'I should like to die to music like that,' said Elise, almost to herself.
II.
Close by a communication-trench, Dick Durwent stood shivering in the cool night-air. He was waiting to go forward on sentry-duty, the remainder of the relief having gathered at the other end of the reserve-trench in which he was standing; but though it was spring, there was a chill and a dampness in the air that seemed to breathe from the pores of the mutilated earth. A desultory shelling was going on, but for a week past a comparative calm had succeeded the hideous nightmare of March and early April, when Germany had so nearly swept the board clean of stakes.
He heard the voices of a carrying-party coming up, and suddenly he crouched low. There was a horrible whine, growing to a shriek—and a shell burst a few yards away. Shaken and almost deafened, Durwent remained where he was until he saw an object roll nearly to his feet. It was a jar of rum that was being brought up for issue. He lifted the thing up, and again he shivered in the raw air like one sickening of the ague. Quick as the thought itself, he put the jar down, and seizing his water-bottle, emptied its contents on the ground. Kneeling down, he filled it with rum, and leaving the jar lying at such an angle that it would appear to have spilled a certain amount, he hurriedly joined the rest of the relief warned for duty.
Dick had been on guard in the front line for an hour, when he received word that a patrol was going out. A moment later they passed him, an officer and two men, and he saw them quietly climb over the parapet which had been hastily improvised when the battalion took over the position. They had been gone only a couple of minutes when pistol-shots rang out, and the flares thrown up revealed a shadowy fight between two patrols that had met in the dark. The firing stopped, and Durwent's eyes, staring into the blackness, saw two men crouching low and dragging something after them. He challenged, to find that it was the patrol returning, and that the one they were bringing back was the officer, killed.
The trench was so narrow that they could not carry him back, and they left the body lying on the parapet until a stretcher could be fetched.
Dulled as he had become to terrible sights, the horror of that silent, grotesque figure began to freeze Dick Durwent's blood. A few minutes before it had been a thing of life. It had loved and hated and laughed; its veins had coursed with the warm blood of youth; and there it sprawled, a ghastly jumble of arms and legs—motionless, silent, dead. He tried to keep his eyes turned away, but it haunted him. When he stared straight ahead into the dark it beckoned to him—he could see the fingers twitching! And not till he crept near could he be satisfied that, after all, it had not moved.
'Sherwood!' He heard a quivering voice to his right. It was the nearest sentry, an eighteen-year-old boy, who had called him by the name given him by Austin Selwyn, the name under which he had enlisted.
'What's the matter?' called Durwent.
Without his rifle, the little chap stumbled towards him, and, dark as it was, Dick could see that his face was livid and his eyes were wide with terror.