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The morning after I arrived at the 14th the Germans concentrated their fire on a large turnip-field and exhumed multitudinous turnips. No further damage was done, but the field was unhealthily near the Estaminet de l'Epinette. In the afternoon we moved our headquarters back a mile or so to a commodious and moderately clean farm with a forgettable name. That evening two prisoners were brought in.
Since I spoke to Waster Lunny the river had risen several feet, and even the hillocks in his turnip-field were now submerged. The mist was creeping down the hills. But what warned me most sharply that the flood was not satisfied yet was the top of the school-house dike; it was lined with field-mice. I turned back, and Gavin, mistaking my meaning, said I did wisely.
The hounds now had got out of sight, but were heard running in cover at the bottom of the turnip-field into which they had just passed, and also the clattering of horses' hoofs on the highway. The hounds came out several times on to the road, evidently carrying the scent, but as often threw up and returned into the cover.
On the hills opposite little points of flame showed that the Germans were replying. On our right some infantry were slowly advancing in extended order through a dripping turnip-field. The Battle of the Aisne had begun. We were wondering what to do when we were commandeered to take a message down that precipitous hill of Ciry to some cavalry. It was now quite dark and still raining.
It looked sweet enough on a day of high summer, such as this, when a man need ask for nothing to better than to be taken and kept out of doors; but the thought of the farm-hand rising in a cheerless wintry dawn, putting on his foul and stiffened habiliments, setting out in a chilly drizzle to uproot a turnip-field, row by row, with no one to talk to and nothing to look forward to but an evening in a tiny cottage-kitchen, full of noisy children no one could say that this was an ideal life, and he did not wonder that the young men flocked to the towns, where there was at all events some stir, some amusement.
As for the Grays, they seemed to be everywhere; that man hoeing in the turnip-field was Gray, that boy at the head of the team in the big yellow wagon was Tom, and Bill seemed to be all over the place, whistling along the road or running round the corner, or waiting to change his book at the organist's gate.
Either way this step-child of Providence must fall; which shall he choose, by doing or not doing? 'Fall, then, is what I would say, replied Nance. 'Fall where you will, but do it! For O, Mr. Archer, she continued, stooping to her work, 'you that are good and kind, and so wise, it doth sometimes go against my heart to see you live on here like a sheep in a turnip-field!
One evening, as she louped along her accustomed trail towards the turnip-field, she discovered a suitor following in her wake. Half in misgiving, half in wantonness, she turned aside and hid in the ditch. Presently she felt a soft touch on her neck: the jack-hare was pushing his way through the undergrowth.
So here he was in Ghent, an open city, when he wanted to be in Antwerp. He hadn't been anywhere anywhere at all. As for what he'd done, he couldn't see what the fuss was all about. He hadn't done anything. He'd seen a little fight in a turnip-field, and a little squabble for a bridge you could blow up to-day and build again to-morrow, and a little tin-pot town peppered. And look at the war!
I crawled up to the General, received my despatch, and started walking across the field. Then I discovered there is a great difference between motor-cycling under rifle fire, when you can hear only the very close ones, and walking across a heavy turnip-field when you can hear all.
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