"For Christ's sake don't bring them here--in the middle of a bombardment!"
"Where's the general?" asked the newcomer.
"Down in the cellar with the other brigadier. They don't ask us down to tea, I notice."
Those last words caused all the officers to laugh--almost excessively. But their laughter ended sharply, and they listened intently as there was a heavy crash outside.
Another officer came up the steps and made a rapid entry into the hall.
"I understand there is to be a conference of battalion commanders," he said, with a queer catch in his breath. "In view of this--er--bombardment, I had better come in later, perhaps?"
"You had better wait," said the brigade major, rather grimly.
A sergeant-major was pacing up and down the passage by the back door. He was calm and stolid. I liked the look of him and found something comforting in his presence, so that I went to have a few words with him.
"How long is this likely to last, Sergeant-major"
"There's no saying, sir. They may be searching for the chateau to pass the time, so to speak, or they may go on till they get it. I'm sorry they caught those gunners. Nice lads, both of them."
He did not seem to be worrying about his own chance.
Then suddenly there was silence. The German guns had switched off. I heard the larks singing through the open doorway, and all the little sounds of a summer day. The group of officers in the hall started chatting more quietly. There was no more need of finding jokes and laughter. They had been reprieved, and could be serious.
"We'd better get forward to Vermelles," said my companion.
As we walked away from the chateau, the brigade major passed us on his horse. He leaned over his saddle toward me and said, "Good day to you, and I hope you'll like Vermelles."
The words were civil, but there was an underlying meaning in them.
We walked down the long straight road toward the ruins of Vermelles with a young soldier-guide who on the outskirts of the village remarked in a casual way:
"No one is allowed along this road in daylight, as a rule. It's under hobservation of the henemy."
"Then why the devil did you come this way?" asked my companion.
"I thought you might prefer the short cut, sir."
We explored the ruins of Vermelles, where many young Frenchmen had fallen in fighting through the walls and gardens. One could see the track of their strife, in trampled bushes and broken walls. Bits of red rag--the red pantaloons of the first French soldiers--were still fastened to brambles and barbed wire. Broken rifles, cartouches, water-bottles, torn letters, twisted bayonets, and German stick-bombs littered the ditches which had been dug as trenches across streets of burned-out houses.