"

"I agree with you that the little thin noise is very silly," said
Martin.

* * * * *

Martin slammed down the hood of the car and stood upright. A cold stream
of rain ran down the sleeves of his slicker and dripped from his greasy
hands.

Infantry tramped by, the rain spattering with a cold glitter on grey
helmets, on gun-barrels, on the straps of equipment. Red sweating faces,
drooping under the hard rims of helmets, turned to the ground with the
struggle with the weight of equipment; rows and patches of faces were
the only warmth in the desolation of putty-coloured mud and bowed
mud-coloured bodies and dripping mud-coloured sky. In the cold
colourlessness they were delicate and feeble as the faces of children,
rosy and soft under the splattering of mud and the shagginess of
unshaven beards.

Martin rubbed the back of his hand against his face. His skin was like
that, too, soft as the petals of flowers, soft and warm amid all this
dead mud, amid all this hard mud-covered steel.

He leant against the side of the car, his ears full of the heavy
shuffle, of the jingle of equipment, of the splashing in puddles of
water-soaked boots, and watched the endless rosy patches of faces moving
by, the faces that drooped towards the dripping boots that rose and
fell, churning into froth the soupy, putty-coloured mud of the road.

* * * * *

The schoolmaster's garden was full of late roses and marigolds, all
parched and bleached by the thick layer of dust that was over them. Next
to the vine-covered trellis that cut the garden off from the road stood
a green table and a few cane chairs. The schoolmaster, something
charmingly eighteenth-century about the cut of his breeches and the
calves of his legs in their thick woollen golf-stockings, led the way, a
brown pitcher of wine in his hand. Martin Howe and the black-haired,
brown-faced boy from New Orleans who was his car-mate followed him. Then
came a little grey woman in a pink knitted shawl, carrying a tray with
glasses.

"In the Verdunois our wine is not very good," said the schoolmaster,
bowing them into chairs. "It is thin and cold like the climate. To your
health, gentlemen."

"To France."

"To America."

"And down with the Boches."

In the pale yellow light that came from among the dark clouds that
passed over the sky, the wine had the chilly gleam of yellow diamonds.

"Ah, you should have seen t