g on his knees a little, singing a
music hall song and smoking. A little flutter of ash fell from his
cigarette, which seemed to be stuck to his lower lip as it rose and
fell with the notes of the song. When he came to the chorus he looked
round as if defying somebody, then raised his right hand over his head
and gripping his rifle, held the weapon there until the last word of
the chorus trembled on his lips; then he brought it down with the last
word and looked round as if to see that everybody was admiring his
action. Bill played his Jew's harp, strummed countless sentimental,
music-hall ditties on its sensitive tongue, his being was flooded with
exuberant song, he was transported by his trumpery toy. Bill lived,
his whole person surged with a vitality impossible to stem.

We came in line with a row of cottages, soldiers' billets for the most
part, and the boys were not yet in bed. It was a place to sing something
great, something in sympathy with our own mood. The song when it (p. 214)
came was appropriate, it came from one voice, and hundreds took it up
furiously as if they intended to tear it to pieces.

Here we are, here we are, here we are again.

The soldiers not in bed came out to look at us; it made us feel noble;
but to me, with that feeling of nobility there came something
pathetic, an influence of sorrow that caused my song to dissolve in a
vague yearning that still had no separate existence of its own. It was
as yet one with the night, with my mood and the whole spin of things.
The song rolled on:--

Fit and well and feeling as right as rain,
Now we're all together; never mind the weather,
Since here we are again,
When there's trouble brewing; when there's something doing,
Are we downhearted. No! let them all come!
Here we are, here we are, here we are again!

As the song died away I felt very lonely, a being isolated. True there
was a barn with cobwebs on its rafters down the road, a snug farm where
they made fresh butter and sold new laid eggs. But there was something
in the night, in the ghostly moonshine, in the bushes out in the (p. 215)
fields nodding together as if in consultation, in the tall poplars, in
the straight road, in the sound of rifle firing to rear and in the song
sung by the tired boys coming back from battle, that filled me with
infinite pathos and a feeling of being alone in a shelterless world.
"Here we are; here we are again." I thought of Mervin, and six oth