In the opposite corner of the compartment Andrews could see Walters
hunched up in an attitude of sleep, with his cap pulled down far over
his eyes. His mouth was open, and his head wagged with the jolting of
the train. The shade over the light plunged the compartment in dark-blue
obscurity, which made the night sky outside the window and the shapes of
trees and houses, evolving and pirouetting as they glided by, seem very
near. Andrews felt no desire to sleep; he had sat a long time leaning
his head against the frame of the window, looking out at the fleeing
shadows and the occasional little red-green lights that darted by and
the glow of the stations that flared for a moment and were lost in dark
silhouettes of unlighted houses and skeleton trees and black hillsides.
He was thinking how all the epochs in his life seemed to have been
marked out by railway rides at night. The jolting rumble of the wheels
made the blood go faster through his veins; made him feel acutely the
clattering of the train along the gleaming rails, spurning fields and
trees and houses, piling up miles and miles between the past and future.
The gusts of cold night air when he opened the window and the faint
whiffs of steam and coal gas that tingled in his nostrils excited him
like a smile on a strange face seen for a moment in a crowded street.
He did not think of what he had left behind. He was straining his eyes
eagerly through the darkness towards the vivid life he was going to
live. Boredom and abasement were over. He was free to work and hear
music and make friends. He drew deep breaths; warm waves of vigor seemed
flowing constantly from his lungs and throat to his finger tips and down
through his body and the muscles of his legs. He looked at his watch:
“One.” In six hours he would be in Paris. For six hours he would sit
there looking out at the fleeting shadows of the countryside, feeling
in his blood the eager throb of the train, rejoicing in every mile the
train carried him away from things past.
Walters still slept, half slipping off the seat, with his mouth open and
his overcoat bundled round his head. Andrews looked out of the window,
feeling in his nostrils the tingle of steam and coal gas. A phrase out
of some translation of the Iliad came to his head: “Ambrosial night,
Night ambrosial unending.” But better than sitting round a camp
fire drinking wine and water and listening to the boastful yarns of
long-haired Achaeans, was this hustling through the countryside away
from the monotonous whine of past unhappiness, towards joyousness and
life.
Andrews began to think of the men he had left behind. They were asleep
at this time of night, in barns and barracks, or else standing on guard
with cold damp feet, and cold hands which the icy rifle barrel burned
when they tended it. He might go far away out of sound of the tramp of
marching, away from the smell of overcrowded barracks where men slept in
rows like cattle, but he would still be one of them. He would not see an
officer pass him without an unconscious movement of servility, he would
not hear a bugle without feeling sick with hatred. If he could only
express these thwarted lives, the miserable dullness of industrialized
slaughter, it might have been almost worth while--for him; for the
others, it would never be worth while. “But you're talking as if you
were out of the woods; you're a soldier still, John Andrews.” The words
formed themselves in his mind as vividly as if he had spoken them. He
smiled bitterly and settled himself again to watch silhouettes of trees
and hedges and houses and hillsides fleeing against the dark sky.
When he awoke the sky was grey. The train was moving slowly, clattering
loudly over switches, through a town of wet slate roofs that rose in
fantastic patterns of shadow above the blue mist. Walters was smoking a
cigarette.
“God! These French trains are rotten,” he said when he noticed that
Andrews was awake. “The most inefficient country I ever was in anyway.”
“Inefficiency be damned,” broke in Andrews, jumping up and stretching
himself. He opened the window. “The heating's too damned efficient.... I
think we're near Paris.”
The cold air, with a flavor of mist in it, poured into the stuffy
compartment. Every breath was joy. Andrews felt a crazy buoyancy
bubbling up in him. The rumbling clatter of the train wheels sang in his
ears. He threw himself on his back on the dusty blue seat and kicked his
heels in the air like a colt.
“Liven up, for God's sake, man,” he shouted. “We're getting near Paris.”
“We are lucky bastards,” said Walters, grinning, with the cigarette
hanging out of the corner of his mouth. “I'm going to see if I can find
the rest of the gang.”
Andrews, alone in the compartment, found himself singing at the top of
his lungs.
As the day brightened the mist lifted off the flat linden-green fields
intersected by rows of leafless poplars. Salmon-colored houses with blue
roofs wore already a faintly citified air. They passed brick-kilns and
clay-quarries, with reddish puddles of water in the bottom of them;
crossed a jade-green river where a long file of canal boats with bright
paint on their prows moved slowly. The engine whistled shrilly. They
clattered through a small freight yard, and rows of suburban houses
began to form, at first chaotically in broad patches of garden-land, and
then in orderly ranks with streets between and shops at the corners. A
dark-grey dripping wall rose up suddenly and blotted out the view. The
train slowed down and went through several stations crowded with people
on their way to work,--ordinary people in varied clothes with only here
and there a blue or khaki uniform. Then there was more dark-grey wall,
and the obscurity of wide bridges under which dusty oil lamps burned
orange and red, making a gleam on the wet wall above them, and where the
wheels clanged loudly. More freight yards and the train pulled slowly
past other trains full of faces and silhouettes of people, to stop
with a jerk in a station. And Andrews was standing on the grey cement
platform, sniffing smells of lumber and merchandise and steam. His
ungainly pack and blanket-roll he carried on his shoulder like a cross.
He had left his rifle and cartridge belt carefully tucked out of sight
under the seat.
Walters and five other men straggled along the platform towards him,
carrying or dragging their packs.
There was a look of apprehension on Walters's face.
“Well, what do we do now?” he said.
“Do!” cried Andrews, and he burst out laughing.
Prostrate bodies in olive drab hid the patch of tender green grass
by the roadside. The company was resting. Chrisfield sat on a stump
morosely whittling at a stick with a pocket knife. Judkins was stretched
out beside him.
“What the hell do they make us do this damn hikin' for, Corp?”
“Guess they're askeered we'll forgit how to walk.”
“Well, ain't it better than loafin' around yer billets all day, thinkin'
an' cursin' an' wishin' ye was home?” spoke up the man who sat the other
side, pounding down the tobacco in his pipe with a thick forefinger.
“It makes me sick, trampin' round this way in ranks all day with the
goddam frawgs starin' at us an'...”
“They're laughin' at us, I bet,” broke in another voice.
“We'll be movin' soon to the Army o' Occupation,” said Chrisfield
cheerfully. “In Germany it'll be a reglar picnic.”
“An' d'you know what that means?” burst out Judkins, sitting bolt
upright. “D'you know how long the troops is goin' to stay in Germany?
Fifteen years.”
“Gawd, they couldn't keep us there that long, man.”
“They can do anythin' they goddam please with us. We're the guys as is
gettin' the raw end of this deal. It ain't the same with an' edicated
guy like Andrews or Sergeant Coffin or them. They can suck around after
'Y' men, an' officers an' get on the inside track, an' all we can do is
stand up an' salute an' say 'Yes, lootenant' an' 'No, lootenant' an' let
'em ride us all they goddam please. Ain't that gospel truth, corporal?”
“Ah guess you're right, Judkie; we gits the raw end of the stick.”
“That damn yellar dawg Andrews goes to Paris an' gets schoolin' free an'
all that.”
“Hell, Andy waren't yellar, Judkins.”
“Well, why did he go bellyachin' around all the time like he knew more'n
the lootenant did?”
“Ah reckon he did,” said Chrisfield.
“Anyway, you can't say that those guys who went to Paris did a goddam
thing more'n any the rest of us did.... Gawd, I ain't even had a leave
yet.”
“Well, it ain't no use crabbin'.”
“No, onct we git home an' folks know the way we've been treated,
there'll be a great ole investigation. I can tell you that,” said one of
the new men.
“It makes you mad, though, to have something like that put over on
ye.... Think of them guys in Paris, havin' a hell of a time with wine
an' women, an' we stay out here an' clean our guns an' drill.... God,
I'd like to get even with some of them guys.”
The whistle blew. The patch of grass became unbroken green again as the
men lined up along the side of the road.
“Fall in!” called the Sergeant.
“Atten-shun!”
“Right dress!”
“Front! God, you guys haven't got no snap in yer.... Stick yer belly in,
you. You know better than to stand like that.”
“Squads, right! March! Hep, hep, hep!”
The Company tramped off along the muddy road. Their steps were all the
same length. Their arms swung in the same rhythm. Their faces were cowed
into the same expression, their thoughts were the same. The tramp, tramp
of their steps died away along the road.
Birds were singing among the budding trees. The young grass by the
roadside kept the marks of the soldiers' bodies.