-class carriage because no first-class trains ran on this line, and they sat with their shawled heads and the thick, still hands of peasants folded upon closed baskets on their laps, watching the man sitting opposite them the white distinction of the hair against the bronze, gaunt face, the needles of the moustaches, the foreign-made suit and the stick on a worn and greasy wooden seat, looking out the window. At first they had just looked, ready to avert their gaze, but as the man did not seem to be aware of them, they began to whisper quietly to one another behind their hands. But the man did not seem to notice this, so they soon were talking in undertone, watching with bright, alert, curious eyes the stiff, incongruous figure leaning a little forward on the stick, looking out a foul window beyond which there was nothing to see save an occasional shattered road and man-high stump of shattered tree breaking small patches of tilled land whorled with apparent unreason about islands of earth indicated by low signboards painted red, the islands inscrutable, desolate above the destruction which they wombed. Then the train, slowing, ran suddenly among tumbled brick, out of which rose a small house of corrugated iron bearing a name in big letters; they watched the man lean forward.
“See!” one of the women said. “His mouth. He is reading the name. What did I tell you? It is as I said. His son fell here.”
“Then he had lots of sons,” the other woman said. “He has read the name each time since we left Arras. Eh! Eh! Him a son? That cold?”
“They do get children, though.”
“That is why they drink whisky. Otherwise…”
“That’s so. They think of nothing save money and eating, the English.”
Presently they got out; the train went on. Then others entered the carriage, other peasants with muddy boots, carrying baskets or live or dead beasts; they in turn watched the rigid, motionless figure leaning at the window while the train ran across the ruined land and past the brick or iron stations among the tumbled ruins, watching his lips move as he read the names. “Let him look at the war, about which he has apparently heard at last,” they told one another. “Then he can go home. It was not in his barnyard that it was fought.”
“Nor in his house,” a woman said.
II
THE BATTALION stands at ease in the rain. It has been in rest billets two days, equipment has been replaced and cleaned, vacancies have been filled and the ranks closed up, and it now stands at ease with the stupid docility of sheep in the ceaseless rain, facing the streaming shape of the sergeant-major.
Presently the colonel emerges from a door across the square. He stands in the door a moment, fastening his trench coat, then, followed by two A. D. C’s, he steps gingerly into the mud in polished boots and approaches.
“Para-a-a-de ’Shun!” the sergeant-major shouts. The battalion clashes, a single muffled, sullen sound. The sergeant-major turns, takes a pace toward the officers, and salutes, his stick beneath his armpit. The colonel jerks his stick toward his cap peak.
“Stand at ease, men,” he says. Again the battalion clashes, a single sluggish, trickling sound. The officers approach the guide file of the first platoon, the sergeant-major falling in behind the last officer. The sergeant of the first platoon takes a pace forward and salutes. The colonel does not respond at all. The sergeant falls in behind the sergeant-major, and the five of them pass down the company front, staring in turn at each rigid, forward-staring face as they pass it. First Company.
The sergeant salutes the colonel’s back and returns to his original position and comes to attention. The sergeant of the second company has stepped forward, saluted, is ignored, and falls in behind the sergeant-major, and they pass down the second company front. The colonel’s trench coat sheathes water onto his polished boots. Mud from the earth creeps up his boots and meets the water and is channelled by the water as the mud creeps up the polished boots again.
Third Company. The colonel stops before a soldier, his trench coat hunched about his shoulders where the rain trickles from the back of his cap, so that he looks somehow like a choleric and outraged bird. The other two officers, the sergeant-major and the sergeant halt in turn, and the five of them glare at the five soldiers whom they are facing. The five soldiers stare rigid and unwinking straight before them, their faces like wooden faces, their eyes like wooden eyes.
“Sergeant,” the colonel says in his pettish voice, “has this man shaved today?”
“Sir!” the sergeant says in a ringing voice; the sergeant-major says: “Did this man shave today, Sergeant?” and all five of them glare now at the soldier, whose rigid gaze seems to pass through and beyond them, as if they were not there. “Take a pace forward when you speak in ranks!” the sergeant-major says.
The soldier, who has not spoken, steps out of ranks, splashing a jet of mud yet higher up the colonel’s boots.
“What is your name?” the colonel says.
“024I86. Gray,” the soldier raps out glibly. The company, the battalion, stares straight ahead.
“Sir!” the sergeant-major thunders.
“Sir-r,” the soldier says.
“Did you shave this morning?” the colonel says.
“Nae, sir-r.”
“Why not?”
“A dinna shave, sir-r.”
“You don’t shave?”
“A am nae auld enough tae shave.”
“Sir!” the sergeant-major thunders.
“Sir-r,” the soldier says.
“You are not…” The colonel’s voice dies somewhere behind his choleric glare, the trickling water from his cap peak. “Take his name, Sergeant-major,” he says, passing on.
The battalion stares rigidly ahead. Presently it sees the colonel, the two officers and the sergeant-major reappear in single file. At the proper place the sergeant-major halts and salutes the colonel’s back. The colonel
