“I don’t know how all this affects you,” said N., his big chin jutted grimly, “but I hate it worse than a battlefield. Let’s get on over to the Major’s office.”
We went by silent streets, empty except for a few soldierly figures in hard-worn khaki, desolate thoroughfares that led between piles and huge unsightly mounds of fallen masonry and shattered brickwork, fallen beams, broken rafters and twisted ironwork, across a desolate square shut in by the ruin of the great Cloth Hall and other once stately buildings, and so to a grim, battle-scarred edifice, its roof half blown away, its walls cracked and agape with ugly holes, its doorway reinforced by many sandbags cunningly disposed, through which we passed into the dingy office of the Town Major.
As we stood in that gloomy chamber, dim-lighted by a solitary oil lamp, floor and walls shook and quivered to the concussion of a shell—not very near, it is true, but quite near enough.
The Major was a big man, with a dreamy eye, a gentle voice and a passion for archæology. In his company I climbed to the top of a high building, whence he pointed out, through a convenient shell hole, where the old walls had stood long ago, where Vauban’s star-shaped bastions were, and the general conformation of what had been present-day Ypres; but I saw only a dusty chaos of shattered arch and tower and walls, with huge, unsightly mounds of rubble and brick—a rubbish dump in very truth. Therefore I turned to the quiet-voiced Major and asked him of his experiences, whereupon he talked to me most interestingly and very learnedly of Roman tile, of mediæval rubble-work, of herringbone and Flemish bond. He assured me also that (Deo volente) he proposed to write a monograph on the various epochs of this wonderful old town’s history as depicted by its various styles of mason-work and construction.
“I could show you a nearly perfect aqueduct if you have time,” said he.
“I’m afraid we ought to be starting now,” said the Intelligence Officer; “over eighty miles to do yet, you see, Major.”
“Do you have many casualties still?” I enquired.
“Pretty well,” he answered. “The mediæval wall was superimposed upon the Roman, you’ll understand.”
“And is it,” said I as we walked on together, “is it always as noisy as this?”
“Oh, yes—especially when there’s a ‘Hate’ on.”