I walked on then, and came to the little flag of D Company headquarters flapping damply outside an estaminet. In the mess they greeted me very kindly and gave me tea--but there was still no Harry. But they all talked very fast, and the tea was good.
'And where's Penrose?' I asked at last. 'I haven't seen him yet?'
I had spoken to Stephenson. He did not answer immediately; but he picked up his cup and drank, assiduously; then he kind of mumbled, very low and apologetic:
'He's in his billet--under close arrest.'
Stephenson began to drink again; he was a good fellow, who knew that Harry and I were friends; also he had known Harry in the Souchez days, and he did not like having to tell me this.
But one of his young subalterns, a young pup just out, was less sensitive, and told me, brutally:
'Running away--cowardice in the face of--_et cetera_--have some more tea?'
Bit by bit I heard the whole miserable story--or rather that naked kernel of it which passed publicly for the whole story. I had to make my own footnotes, my own queries.
The first night Harry was with the battalion Philpott had sent him up with a carrying-party to the Front Line, or thereabouts, fifty men and some engineering stuff of sorts, wiring trestles, barbed wire, or something. It was shell-hole country, no communication trenches or anything, and since there had been an attack recently, the Boche artillery was very active on the roads and back areas. Also there was the usual rotten valley to cross, with the hell of a barrage in it. So much these young braves conceded. Harry had started off with his party, had called at the Brigade Dump, and picked up the stuff. Later on some one rang up Brigade from the line and said no party had arrived. Brigade rang up Philpott, and he sent up the Assistant Adjutant to investigate. Somewhere in the Arras Road he had come upon Harry, with most of the party, _running down the road--towards the Dump--away from the line_. The stores were urgently needed at the front; they never got there. That was all. The court-martial was to-morrow.
Well, it was a black story, but I made one or two footnotes at once.
_The very first night he was back._ The awful luck--the cruelty of it! Just back, in the condition of nerves I knew him to be in, with that first miserable feeling upon him, wondering probably why the hell he had driven himself out there, and praying to be let down easy for one night at least--and then to be sent straight up on a job like that, the job that had broken him before.