Fitzgerald got to his feet and entered an outer room. There he found a copy of an English magazine lying on a chair. He picked it up and presently was deep in an article which tried to prove that war would be a thing of the past if Prussia ceased to exist. When he had finished reading he came back to the man by the stove and found him sitting there all alone, his eyes fixed on the flames. Benners was not there, he had left, accompanied by Spudhole and the sergeant. The farm in which their company was billeted was some two miles off.
Fitzgerald looked at his watch and saw that it was nine o'clock.
"Nine o'clock," he said aloud, and something familiar in the words struck him. Two soldiers left the wine shop the night previous at nine o'clock and next morning they were discovered lying in a ruined cottage with their throats cut. None of the men now in the inn were billeted at Y—— Farm. Fitzgerald had to go home alone. He swung his bandolier over his shoulder, lifted his rifle from the table and went out into the night. The story which Jean Lacroix had told affected Fitzgerald strongly. A stranger in a new locality he was ready to give credence to any tale.
Fitzgerald had seen very little of trench warfare. True, he had come out to France with his regiment in March of 1915 but then he got wounded on his first journey to the trenches and was sent back to England. He came out again in time to take part in the battle of Loos and got gassed in the charge. Followed a few weeks in the hospital at Versailles and then he was sent back to the trenches. He had seen a fortnight's trench warfare, done turns in listening patrol and sentry-go, before coming back with his battalion to Y—— Farm near the town of Cassel. So now, although first battalion man, he was in many ways a "rooky," one who was not as yet versed in the practices of modern warfare. Now, on the way back to his billet he thought of Jean Lacroix's story and a strange fit of nervousness laid hold of him. What might happen in the darkness he could not tell, and he wished that his mates had not gone leaving him to come back alone. They ought to have looked him up. He was annoyed with them. He was angry.
The road stretched out in front a dull streak of grey, lined with ghostly poplars, that lost itself in the darkness ahead. The night was gloomy and chilly, a low weird wind crooned in the grass and a belated night-bird shrieked painfully in the sky above. Far out in front the carnage was in full swing, the red fury of war lit the line of battle and darts of flame, ghastly red, pierced the clouds in a hasty succession of short vicious stabs. Round Fitzgerald was the flat dead country, black and limitless, and over it from time to time swift flashes of light would rise and tremble in the gloom like will-o'-the-wisps over a churchyard. The sharp penetrating odour of dung was in the air, the night-breath of the low-lying land of Flanders.
The shadows gathered round the man silently. One rushed in from the fields and took on an almost definite form on the roadway in front. He could not help gazing round from time to time and staring back along the road. What might be following! He was all alone, apart from his kind, isolated. One hand gripped tightly on his rifle and the fingers of the other fumbled at his bandolier. He ran his hand over the cartridges, counting them aloud. Fifty rounds. But he had none in the magazine of his rifle. He should have five there. But he would not put them in now. He would make too much noise.
He walked at a good steady pace; and hummed a tune under his breath, trying thus to keep down any disposition to shiver. His eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness could now take stock of the roadway, the grassy verge and the ditch on either side. The poplars rose high and became one with the sombre darkness of the sky. Shadows lurked in the ditches, bundled together and plotting some mischief towards him. His imagination conceived ghastly pictures of men lying flat in the shadows staring at the heavens with glazed, unseeing eyes, their throats cut across from ear to ear.... What a row his footsteps created! The noise he kicked up must have echoed across the world. He hummed a tune viciously and stared intensely into the remoter darkness of the unknown.
The breeze whimpered amidst the poplar leaves and its sigh was carried ever so far away. Again a shadow swept up from the fields and took shape on the road in front. Fitzgerald advanced towards it quickly and collided with a solid mass, a living form.
"I am sorry," he muttered.
"Good evening," said a voice with a queer strange note in it. "You are out late."