The Angels of Mons | Page 7

"I didn't know they had such places in France. It's just like Wells. And it might be the other day when I was going past the Swan, just as it might be past that window, and asked the ostler what time it was, and he says, 'What time? Why, summer-time'; and there outside it looks like summer that would last for ever. If this was an inn they ought to call it The Soldiers' Rest."
He dozed off again, and when he opened his eyes once more a kindly looking man in some sort of black robe was standing by him.
"It's all right now, isn't it?" he said, speaking in good English.
"Yes, thank you, sir, as right as can be. I hope to be back again soon."
"Well well; but how did you come here? Where did you get that?" He pointed to the wound on the soldier's forehead.
The soldier put his hand: up to his brow and looked dazed and puzzled.
"Well, sir," he said at last, "it was like this, to begin at the beginning. You know how we came over in August, and there we were in the thick of it, as you might say, in a day or two. An awful time it was, and I don't know how I got through it alive. My best friend was killed dead beside me as we lay in the trenches. By Cambrai, I think it was.
"Then things got a little quieter for a bit, and I was quartered in a village for the best part of a week. She was a very nice lady where I was, and she treated me proper with the best of everything. Her husband he was fighting; but she had the nicest little boy I ever knew, a little fellow of five, or six it might be, and we got on splendid. The amount of their lingo that kid taught me--'We, we' and 'Bong swot' and 'Commong voo potty we' and all--and I taught him English. You should have heard that nipper say ''Arf a mo', old un!' It was a treat.
"Then one day we got surprised. There was about a dozen of us in the village, and two or three hundred Germans came down on us early one morning. They got us; no help for 'it. Before we could shoot.
"Well there we were. They tied our hands behind our backs, and smacked our faces and kicked us a bit, and we were lined up opposite the house where I'd been staying.
"And then that poor little chap broke away from his mother, and he run out and saw one of the Boshes, as we call them, fetch me one over the jaw with his clenched fist. Oh dear! oh dear! he might have done it a dozen times if only that little child hadn't seen him.
"He had a poor bit of a toy I'd bought him at the village shop; a toy gun it was. And out he came running, as I say, Crying out something in French like 'Bad man! bad man! don't hurt my Anglish or I shoot you'; and he pointed that gun at the German soldier. The German, he took his bayonet, and he drove it right through the poor little chap's throat."
The soldier's face worked and twitched and twisted itself into a sort of grin, and he sat grinding his teeth and staring at the man in the black robe. He was silent for a little. And then he found his voice, and the oaths rolled terrible, thundering from him, as he cursed that murderous wretch, and bade him go down and burn for ever in hell. And the tears were raining down his face, and they choked him at last.
"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure," he said, "especially you being a minister of some kind, I suppose; but I can't help it, he was such a dear little man."
The man in black murmured something to himself: "Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors innocentium ejus"--Dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His innocents. Then he put a hand very gently on the soldier's shoulder.
"Never mind," said he; "I've seen some service in my time, myself. But what about that wound?"
"Oh, that; that's nothing. But I'll tell you how I got it. It was just like this. The Germans had us fair, as I tell you, and they shut us up in a barn in the village; just flung us on the ground and left us to starve seemingly. They barred up the big door of the barn, and put a sentry there, and thought we were all right.
"There were sort of slits like very narrow windows in one of the walls, and on the second day it was, I was looking out of these slits down the