III.
A PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Through the bars I looked into that little and dirty lane whereby I had entered; in which a sentinel, gun on shoulder, and with a huge revolver strapped at his hip, monotonously moved. On my right was an old wall overwhelmed with moss. A few growths stemmed from its crevices. Their leaves were of a refreshing colour. I felt singularly happy, and carefully throwing myself on the bare planks sang one after another all the French songs which I had picked up in my stay at the ambulance; sang La Madelon, sang AVec avEC DU, and Les Galiots Sont Lourds Dans Sac—concluding with an inspired rendering of La Marseillaise, at which the guard (who had several times stopped his round in what I choose to interpret as astonishment) grounded arms and swore appreciatively. Various officials of the jail passed by me and my lusty songs; I cared no whit. Two or three conferred, pointing in my direction, and I sang a little louder for the benefit of their perplexity. Finally out of voice I stopped.
It was twilight.
As I lay on my back luxuriously, I saw through the bars of my twice padlocked door a boy and a girl about ten years old. I saw them climb on the wall and play together, obliviously and exquisitely, in the darkening air. I watched them for many minutes; till the last moment of light failed; till they and the wall itself dissolved in a common mystery, leaving only the bored silhouette of the soldier moving imperceptibly and wearily against a still more gloomy piece of autumn sky.
At last I knew that I was very thirsty; and leaping up began to clamor at my bars. “Something to drink, please.” After a long debate with the sergeant of guards who said very angrily: “Give it to him,” a guard took my request and disappeared from view, returning with a more heavily armed guard and a tin cup full of water. One of these gentry watched the water and me, while the other wrestled with the padlock. The door being minutely opened, one guard and the water painfully entered. The other guard remained at the door, gun in readiness. The water was set down, and the enterer assumed a perpendicular position which I thought merited recognition; accordingly I said “Merci” politely, without getting up from the planks. Immediately he began to deliver a sharp lecture on the probability of my using the tin cup to saw my way out; and commended haste in no doubtful terms. I smiled, asked pardon for my inherent stupidity (which speech seemed to anger him) and guzzled the so-called water without looking at it, having learned something from Noyon. With a long and dangerous look at their prisoner, the gentlemen of the guard withdrew, using inconceivable caution in the relocking of the door.
I laughed and fell asleep.
After (as I judged) four minutes of slumber, I was awakened by at least six men standing over me. The darkness was intense, it was extraordinarily cold. I glared at them and tried to understand what new crime I had committed. One of the six was repeating: “Get up, you are going away. Four o’clock.” After several attempts I got up. They formed a circle around me; and together we marched a few steps to a sort of storeroom, where my great sack, small sack, and overcoat were handed to me. A rather agreeably voiced guard then handed me a half-cake of chocolate, saying (but with a tolerable grimness): “You’ll need it, believe me.” I found my stick, at which “piece of furniture” they amused themselves a little until I showed its use, by catching the ring at the mouth of my sack in the curved end of the stick and swinging the whole business unaided on my back. Two new guards—or rather gendarmes—were now officially put in charge of my person; and the three of us passed down the lane, much to the interest of the sentinel, to whom I bade a vivid and unreturned adieu. I can see him perfectly as he stares stupidly at us, a queer shape in the gloom, before turning on his heel.
Toward the very station whereat some hours since I had disembarked with the Belgian deserter and my former escorts, we moved. I was stiff with cold and only half awake, but peculiarly thrilled. The gendarmes on either side moved grimly, without speaking; or returning monosyllables to my few questions. Yes, we were to take the train. I was going somewhere, then? “B’en sûr.”—“Where?”—“You will know in time.”
After a few minutes we reached the station, which I failed to recognize. The yellow flares of lamps, huge and formless in the night mist, some figures moving to and fro on a little platform, a rustle of conversation: everything seemed ridiculously suppressed, beautifully abnormal, deliciously insane. Every figure was wrapped with its individual ghostliness; a number of ghosts each out on his own promenade, yet each for some reason selecting this unearthly patch of the world, this putrescent and uneasy gloom. Even my guards talked in whispers. “Watch him, I’ll see about the train.” So one went off into the mist. I leaned dizzily against the wall nearest me (having plumped down my baggage) and stared into the darkness at my elbow, filled with talking shadows. I recognized officiers anglais wandering helplessly up and down, supported with their sticks; French lieutenants talking to each other here and there; the extraordinary sense-bereft station master at a distance looking like a cross between a jumping-jack and a goblin; knots of permissionnaires cursing wearily or joking hopelessly with one another or stalking back and forth with imprecatory gesticulations. “It’s a joke, too, you know, there are no more trains?”—“The conductor is dead. I know his sister.”—“Old chap, I am all in.”—“Say, we are all lost.”—“What time is it?”—“My dear fellow, there is no more time, the French Government forbids it.” Suddenly burst out of the loquacious opacity a dozen handfuls of Algériens, their feet swaggering with fatigue, their eyes burning, apparently by themselves—faceless in the equally black mist. By threes and fives they assaulted the goblin who wailed and shook his withered fist in their faces. There was no train. It had been taken away by the French Government. “How do I know how the poilus can get back to their regiments on time? Of course you’ll all of you be deserters, but is it my fault?” (I thought of my friend, the Belgian, at this moment lying in a pen at the prison which I had just quitted by some miracle.) … One of these fine people from uncivilized, ignorant, unwarlike Algeria was drunk and knew it, as did two of his very fine friends who announced that as there was no train he should have a good sleep at a farmhouse hard by, which farmhouse one of them claimed to espy through the impenetrable night. The drunk was accordingly escorted into the dark, his friends’ abrupt steps correcting his own large slovenly procedure out of earshot…. Some of the Black People sat down near me and smoked. Their enormous faces, wads of vital darkness, swooned with fatigue. Their vast gentle hands lay noisily about their knees.
The departed gendarme returned, with a bump, out of the mist. The train for Paris would arrive de suite. We were just in time, our movement had so far been very creditable. All was well. It was cold, eh?