Free Behind the Lines by W. F.; Morris Page A

choking exhaust fumes and the clouds of white dust which rolled like smoke around the clattering shadowy shapes, he crossed it and followed the short cut he had taken on his ride to Doullens. He tramped acrossfields along the margin of copses and came at last down the sunken track to the main Doullens road where his mare had been startled by the ambulance.
    He looked up and down the road, half hoping to see the ambulance with Berney at the wheel, but there was only a Maltese cart jogging along and a despatch rider phutting by on a motor-cycle. He climbed a bank overlooking the road and sat down on the grass at the top beneath some trees. He took out his pipe and lighted it. She might be going into Doullens that afternoon, and if she were she would pass along the road below him. Anyway, it was very pleasant lying there in the shade.
    He smoked several pipes and allowed his thoughts to drift idly as he watched the traffic that passed intermittently below him—a G.S. wagon with driver perched high above the horses’ tails, a swiftly moving green staff car with a little red flag fluttering above the nickel radiator, a heavy French farm wagon with two long-maned horses harnessed tandem-wise, motor lorries singly and in convoys, a mule-drawn limber wagon, two French gendarmes in glittering horse-tailed helmets, a noisy caterpillar tractor dragging the massive mounting of a nine-point-two, and a light ambulance. This last caused him to sit up, and when he saw that the driver was a man he experienced a sharp pang of disappointment.
    He sat a long time, longer than he had intended, giving himself another five minutes, and then another, in the hope that she might be on her way back from Doullens; but no ambulance sped along the road below him. Finallyhe bound himself to go when seven more vehicles of any kind had passed, and when they passed one by one, and the seventh had disappeared round a bend, he threw one last hopeful look up and down the road and rose reluctantly.
    III
    The Major and Whedbee had returned when he got back, and Rumbald was entertaining them and Piddock with an account of his adventures in Amiens on the previous evening. Rumbald was a good talker and artist enough not to adhere too strictly to the truth if the story could be improved upon by the exercise of some imagination. His breezy narrative style, accompanied by pantomimic gestures in the comic parts, kept the Major highly amused; Piddock was giggling in his irrepressible way, and even Whedbee’s eyes twinkled behind his glasses and his lean face broke periodically into an amused smile.
    Rawley dropped into a chair and listened with mixed admiration and disgust; for, as told by Rumbald, the sordid events of the previous evening assumed the lustre of comedy and romance. Amiens became a comic opera city in which the most ludicrous incidents were to be encountered at every street corner, and the little back-street restaurant became the scene of such gaiety, beauty, wit, and romance, as is to be found only in the imagination of young novelists. And in this brilliant scene, Penhurst and Rumbald played their parts gallantlyand worthily; and Rawley was astonished to learn how witty and amusing he himself had been.
    Rumbald’s powers of imagination and description appeared to be inexhaustible. Each laugh that he drew spurred him to further efforts. He addressed himself principally to the Major, with an occasional glance at the others, and he dominated the room. General conversation was impossible. The Major and Piddock were his willing listeners, and Whedbee sat silently drawing at his pipe with that non-committal expression on his face that made it so difficult to guess what he was thinking.
    Rawley found the persistent voice and the loud vulgar laugh maddeningly irritating. The man was shamelessly showing off, sucking up to the Major. He dominated the place; nobody else could say a word. They all sat and listened like sheep to his blatterings, and