Further outbuildings stood outside the moat, a few to the north in the smaller pasture behind the house, but a long broad range of cowshed, stable, and hop-press stretched into the ten-acre “home” or “manor” pasture.
Never, since Alva last marched that way, had the old semi-fortress been so packed with humanity. Two companies, which even at their present weakness must have numbered over three hundred men, were getting rid of their arms and equipment and filing round to the north pasture where the cookers flared and smoked, the cooks, demoniac in their blackened faces and clothes, ladled out that standard compost that, at any time before nine in the morning was denominated “coffee,” at any hour before or after noon “soup,” until the end of the day, when, as a last effort, it became “tea.” Derisive shouts of “Gyp-oh!” intended to convey that it was accepted for what it was—yesterday’s bacon grease, hot water and dust from the floor of a lorry—greeted it, as it splashed into the tendered mess-tins of the jostling crowd.
* * * *
Within the house, in the westward of the two principal rooms, Madeleine, with Berthe, most useful of the Belgian refugees about the place, had got her stove nearly red hot, and was silently, deftly handling her pots and dishes, while the mess cooks unpacked the enamelled plates and cups and carried them through to the other room where the table was being set by the simple process of spreading sheets of newspapers upon it and arranging the drinking-cups, knives and forks thereon. Bread being cut, there only remained for “Maddam,” as they called Madeleine, to say that all was ready, so that the brass shell-case in the passage could be used as a gong. The Colonel appeared, and the Adjutant, both regular soldiers, masking whatever they felt under professional passivity. There were no other senior officers; the only surviving Major was with a captainless outlying company. The two companies in the farm were commanded by lieutenants. The junior officers were all Kitchener enlistments. Some of them had hoped to spend that night in Lille.
The conversation was not so brilliant as the meal. In many a worse billet, the Easthamptons looked back to their night at Spanish Farm. Every one was dog tired and bitterly depressed. The Colonel only sat the length of one cigarette. Adams took his food in his “bunk.” The junior officers clattered up the narrow candle-lit stair into the loft where two of them had a bedstead and two others the floor. The Adjutant was left collating facts and figures, with the Doctor, who was going through his stores. To them came the runner from the guard-room (improvised in a tent at the brick-pillared gate of the pasture).
“Reinforcement officers, sir!”
There entered two rather bewildered young men who had passed during the previous forty-eight hours through every emotion from a desperate fear that the “victory” of Loos would end the war without their firing a shot, to sheer annoyance at being dumped at a railhead and told to find a battalion in the dark. They had lost everything they had except what they carried on them, and were desperately hungry.
The Adjutant surprised even himself at the cordial greeting he gave the two strangers—untried officers from a reserve battalion he had never seen. He knew nothing of their history or capabilities, but the sense of more people behind, coming to fill the gaps, warmed even the professional soldier’s trained indifference. He got up, and went to the door of the kitchen, calling for “Maddam” and repeating “Mangay” in a loud voice to indicate that further refreshment was required.
Madeleine had just finished, with Berthe, the washing and cleaning up of her cooking utensils, and was about to go to bed in her little single bedroom that looked out over the northern pasture. She was just as inclined to cook another meal as a person may be, who has already worked eighteen hours and expects to rise at half-past five in the morning. Nor was there anything in the stare of the shorter, fair-haired new arrival, with his stolid silence, to encourage her. But the taller and darker of the two asked her in fair French if she could manage an omelet and some coffee. They regretted deranging her, but had the hunger of a wolf and had not eaten since the morning. Whether it was being addressed in her own tongue, or the fact that the young officer had hit on the things that lay next her hand and would not take five minutes, or whether it was something in the voice, Madeleine acquiesced politely, and set about providing what was asked.