Part 31 (1/2)

Suddenly it struck me that hardly a foot of the plaster interior of that room was whole. The ceiling was riddled. So were the walls.

”Shrapnel,” said the major, following my gaze. ”It gets worse every day.”

”I think the ceiling is going to fall,” said one of the hostesses.

True enough, there was a great bulge in the centre. But it held for that night. It may be holding now.

Everybody took a hand at clearing the table. The lamp was burning low, and they filled it without putting it out. One of the things that I have always been taught is never to fill a lighted lamp. I explained this to them carefully. But they were quite calm. It seems at the front one does a great many extraordinary things. It is part and parcel of that utter indifference to danger that comes with war.

Now appeared the chauffeur, who brought the information that the car had been dragged out of the mud and towed as far as the house.

”Towed?” I said blankly.

”Towed, madame. There is no more petrol.”

The major suggested that we kill him at once. But he was a perfectly good chauffeur and young. Also it developed that he had not sat on my hat. So we let him live.

”Never mind,” said Miss C----; ”we can give you the chauffeur's bed and he can go somewhere else.”

But after a time I decided that I would rather walk back than stay overnight in that house. For the major explained that at eleven o'clock the batteries behind the town would bombard the German trenches and the road behind them, along which they had information that an ammunition train would pa.s.s.

”Another night in the cellar!” said some one. ”That means no one will need any beds, for there will be a return fire, of course.”

”Is there no petrol to be had?” I inquired anxiously.

”None whatever.”

None, of course. There had been shops in the town, and presumably petrol and other things. But now there was nothing but ruined walls and piles of brick and mortar. However, there was a cellar.

My feet were swollen and painful, for the walk had been one long agony. I was chilled, too, from my wetting, in spite of the fire. I sat by the tiny stove and tried to forget the prospect of a night in the cellar, tried to ignore the pieces of sh.e.l.l and shrapnel cases lined up on the mantelpiece, sh.e.l.ls and shrapnel that had entered the house and destroyed it.

The men smoked and talked. An officer came up from the trenches to smoke his after-dinner pipe, a bearded individual, who apologised for his muddy condition. He and the major played a duet. They made a great fuss about their preparation for it. The stool must be so, the top of the cracked piano raised. They turned and bowed to us profoundly. Then sat down and played--CHOP STICKS!

But that was only the beginning. For both of them were accomplished musicians. The major played divinely. He played a Rhapsodie Hongroise, the Moonlight Sonata, one of the movements of the Sonata Appa.s.sionata.

He played without notes, a bulldog pipe gripped firmly in his teeth, blue clouds encircling his fair hair. Gone was the reckless soldier who would have taken his life in his hands for the whim of bringing in a German sentry. Instead there was a Belgian whose ruined country lay behind him, whose people lay dead in thousands of hideous graves, whose heart was torn and aching with the things that it knew and buried. We sat silent. His pipe died in his mouth; his eyes, fixed on the sh.e.l.l-riddled wall, grew sombre. When the music ceased his hands still lay lingeringly on the keys. And, beyond the foot of the street, the ominous guns of the army that had ruined his country crashed steadily.

We were rather subdued when the music died away. But he evidently regretted having put a weight on the spirits of the party. He rose and brought me a charming little water-colour sketch he had made of the bit of No Man's Land in front of his trench, with the German line beyond it.

”By the way,” he said in his exact English, ”I went to art school in Dresden with an American named Reinhart. Afterward he became a great painter--Charles Stanley Reinhart. Is he by any chance a relative?”

”Charles Stanley Reinhart is dead,” I said. ”He was a Pittsburgher, too, but the two families are connected only by marriage.”

”Dead! So he is dead too! Everybody is dead. He--he was a very nice boy.”

Suddenly he stood up and stretched his long arms.

”It was a long time ago,” he said. ”Now I go for the sentry.”

They caught him at the door, however, and brought him back.

”But it is so simple,” he protested. ”No one is hurt. And the American lady--”