PAGES OF WAR.

AFAINT jingle of steel-work, the soft squelch of horses' feet churning the clayey hillside track, the sharp report of a cracking branch, a muffled oath, and the phantom squadron, flickering across the crest-line like the nightmarish shadows of a cinema-screen, plunges into the milky twilight of the spellbound hollow. Sable and silver, stencilled by the mist-filtered autumn moon, the ghostly cavalcade threads the aisles of solemn aspens, dreaming in the gun unreality of huge subaqueous weeds. What magic lurks about them in the dank undergrowth by the brooding mere, where the flap of startled wings tears the gloom as the horses turn greedily to drink ? Evil are the rank herbs they trample, evil the oozing soil netted with tangled roots : the stifled screams of children have stirred this heavy silence, where Gilles de Rate of old held revel for the Witches' Sabbath . . . have maybe echoed again in the broad daylight after six hundred years, when blood-maniacs as ingeniously merciless as he passed here a few days since.

Now flames of purest gold thaw the horror of the foul courtyard in the long-abandoned grange, and scare the bats that circle above the jostling croups. Figures with flashing torches warily probe the rotten barns where sudden chasms gape over musty cells. A drove of squealing pigs charges blindly through the squadron : saddles clatter to the ground, the rusty pump grinds with feeble gurglings, dixies hiss gently on the throbbing logs, the mumble of a hundred nose- bags sounds content Uncannineas has fled into the dim woods.

A subaltern, wonderfully spotless in spite of the long march, is heard complaining of the smells.

• • A cup of coffee? With the storm hurling handfuls of heavy drops against the rattling window, and the valley an unplumbed chasm of driving mist, a refusal can only be formal. The neat little old woman, twinkling like some steeple-hatted fairy godmother of bygone days, bustles about the trim two-roomed cottage that clings perilously on the forest slope, and stirs the sizzling logs. With her clogs and black worsted Maintenon head-dress, she might have pattered to market two hundred years ago and have been as well in the fashion as now. And how good her coffee is, after a start at dawn and the long wait in the inexorable rain! What matter though the bread be a trifle stale ? The welcome is as rare and fresh as the grandam's apple cheeks.

The P111881=8 P Yes, they were here only the day before. Loot P Only her watch . . . but the faint sigh of resignation and the finger pointed to the nail in the mantelpiece where it Lad ticked for thirty years deny the adverb. The watch of a penniless old country wife, some valueless, innocent-looking turnip, no doubt—what a present to send home to Gretchen— if it has not been flung away in the first ditch!

. Yes, she was very frightened—she Lad heard des histoiret- so frightened that she has not eaten for thirty-six hours. . . . Horribly ashamed of his thoughtless hunger—greed, if you will—the officer gropes in his pocket. "Non, non," and again "non," as he awkwardly passes her the coin which she returns with a shake of the head. "Souvenir !" The magic word melts her scruples into a misty smile, and she stands weighing the fat silver diet—fat as the stolen watch—on her honest, gnarled palm. ".le prierai pour vous."

•

Who would have thought that the joy of sitting,

up late could cloy and fade so soon P Yet already the two little girls—one of them is a boy—with straight-cropped fringes and inky saucer-eyes invading the Latin pallor of their chubby cheeks, are almost fretting for bed. Where is Felioienne P Coquetting in the kitchen, no doubt, with some mud-plastered motor.oyclist. They are tired of wandering aimlessly from room to room of the huge villa, whose heavy, middle-class opulence disarms by its sheer ignorance of subtlety: tired of being good while mother shrugs and makes fin-like motions with her tapering fingers as she argues against the tall, fair- haired officer with the pretty band on his arm. What a lot of them there are, drowsily leaning on the sham Renaissance tables or rolled in rugs, carpets, curtains, on the tiled floor! Mother must bay Toto a gold-laced cap like that of the massive-shouldered man who nibbles cigarette after cigarette as though working against the time-limit of a wager, and keeps stroking the back of his head in a gesture of habit or of worry.

"Partir7 Mai, nous n'avons pas deseenee . . . r1 n'y a plus de earbure." But it is no use shrugging and smiling and flapping those long black lashes. With a final pout of vexation mother vanishes up the shallow stairs, to reappear in hat and cloak, with a fresh snowfall of poudre da rix Felicienne, thrice summoned from the depths, seizes her charges, and there is a frantic buttoning of boots that drag and pinch the fat little calves. "Mali tome fair mall" The holiday evening ends in a hail of tears, to which the far-off grating of a starting-lever makes fit accompaniment.

•

The two-hour luncheon interval is over, and the afternoon tornado begins afresh. Huddled at the bottom of their sickle- shaped canyons, flattening themselves like limpets under the craggy overhang, the men stare upwards at the slit of leaden sky, listening in dry-lipped anxiety or seeming indifference to the earth-shaking passage of invisible overhead trains. In the air, not so far above their heads, giant hands are ripping mammoth lengths of linen that end in a tawny flash, • monstrous thump, and a geyser of black spray that patters finely on the letter-block which an officer, bunkered in his burrow, is propping against his drawn-up knees. A stale smell of rotten fish poisons the tainted air.

On the skyline, behind the trenches, backed by sagging

clouds, a black windmill vertically stretches its motionless sails like a crucifix upheld in stark protest against iniquity. Grim symbol of pain and mercy, it has forgotten its homely use. The flicker of a spun half-sovereign, a fat clump of oily smoke knobbed with bulging curves like a cluster of toy balloons, and instantly its side begins to bleed a stain of fire that swiftly spreads and brightens. Clearer the cross stands out against the blazing trunk, as the licking flames pick out every rib of the framework in spidery silhouette. Now it is a huge Chinese lantern glowing with inward light. Then the body begins to bend and crumple, swaying and writhing as it fights for life. Suddenly, in its last agony, the arms begin to move. Faster and faster they whirl, as driven by some mighty sea-borne wind. The symbol is gone, it is no more than a poor human thing brought back by delirium to its primitise self.

A crash, a glory of upward-flying sparks, and nothing remains in the dusk but a reddening, fading stump.

• You would have said that a legion of monkeys had swarmed through the cottage where the squadron mess has encamped. Every drawer and cupboard in the overheated kitchen yawns limp and broken. Chairs, crockery, humbly hideous pictures, reeling and shattered—not an object but is a mute memorial of silly, vicious outrage. In the bedroom beyond, an inde- scribable litter of piled debris underlines the tale of invasion —poor useless finery rent and scattered with industriously petty spite; linen with its cheap lace picked to fragments, broken tubes on a grimy card oozing their fifteen-centime scent, a tawdry clock elaborately disembowelled, a half-burnt imitation ostrich-feather stripped from a telescoped hat, great rinds of clay trodden into the white bed-cover.

How has the green and yellow parrot escaped P Was it carelesenese or a refinement of cruelty that left it, without food or water, to peck the bare of its cage until exhaustion came? Even its masters in their flight bad overlooked it ; possibly the vandals have done the same. The tiny black winking eye, dull now like an old boot-button, has witnessed them in silent terror from a lair of piteously ruffled feathers—has watched the cyclone break through the house, and pass. Who are these others who have come, pink-faced and dust-coloured, with their quiet ways and monosyllabic speech? Half-sense- less with fasting, through the metal prison the parched bird sees them eat and drink.

And then the water-trough is filled and bread crumbled through the wires. The blue tongue pecks and laps, almost too stiff and swollen to swallow. Only afterwards does the bird realize that the merciless spring-door stands open. A cautious claw timidly grasps the sill, a moment's pause and flutter, then an emerald streak whirs through the window, to perch, dazed with freedom, in the little garden that weeds already claim.

Spread your wings and fly, bird, though the cage has cramped you--spread them soon! A lithe Indian with sinuous fingers and glinting coffee-eyes is leering over the gate : the hour of tiffut is not yet past.

• • • The indecent disorder of yesterday's =swept table—broken meats of some unhallowed banquet—so the shell-stricken town appears in the widening winter dawn.

Last night there was singing and cheers and shouting, the surging of human floods this way and that, in the rattle of musketry that bubbled like a boiling pot under dark heavens split and blinded with the glare of man-wrought thunder : there were great orange clouds of flame-lit smoke from build- ings that swiftly sank in upon themselves, there were hoarse cries of victory and hoarser moans of death. Now there is sheer silence ; not a breath stirs among these riven houses that lean and hover Pisa-fashion, poised in dizzy angles that no maddest architect dare dream of not a step falls on the cobbled street that some monstrous mole has humped: no tramway risks the buckled switchback of twisted rails, pitted with giant cups that gape inkily black in the surrounding white. For during the night snow has softly fallen, smoothing away detail with the remote, unswerving ease of an historian's chill phrases. Yesterday those rounded boulders may have been men or horses they are now no more than the clay which they must become.

The sharp trees darken and gain focus against the pale screen of daylight: wondrous subtleties of faintest colour flush and strengthen in the East. Now a timid tendril of thin smoke slowly uncurls above a crazy chimney. Presently an old woman, flat-backed and high-shouldered with immemorial years, ventures forth, bucket in hand- Contemptuous Death, patient for a little while, has passed her by. The well-chain creaks and rattles : the whimpering child in the half-reined

kitchen shall have its morning soup. Muss.