'Who is your favourite author?'
'Don't know as I have one; gimme any good yarn.'
'What's the best yarn you ever read?'
'I don't often read one.'
'The last you did read?'
Lost in the mists. I set _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ on him, and
saw him well bitten by the book before the afternoon was out or the
bombardment by way of abating. There was no tea-interval on the other
side, that I remember; but we had ours as usual in my room, and it was
either that afternoon or the next that an eminent Oxford professor, out
on a lecturing tour, gave us his company. He was delightfully interested
in the library, and spent most of the afternoon behind the counter,
making out a list of books he talked of sending us, chatting with the
men, and endearing himself to us all. I daresay he was the oldest man
who had ever entered the hut; but I still see him perched on top of our
little home-made step-ladder, in overcoat and muffler and soft felt hat,
while the shells burst nearer, or at any rate made more noise, as the
day drew in. Book in hand, and a kindly, interested, quizzical smile
upon his face, the professor looked either as though he never heard one
of them, or as though he had heard little else all his life. He cheered
one more than the cheeriest soldier, for his was not the insensibility
of usage, but the selfless preoccupation of a lofty soul.
Earlier in the week I had accepted an invitation to dine that evening
with a mess at the other end of the town. It was quite the wrong end for
dinner at such a time; it was the end where the German shells were
feeling about for things worth smashing. They kept skimming across the
streets as I found my way through the dusk, and ours came skimming back;
it was the tennis-court again, but this time one seemed to be crossing
it on gigantic stilts, head and shoulders above the chimney-pots. But
nothing happened. It was a seasoned mess, all padres and doctors, to the
best of my recollection; and they gave one a confidence more welcome
than all their conscious hospitality. I enjoy my evening immensely--as I
look back.
There was a window at each end of the dinner-table. No sooner were we
seated than there occurred outside one of these windows about the
loudest explosion I ever heard. No chair was pushed back, and I am bound
to say that was the end of it; they said it was further off than I can
yet believe. They also seemed to think it was a bomb. There I trusted
they were right. Bombs cannot go on falling on or even about the same
place. But in fifteen minutes to the tick we had the same thing outside
the other window. This time the glass came tinkling down, and it was
thought worth while to inquire whether there were any casualties in the
kitchen. There were none: no doubt some chair _would_ have been pushed
back if the answer had been in the affirmative.
And that was all, except a great deal of shell-talk, and comparison of
hair-breadth escapes, between my two hosts (both of whom had borne
charmed lives--but who has not, out there?) when the rest were gone, and
a shower of stuff in the soft soil of the garden as I was going myself.
Perhaps 'shower' is too strong a word; but one of the many things I can
still hear is the whizz and burial of at least one lethal fragment close
beside us in the dark. The kind pair insisted on walking back with me,
and were strong in their advice to me to seek a cellar for the night.
This being their own intention, and the idea that I found in the mind of
my mate on regaining the Rest Hut, he and I spent the next hour in
transferring our beds and bedding to the dungeon aforesaid, where I for
one slept all the better for the soothing croon of shells high overhead
in waking intervals.
It was officially computed that over eight hundred large shells arrived
in our little town that day, the historic 21st March, 1918.