Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (mystery books to read .TXT) 📕

a mechanical genius to understand her⁠ ⁠… If they’d only get her a little simpler and safer, there wouldn’t be her match in the field. I’m about the only man that has patience with her and knows her merits, but she’s often been nearly the death of me. All the same, if I were in for a big fight against some fellow like Lensch, where it was neck or nothing, I’m hanged if I wouldn’t pick the Gladas.”

Archie laughed apologetically. “The subject is banned for me in our mess. I’m the old thing’s only champion, and she’s like a mare I used to hunt that loved me so much she was always tryin’ to chew the arm off me. But I wish I could get her a fair trial from one of the big pilots. I’m only in the second class myself after all.”

We were running north of St. Just when above the rattle of the train rose a curious dull sound. It came from the east, and was like the low growl of a veld thunderstorm, or a steady roll of muffled drums.

“Hark to the guns!” cried Archie. “My aunt, there’s a tidy bombardment goin’ on somewhere.”

I had been listening on and off to guns for three years. I had been present at the big preparations before Loos and the Somme and Arras, and I had come to accept the racket of artillery as something natural and inevitable like rain or sunshine. But this sound chilled me with its eeriness, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was its unexpectedness, for I was sure that the guns had not been heard in this area since before the Marne. The noise must be travelling down the Oise valley, and I judged there was big fighting somewhere about Chauny or La Fere. That meant that the enemy was pressing hard on a huge front, for here was clearly a great effort on his extreme left wing. Unless it was our counterattack. But somehow I didn’t think so.

I let down the window and stuck my head into the night. The fog had crept to the edge of the track, a gossamer mist through which houses and trees and cattle could be seen dim in the moonlight. The noise continued⁠—not a mutter, but a steady rumbling flow as solid as the blare of a trumpet. Presently, as we drew nearer Amiens, we left it behind us, for in all the Somme valley there is some curious configuration which blankets sound. The countryfolk call it the “Silent Land,” and during the first phase of the Somme battle a man in Amiens could not hear the guns twenty miles off at Albert.

As I sat down again I found that the company had fallen silent, even the garrulous Archie. Mary’s eyes met mine, and in the indifferent light of the French railway-carriage I could see excitement in them⁠—I knew it was excitement, not fear. She had never heard the noise of a great barrage before. Blenkiron was restless, and Peter was sunk in his own thoughts. I was growing very depressed, for in a little I would have to part from my best friends and the girl I loved. But with the depression was mixed an odd expectation, which was almost pleasant. The guns had brought back my profession to me, I was moving towards their thunder, and God only knew the end of it. The happy dream I had dreamed of the Cotswolds and a home with Mary beside me seemed suddenly to have fallen away to an infinite distance. I felt once again that I was on the razor-edge of life.

The last part of the journey I was casting back to rake up my knowledge of the countryside. I saw again the stricken belt from Serre to Combles where we had fought in the summer of ’17. I had not been present in the advance of the following spring, but I had been at Cambrai and I knew all the down country from Lagnicourt to St. Quentin. I shut my eyes and tried to picture it, and to see the roads running up to the line, and wondered just at what points the big pressure had come. They had told me in Paris that the British were as far south as the Oise, so the bombardment we had heard must be directed to our address. With Passchendaele and Cambrai in my mind, and some notion of the difficulties we had always had in getting drafts, I was puzzled to think where we could have found the troops to man the new front. We must be unholily thin on that long line. And against that awesome bombardment! And the masses and the new tactics that Ivery had bragged of!

When we ran into the dingy cavern which is Amiens station I seemed to note a new excitement. I felt it in the air rather than deduced it from any special incident, except that the platform was very crowded with civilians, most of them with an extra amount of baggage. I wondered if the place had been bombed the night before.

“We won’t say goodbye yet,” I told the others. “The train doesn’t leave for half an hour. I’m off to try and get news.”

Accompanied by Archie, I hunted out an R.T.O. of my acquaintance. To my questions he responded cheerfully.

“Oh, we’re doing famously, sir. I heard this afternoon from a man in Operations that G.H.Q. was perfectly satisfied. We’ve killed a lot of Huns and only lost a few kilometres of ground⁠ ⁠… You’re going to your division? Well, it’s up Peronne way, or was last night. Cheyne and Dunthorpe came back from leave and tried to steal a car to get up to it⁠ ⁠… Oh, I’m having the deuce of a time. These blighted civilians have got the wind up, and a lot are trying to clear out. The idiots say the Huns will be in Amiens in a week. What’s the phrase? ‘Pourvu que les civils