The Roll-Call - Arnold Bennett (top ten books to read TXT) 📗

by saying sternly: "You've got exactly the right tone with the men. Don't you go trying to alter it." The general excitement was intense, and the solemn synchronizing of watches increased it further. An orderly brought a newspaper, and nobody would do more than disdainfully glance at it. The usual daily stuff about the war!... Whereas Epsom Downs glittered in the imagination like a Canaan. And it lay southward. Probably they were not going to France, but probably they would have the honour of defending the coast against invasion. George desired to master gunnery instantly, and Resmith soothed him with the assurance that he would soon be sent away on a gunnery course, which would give him beans. And in the meantime George might whet his teeth on the detailed arrangements for feeding and camping the Battery on Epsom Downs. This organization gave George pause, especially when he remembered that the Battery was a very trifling item in the Division, and when Resmith casually informed him that a Division on the trek occupied fifteen miles of road. He began to perceive the difference between the Army and a circus, and to figure the Staff as something other than a club of haughty, aristocratic idlers in red hats. And when the Battery was fairly under way in the side-road, with another Battery in front and another Battery behind, and more Artillery Brigades and uncounted Infantry Brigades and a screen of Yeomanry all invisibly marching over the map in the direction of Epsom, and bound to reach a certain lettered square on the map at a certain minute--when this dynamic situation presented itself to the tentacles of his grasping mind, he really did feel that there could be no game equal to war.

The Battery 'rode easy,' the men were smoking, talking, and singing in snatches, when suddenly all sounds were silenced. Captain Resmith, who had been summoned to the Major, reined in his horse, and George did likewise, and the Battery passed by them on the left. The Major's voice was heard:

"No. 2 Battery. Eyes--_right_!"

George asked:

"What's this?"

"C.R.A.'s ahead," murmured Resmith.

Then another officer cried:

"Right section. Eyes--_right_."

And then an N.C.O. bawled:

"A sub-section. Eyes--_right_."

Then only did George, from the rear, see the drivers, with a simultaneous gesture, twist their heads very sharply to the right, raise their whips, and fling the thongs over the withers of the hand-horses, while the section-officer saluted.

Another N.C.O. bawled:

"B sub-section. Eyes--_right_."

And the same action followed.

Then another officer cried:

"Left section. Eyes--_right_."

So the rite proceeded.

Resmith and George had now gone back to their proper places. George could see the drivers of the last gun gathering up the whip thongs into their hands preparatory to the salute. C sub-section received the command.

And then, not many yards ahead, the voice of an N.C.O.:

"D sub-section. Eyes--_right_."

Heads turned; whips were raised and flung outwards; horses swerved slightly.

"Get ready," muttered Resmith to George.

The figure of the C.R.A., Brigadier-General Rannion, motionless on a charger, came into view. George's heart was beating high. Resmith and he saluted. The General gazed hard at him and never moved. They passed ahead.

The officer commanding the Third Battery had already called:

"Battery. _Eyes--right."_

The marvellous ceremonial slipped rearwards. George was aware of tears in his eyes. He was aware of the sentiment of worship. He felt that he would have done anything, accomplished any deed, died, at the bidding of the motionless figure on the charger. It was most curious.

There was a terrific crash of wood far behind. Resmith chuckled.

"One of those G.S. wagons has knocked down the Automobile Club 'Cross-Roads' sign," he said. "Good thing it wasn't a lamp-post! You see, with their eyes right, they can't look where they're going, and the whip touches up the horses, and before you can say knife they're into something. Jolly glad it's only the Am. Col. Jones will hear of this." He chuckled again. Jones was the Captain commanding the Ammunition Column.

The order ran down the line:

"Eyes--_front_."

Soon afterwards they came to some policemen, and two girls in very gay frocks with bicycles, and the cross-roads. The Battery swung into the great high road whose sign-post said, 'To Ewell and Epsom.' Another unit had been halted to let the Artillery pass into its definitive place in the vast trek. It was about this time that George began to notice the dust. Rain had fallen before dawn and made the roads perfect; but now either all the moisture had evaporated in the blazing sun, or the Battery had reached a zone where rain had not fallen. At first the dust rose only in a shallow sea to the height of fetlocks; but gradually it ascended and made clouds, and deposited a layer on the face and on the tongue and in the throat. And the surface itself of the road, exasperated by innumerable hoofs and wheels, seemed to be in a kind of crawling fermentation. The smell of humanity and horses was strong. The men were less inclined to sing.

"Left!" yelled a voice.

And another:

"_Left_!"

And still another, very close on the second one:

"LEFT!"

"Keep your distances there!" Resmith shouted violently.

A horn sounded, and the next moment a motor-car, apparently full of red-hats, rushed past the Battery, overtaking it, in a blinding storm of dust. It was gone, like a ghost.

"That's the Almighty himself," Resmith explained, with unconscious awe and devotion in his powerful voice. "Gramstone, Major-General."

George, profoundly impressed (he knew not why), noticed in his brain a tiny embryo of a thought that it might be agreeable to ride in a car.

A hand went up, and the Battery stopped. It was the first halt.

"Look at your watch," said Resmith, smiling.

"Ten to, exactly."

"That's right. We have ten minutes in each hour."

All dismounted, examined horses for galls, and looked at their shoes, took pulls at water-bottles, lit cigarettes, expectorated, coughed, flicked at flies with handkerchiefs. The party also went past, and shortly afterwards returned with the stretcher laden.


VI


It was after the long halt at midday that the weather changed. The horses, martyrized by insects, had been elaborately watered and fed with immense labour; officers and men had eaten rations and dust from their haversacks, and for the most part emptied their water-bottles; and the march had been resumed in a temper captious and somewhat exacerbated.

"Get your horse away; he's kicking mine!" said Captain Resmith impatiently to George, reflecting the general mood. And George, who was beginning to experience fatigue in the region of the knees, visited on his horse the resentment he felt at Resmith's tone.

At precisely that moment some drops of rain fell. Nobody could believe at first that the drops were raindrops for the whole landscape was quivering in hot sunshine. However, an examination of the firmament showed a cloud perpendicularly overhead; the drops multiplied; the cloud slowly obscured the sun. An almost audible sigh of relief passed down the line. Everybody was freshened and elated. Some men with an instinct for the apposite started to sing:

"Shall we gather at the river?"

And nearly the whole Battery joined in the tune. The rain persevered, thickening. The sun accepted defeat. The sky lost all its blue. Orders were given as to clothing. George had the sensation that something was lacking to him, and found that it was an umbrella. On the outskirts of Ewell the Battery was splashing through puddles of water; the coats of horses and of men had darkened; guns, poles, and caps carried chaplets of raindrops; and all those stern riders, so proud and scornful, with chins hidden in high, upturned collars, and long garments disposed majestically over their legs and the flanks of the horses, nevertheless knew in secret that the conquering rain had got down the backs of their necks, and into their boots and into their very knees but they were still nobly maintaining the illusion of impermeability against it. The Battery, riding now stiffly 'eyes front,' was halted unexpectedly in Ewell, filling the whole of the village, to the village's extreme content. Many minutes elapsed. Rumour floated down that something, was wrong in front. Captain Resmith had much inspectorial cantering to do, and George faithfully followed him for some time. At one end of the village a woman was selling fruit and ginger-beer to the soldiers at siege prices; at the other, men and women out of the little gardened houses were eagerly distributing hot tea and hot coffee free of charge. The two girls from the crossroads entered the village, pushing their bicycles, one of which had apparently lost a pedal. They wore mackintoshes, and were still laughing.

At length George said:

"If you don't mind I'll stick where I am for a bit."

"Tired, eh?" Resmith asked callously.

"Well! I shall be if I keep on."

"Dismount, my canny boy. Didn't I tell you what would happen to you? At your age--"

"Why! How old d'you think I am?"

"Well, my canny boy, you'll never see thirty again, I suppose."

"No, I shan't. Nor you either."

Captain Resmith said:

"I'm twenty-four."

George was thunder-struck. The fellow was a boy, and George had been treating him as an equal! But then the fellow was also George's superior officer, and immeasurably his superior in physique. Do what he would, harden himself as he might, George at thirty-three could never hope to rival the sinews of the boy of twenty-four, who incidentally could instruct him on every conceivable military subject. George, standing by his sodden horse, felt humiliated and annoyed as Resmith cantered off to speak to the officer commanding the Ammunition Column. But on the trek there was no outlet for such a sentiment as annoyance. He was Resmith's junior and Resmith's inferior, and must behave, and expect to be behaved to, as such.

"Never mind!" he said to himself. His determination to learn the art and craft of war was almost savage in ferocity.

When the Battery at length departed from Ewell the rain had completed its victory but at the same time had lost much of its prestige. The riders, abandoning illusion, admitting frankly that they were wet to the skin, knowing that all their clothing was soaked, and satisfied that they could not be wetter than they were if the bottom fell out of the sky, simply derided the rain and plodded forward. Groups of them even disdained the weather in lusty song. But not George. George was exhausted. He was ready to fall off his horse. The sensation of fatigue about the knees and in the small of his back was absolute torture. Resmith told him to ride without stirrups and dangle his legs. The relief was real, but only temporary. And the Battery moved on at the horribly monotonous, tiring walk. Epsom was incredibly distant. George gave up hope of Epsom; and he was right to do so, for Epsom never came. The Battery had taken a secondary road to the left which climbed slowly to the Downs. At the top of this road, under the railway bridge, just before fields ceased to be enclosed, stood the two girls. Their bicycles leaned against the brick wall. They had taken off their mackintoshes, and it was plain from their clinging coloured garments that they too were utterly drenched. They laughed no more. Over the open Downs the wind was sweeping the rain in front of it; and the wind was the night wind, for the sky