Mr. Standfast
a Welsh college—a dangerous fellow, for he was an upright, high-minded,
raging fanatic. Against Gresson they had no evidence at all, but he was
kept under strict observation. When I asked about his crossing to
France, Macgillivray replied that that was part of their scheme. I
inquired if the visit had given them any clues, but I never got an
answer, for the line had to be cleared at that moment for the War
Office.
I hunted up the man who had charge of these Labour visits, and made
friends with him. Gresson, he said, had been a quiet, well-mannered,
and most appreciative guest. He had wept tears on Vimy Ridge,
and—strictly against orders—had made a speech to some troops he met on
the Arras road about how British Labour was remembering the Army in its
prayers and sweating blood to make guns. On the last day he had had a
misadventure, for he got very sick on the road—some kidney trouble that
couldn’t stand the jolting of the car—and had to be left at a village
and picked up by the party on its way back. They found him better, but
still shaky. I cross-examined the particular officer in charge about
that halt, and learned that Gresson had been left alone in a peasant’s
cottage, for he said he only needed to lie down. The place was the
hamlet of Eaucourt Sainte-Anne.
For several weeks that name stuck in my head. It had a pleasant, quaint
sound, and I wondered how Gresson had spent his hours there. I hunted
it up on the map, and promised myself to have a look at it the next
time we came out to rest. And then I forgot about it till I heard the
name mentioned again.
On 23rd October I had the bad luck, during a tour of my first-line
trenches, to stop a small shell-fragment with my head. It was a close,
misty day and I had taken off my tin hat to wipe my brow when the thing
happened. I got a long, shallow scalp wound which meant nothing but
bled a lot, and, as we were not in for any big move, the M.O. sent me
back to a clearing station to have it seen to. I was three days in the
place and, being perfectly well, had leisure to look about me and
reflect, so that I recall that time as a queer, restful interlude in
the infernal racket of war. I remember yet how on my last night there a
gale made the lamps swing and flicker, and turned the grey-green canvas
walls into a mass of mottled shadows. The floor canvas was muddy from
the tramping of many feet bringing in the constant dribble of
casualties from the line. In my tent there was no one very bad at the
time, except a boy with his shoulder half-blown off by a whizz-bang,
who lay in a drugged sleep at the far end. The majority were influenza,
bronchitis, and trench-fever—waiting to be moved to the base, or
convalescent and about to return to their units.
A small group of us dined off tinned chicken, stewed fruit, and ration
cheese round the smoky stove, where two screens manufactured from
packing cases gave some protection against the draughts which swept
like young tornadoes down the tent. One man had been reading a book
called the _Ghost Stories of an Antiquary_, and the talk turned on the
unexplainable things that happen to everybody once or twice in a
lifetime. I contributed a yarn about the men who went to look for
Kruger’s treasure in the bushveld and got scared by a green
wildebeeste. It is a good yarn and I’ll write it down some day. A tall
Highlander, who kept his slippered feet on the top of the stove, and
whose costume consisted of a kilt, a British warm, a grey hospital
dressing-gown, and four pairs of socks, told the story of the Camerons
at First Ypres, and of the Lowland subaltern who knew no Gaelic and
suddenly found himself encouraging his men with some ancient Highland
rigmarole. The poor chap had a racking bronchial cough, which suggested
that his country might well use him on some warmer battle-ground than
Flanders. He seemed a bit of a scholar and explained the Cameron
business in a lot of long words.
I remember how the talk meandered on as talk does when men are idle and
thinking about the next day. I didn’t pay much attention, for I was
reflecting on a change I meant to make in one of my battalion commands,
when a fresh voice broke in. It belonged to a Canadian captain from
Winnipeg, a very silent fellow who smoked shag tobacco.
“There’s a lot of ghosts in this darned country,” he said.
Then he started to tell about what happened to him when his division
was last back in rest billets. He had a staff job and put up with the
divisional command at an old French château. They had only a little bit
of the house; the rest was shut up, but the passages were so tortuous
that it was difficult to keep from wandering into the unoccupied part.
One night, he said, he woke with a mighty thirst, and, since he wasn’t
going to get cholera by drinking the local water in his bedroom, he
started out for the room they messed in to try to pick up a
whisky-and-soda. He couldn’t find it, though he knew the road like his
own name. He admitted he might have taken a wrong turning, but he
didn’t think so. Anyway he landed in a passage which he had never seen
before, and, since he had no candle, he tried to retrace his steps.
Again he went wrong, and groped on till he saw a faint light which he
thought must be the room of the G.S.O., a good fellow and a friend of
his. So he barged in, and found a big, dim salon with two figures in it
and a lamp burning between them, and a queer, unpleasant smell about.
He took a step forward, and then he saw that the figures had no faces.
That fairly loosened his joints with fear, and he gave a cry. One of
the two ran towards him, the lamp went out, and the sickly scent caught
suddenly at his throat. After that he knew nothing till he awoke in his
own bed next morning with a splitting headache. He said he got the
General’s permission and went over all the unoccupied part of the
house, but he couldn’t find the room. Dust lay thick on everything, and
there was no sign of recent human presence.
I give the story as he told it in his drawling voice. “I reckon that
was the genuine article in ghosts. You don’t believe me and conclude I
was drunk? I wasn’t. There isn’t any drink concocted yet that could lay
me out like that. I just struck a crack in the old universe and pushed
my head outside. It may happen to you boys any day.”
The Highlander began to argue with him, and I lost interest in the
talk. But one phrase brought me to attention. “I’ll give you the name
of the darned place, and next time you’re around you can do a bit of
prospecting for yourself. It’s called the Château of Eaucourt
Sainte-Anne, about seven kilometres from Douvecourt. If I was
purchasing real estate in this country I guess I’d give that location a
miss.”
After that I had a grim month, what with the finish of Third Ypres and
the hustles to Cambrai. By the middle of December we had shaken down a
bit, but the line my division held was not of our choosing, and we had
to keep a wary eye on the Boche doings. It was a weary job, and I had
no time to think of anything but the military kind of
intelligence—fixing the units against us from prisoners’ stories,
organizing small raids, and keeping the Royal Flying Corps busy. I was
keen about the last, and I made several trips myself over the lines
with Archie Roylance, who had got his heart’s desire and by good luck
belonged to the squadron just behind me. I said as little as possible
about this, for G.H.Q. did not encourage divisional generals to
practise such methods, though there was one famous army commander who
made a hobby of them. It was on one of these trips that an incident
occurred which brought my spell of waiting on the bigger game to an
end.
One dull December day, just after luncheon, Archie and I set out to
reconnoitre. You know the way that fogs in Picardy seem suddenly to
reek out of the ground and envelop the slopes like a shawl. That was
our luck this time. We had crossed the lines, flying very high, and
received the usual salute of Hun Archies. After a mile or two the
ground seemed to climb up to us, though we hadn’t descended, and
presently we were in the heart of a cold, clinging mist. We dived for
several thousand feet, but the confounded thing grew thicker and no
sort of landmark could be found anywhere. I thought if we went on at
this rate we should hit a tree or a church steeple and be easy fruit
for the enemy.
The same thought must have been in Archie’s mind, for he climbed again.
We got into a mortally cold zone, but the air was no clearer. Thereupon
he decided to head for home, and passed me word to work out a compass
course on the map. That was easier said than done, but I had a rough
notion of the rate we had travelled since we had crossed the lines and
I knew our original direction, so I did the best I could. On we went
for a bit, and then I began to get doubtful. So did Archie. We dropped
low down, but we could hear none of the row that’s always going on for
a mile on each side of the lines. The world was very eerie and deadly
still, so still that Archie and I could talk through the speaking-tube.
“We’ve mislaid this blamed battle,” he shouted.
“I think your rotten old compass has soured on us,” I replied.
We decided that it wouldn’t do to change direction, so we held on the
same course. I was getting as nervous as a kitten, chiefly owing to the
silence. It’s not what you expect in the middle of a battle-field.... I
looked at the compass carefully and saw that it was really crocked.
Archie must have damaged it on a former flight and forgotten to have it
changed.
He had a very scared face when I pointed this out.
“Great God!” he croaked—for he had a fearsome cold—“we’re either about
Calais or near Paris or miles the wrong side of the Boche line. What
the devil are we to do?”
And then to put the lid on it his engine went wrong. It was the same
performance as on the Yorkshire moors, and seemed to be a speciality of
the Shark-Gladas type. But this time the end came quick. We dived
steeply, and I could see by Archie’s grip on the stick that he was
going to have his work cut out to save our necks. Save them he did, but
not by much for we jolted down on the edge of a ploughed field with a
series of bumps that shook the teeth in my head. It was the same dense,
dripping fog, and we crawled out of the old bus and bolted for cover
like two ferreted rabbits.
Our refuge was the lee of a small copse.
“It’s my opinion,” said Archie solemnly, “that we’re somewhere about La
Cateau. Tim Wilbraham got left there in the Retreat, and it took him
nine months to make the Dutch frontier. It’s a giddy prospect, sir.”
I sallied out to reconnoitre. At the other side of the wood was a
highway, and the fog so blanketed sound that I could not hear a man on
it till I saw his face. The first one I saw made me lie flat in the
covert.... For he was a German soldier, field-grey, forage cap, red
band and all, and he had a pick on his shoulder.
A second’s reflection showed me that this was not final proof. He might
be one of our prisoners. But it was no place to take chances. I went
back to Archie, and the pair of us crossed the ploughed field and
struck the road farther on. There we saw a farmer’s cart with a woman
and child in it. They looked French, but melancholy, just what you
would expect from the inhabitants of a countryside in enemy occupation.
Then we came to the park wall of a great house, and saw dimly the
outlines of a cottage. Here sooner or later we would get proof of our
whereabouts, so we lay and shivered among the poplars of the roadside.
No one seemed abroad that afternoon. For a quarter of an hour it was as
quiet as the grave. Then came a sound of whistling, and muffled steps.
“That’s an Englishman,” said Archie joyfully. “No Boche could make such