We sat a minute or two longer and nothing was said.
“Well,” he said at length, “if you've had enough of this we'll be getting back. It isn't very much of a show, once a fellow gets used to it, and I guess the major will have supper ready for us pretty soon. Ready to go?”
We got up cautiously and put our helmets on the proper ends of us and started back through the shallow communication trench leading to the village.
“Being where you can look right across and down into the German lines makes a fellow wonder,” I suggested. “It makes a fellow wonder what those men over yonder are thinking about and what their feelings toward us are, and whether they hate us as deeply as they hate the British'.”
“I guess I can figure out what one of them thinks anyhow,” he said with a quizzical side-wise glance at me. He flirted over his shoulder with his thumb. “I've got a brother somewhere over yonder ways—if he's alive.” He smiled at the look that must have come across my face. “Oh, you needn't suspect me,” he went on. “I judge I'm as good an American as you are or any man alive is, even if I do wear a German name. You see I'm a youngest son. I was born in the good old U. S. A. all right enough, but two of my brothers, older than I am, were born in Germany, and they didn't come to America when the rest of the family migrated. And one of them, last time I heard from him before we got into the mess, was a lieutenant in a Bavarian field battery. Being a German subject I suppose he figures he's only doing his duty, but how he can go on fighting for that swine of a Kaiser beats me. But then, I don't suppose I can understand; I'm an American citizen. Funny world, isn't it?
“Say, listen! That cuckoo is calling again. I wonder if there is anything in the superstition of the French peasants that peace will come this year. Well, so far as I am concerned I don't want it to come until Uncle Sam has finished up this job in the right way. I only hope the next time I hear the cuckoo sing it'll be in the outskirts of Berlin—that is, providing a cuckoo can stand for the outskirts of Berlin.”
I reminded him that the cuckoo was a bird that stole other bird's nests—or tried to.
“That being so, I guess Berlin must be full of 'em,” said he.
The major's headquarters—he was a major of artillery—was in the chief house of the little town. Curiously enough this was almost the only house in the town that had not been hit, and two days later it was hit, and in the ruins of it a friend of mine, another major, was crushed; but that is a different story, not to be detailed here. It stood—the house, I mean—in a little square courtyard of its own, as most village houses in this part of France do, being flanked on one side by its stable and on the other side by its cow barn and by its chicken houses. There was a high wall to inclose it along the side nearest the street, with rabbit hutches and pigeon cots tucked up under the wall. In the centre of the court was a midden for manure. It had been a cosy little place once. The dwelling was of red brick with a gay tiled roof, and the lesser buildings and the wall were built of stones, as is the French way. Even the rabbit hutches were stone, and the dovecot and the cuddy for the fowls. Now, except for American artillerymen, it was all empty of life. The paved yard was littered with wreckage; the doors of the empty cubicles stood open.
I sat with the major and his adjutant on the doorstep of the cottage waiting for the orderlies to call us in to eat our suppers. Through the lolled gate in the wall an old man, a civilian, entered. He was tall and lean like one of the lombard trees growing in the spoiled vegetable garden at the back of the house, and he was dressed in a long frock coat that was all powdered with a white dust of the roads. He had a grave long face, and we saw that he limped a little as he came across the close toward us. Nearing us he took off his hat and bowed.