May Margaret stumbled after him down the hill. At the foot, a soldier was waiting; and, hardly conscious of the fact that she had exchanged one guide for another, she found herself plodding silently beside him on her unchanging quest, toward the communication trenches.
"What do they think about things in England, sir?" said her new companion at last, with a curiously suppressed eagerness.
"They are very hopeful," said May Margaret.
"When do they think it will be over?"
"Some of them say in six months."
"Ah, yes. I've been here three years now, and they always say that. At the end of the six months they'll say it again."
It was the first open note of depression that May Margaret had heard. "Do most of the men feel like that?" she said.
"They don't say so, sir, but they all want it to be over." Then he added, with the doggedness of his kind, "Not till we get what we're fighting for, of course. You're a correspondent, sir, aren't you? Well, I never seen the real fax put in the papers yet. There was one of these soldier writers the other day. I saw his book in the Y. M. C. A. hut. He said that the only time he nearly broke his heart was when there was a rumor that Germany was asking for peace before he was able to get into it hisself. That's what I call bloody selfish, sir. All this poytry! (he spat into a shell-hole) making pictures out of it and talking about their own souls. Mind you I'm all for finishing it properly; but it ain't right, the way they look at it. It's like saying they're glad the Belgians had their throats cut because it's taught their own bloody selves the beauty of sacrifice. If what they say is true, why in the hell do they want the war ever to stop at all? P'raps if it went on for ever, we should all of us learn the bloody beauty of it, and keep on learning it till there wasn't any one left. There was a member of Parliament out here the other day. He saw three poor chaps trying to wash in a mine-crater full of muddy water. Covered with lice they was. The paper described it afterwards. The right honorable gentleman laughed 'artily, it said, same as they say about royalty. Always laughing 'artily. P'raps he didn't laugh. I dunno about that. But if he did, I'd like him to 'ave a taste of the fun hisself."
They were entering the long tunnel of the communication-trench now. The soldier went ahead, and May Margaret followed, through smells of earth, and the reek of stale uniforms, for a mile or more, till they came to the alert eyes along the fire-step of the front-line trench.
"Here's Major Hilton, sir." A lean young man with a thin aquiline nose and a face of Indian red approached them, stepping like a cat along the trench.