Chapter XI: Part IV: The Forest (2)

"_Bon jour_, most powerful and disreputable of majors!"

George held out his hand.

"Bring any chocolate, Driggs? Sit down, you idiot. Jerry's never seen such a nice new uniform."

Suddenly he lost his temper. Why the devil couldn't he get some pleasure out of this extraordinary reunion? Why did he have to greet Wandel as if he had seen him daily since their parting more than three years ago on a dusky pier in New York? He had heard that Wandel, with the declaration of war, had left the ambulance for a commission in the field artillery. He saw him now wearing the insignia of a general staff major.

"Just attached to your corps headquarters," Wandel said. "Didn't want the job, would rather have been a fighting man with my pretty guns. Suppose some fool of a friend of the family brought the usual influence without consulting me."

"Glad to see you, Driggs," George muttered, "although I don't seem able to tell you so. How did you get here?"

"Guide from regimental headquarters. Wanted to see how the submerged heroes live. Nasty, noisy, smelly spot to be heroic in."

"A picnic to-day."

"I've always suspected," Wandel said, "that picnics were unhealthy."

"Better have come," George grinned, "any other day we've been here the past few weeks."

Wandel laughed.

"Don't think I didn't pick my day. The general staff takes no unnecessary risks. Tell me, my George, when did you shave last? When did you wash your pretty face last? When did you take your swank clothes off last?"

"I think when I was a very little boy," George sighed.

Wandel became abruptly serious, turned so, perhaps, by a large shell fragment, still warm, which he had picked up. As he fingered it he stared at George.

"I know," George said, "that I point a moral, but even little boys would be glad to be made clean if they got like this. Don't rub it in."

"To the contrary," Wandel said, thoughtfully, "I'm going back over a lot of years. I'm remembering how that most extraordinary man, Freshman George Morton, looked. I'm thinking that I've always been right about you."

The warm sun, the diminution of racket, this sudden companionship, had drawn George a little from his indifferent, half-dazed condition. He, too, could look back, and without discomfort. On the Vesle it was only death that counted. Birth didn't amount to a hill of beans, or money, or education, except in that it made a man an officer. So George answered frankly:

"All along you've guessed a lot about me, Driggs."

"Known, George."

"Would you mind telling me how?"

"It would be a pleasure to point out to you," Wandel drawled, "that a lot of people aren't half as big fools as you've credited them with being. You looked a little what you were at first. You've probably forgotten that when you matriculated you put down a place of residence, a record easily available for one who saw, as I did, means of using you. Even a fool could have guessed something was up the night Betty was good enough to make herself a part of the _beau monde_. I gathered a lot from Lambert then."

"Yet," George said, almost indifferently, "you went on being a friend."

"Your political manager, George," Wandel corrected. "I'm not sure it would have gone much further if it hadn't been for Dicky."

George was thoroughly aroused at last.

"Did Dicky know?"

"Not mere facts," Wandel answered. "What difference did they make? But he could see what you had started from, how great the climb you were taking. That's why he liked and admired you, because of what you were, not because of what you wanted people to think you were. That's really what first attracted me to you, and it amused me to see you fancying you were getting away with so much more than you really were."

"Extraordinary!" George managed. "Then the heights are not so well guarded?"

"Ah, yes--guarded," Wandel said, "but not against great men."

George kicked at the ground with his heel.

"Funny how unimportant it all seems here," he muttered.

It wasn't only the surroundings that made it seem unimportant; it was his remembrance of Sylvia who had known more than Wandel, more than anybody, yet had never opened the gate.

"You've taken all my conceit away," he went on. "Once it might have made me want to put myself out. Now I'm quite content to let Jerry do it."

Wandel's voice warmed, was less affected than George had ever heard it.

"What are you talking about? You've won a great victory. You should carry laurels on your brow. You've climbed to the top. You've defined for us all a possible socialism."

George smiled.

"A hell of a thing to talk about here! But tell that to Squibs, will you, little man, when you get back? We've had some rare battles over it."

Wandel hurried on.

"You've made yourself one of us, if it's any satisfaction. You're as good as the best of us--of the inheritors."

George folded his arms on his knees and bowed his head. Wandel's voice was startled.

"What's up?"

"Maybe I'm crying," George mumbled. "Ought to be, because I'm so filthy tired, and I know you're wrong, Driggs. I'm rotten inside. I haven't even started to climb."

But when he looked up there were no tears in his eyes, and his dirty face had altered with its old whimsical smile.

"Besides, it's enough to make me cry to know you wouldn't say all this unless you were certain I'm going to be killed."

"Hope not," Wandel laughed, "but picnics are full of germs. What's this?"

A grimy figure approached like a man fantastically imitating some animal. His route was devious as if he were perpetually dodging something that miraculously failed to materialize. He stopped, straightened reluctantly, and saluted George.

"Captain sent me on, sir. I've located Jerry opposite at----"

He rattled off some coordinates. George looked him over.

"How did you find that out?" he snapped.

"Ran across Jerry----"

The dirty young man recited jerkily and selflessly a story of fear and risks overcome, of cunning stealth, of passionate and promiscuous murder----

"Report back," George said.

When he had gone George called for his adjutant and turned to Wandel.

"Before anything happens to me," he said, "I'll recommend that dirty young assassin for a citation."

Wandel laughed in a satisfied way.

"I'm always right about you, great man. Don't you see that? Never think about your own citation----"

George stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Citation! A thousand citations for a bed!"

He watched Wandel uneasily when, at the heels of a guide, he dodged down the slope in search of Lambert, calling back:

"Don't swallow any germs."

"That's very fine, Driggs," he thought, "but why all that and not the rest? I'd give a good deal to guess what you know about me and Sylvia Planter."

X

George hoped Wandel would find Lambert. Day by day he had dreaded bad news. Other officers and men got hit every hour; why not himself or Lambert? For he had never forgotten Mrs. Planter's unexpected and revealing whisper. It had shown him that even beneath such exteriors emotion lurks as raw, as desirous, as violent as a savage's. The rest, then, was habit which people inherited, or acquired, or imitated with varying success. It had made him admire her all the more, had forced on him a wish to obey her, but what could he do? It was not in him to play favourites. One man's life was as good as another's; but he watched Lambert as he could, while in his tired brain lingered a feeling of fear for that woman's son.

During the peaceful days dividing the Aisne and the Argonne he looked at Lambert and fingered his own clothing, stained and torn where death had nearly reached, with a wondering doubt that they could both be whole, that Mrs. Planter in her unemotional way could still welcome guests to Oakmont. And he recalled that impression he had shared with Sylvia on the bluff above Lake Champlain of being suspended, but he no longer felt free. He seemed to hang, indeed, helplessly, in a resounding silence which at any moment would commence giving forth unbearable, Gargantuan noises; for, bathed and comfortable, eating in leisure from a mess-kit, he never forgot that this was a respite, that to-morrow or the next day or the day after the sounding board would reverberate again, holding him a deafened victim.

Wandel caught up with them one evening in the sylvan peace that preceded the fatal forest uproar. The Argonne still slumbered; was nearly silent; offered untouched trees under which to loaf after a palatable cold supper. The brown figures of enlisted men also lounged near by, reminiscing, wondering, doubtless, as these officers did, about New York which had assumed the attributes of an unattainable paradise.

George hadn't been particularly pleased to see Wandel. What Wandel knew made more difference in this quiet place, and George had a vague, shamed recollection of having accused himself of being rotten inside, of not having even started to climb.

"Must have had a touch of shell shock without knowing it," he mused as he stared through the dusk at the precise, clean little man.

Indifferently he listened to Lambert's good-natured raillery at the general staff, then he focussed his attention, for Lambert's voice had suddenly turned serious, his hand had indicated the lounging figures of the enlisted men.

"With all your ridiculous fuss and feathers at nice headquarters chateaux, I don't suppose you ever get to know those fellows, Driggs."

"I don't see why not," Wandel drawled.

"Do you love them, everyone?"

"Can't say that I do, but then my heart is only a small organ."

"I do," Lambert said, warmly. "And you'll find George does. You can't help it when you see them pulling through this thing. They're real men, aren't they, George?"

George yawned.

"Are they any more so," he asked, dryly, "than they were when they lived in the same little town with you? I mean, if all you say about them is true why did you have to wait for war to introduce you to unveil their admirable qualities?"

Lambert straightened.

"It's wrong," he said, defiantly, "that I should have waited. It's wrong that I couldn't help myself."

"And you once tried to take a horse whip to me," George whispered in his ear.

It was Lambert's absurd earnestness that worried him. Did Lambert, too, have a touch of shell shock? Wandel was trying to smooth out his doubts.

"I think what you mean to say is that war, aside from military rank, is a great leveller. We can leave that out altogether. You know the professional officer's creed: 'Good Colonel, deliver us.' 'We beseech ye to hear us, good General,' and so on up to the top man, who begs the Secretary of War, who prays to the President, who, one ventures to hope, gets a word to God. You mean, Lambert, that out here it never occurs to you to ask these men who their fathers were, or what preps they went to, or what clubs they're members of. It's the war spirit--aside from military rank--this sham equality. Titled ladies dine with embarrassed Tommies. Your own sister dances with doughboys who'd be a lot happier if she'd leave them alone. It's in the air, beautiful, gorgeous, hysterical war democracy which declares that all men are equal until they're wounded; then they're superior; or until they're dead; then they're forgotten."

George grunted.

"You're right, Driggs. It won't survive the war."

"Paper work!" Wandel sneered.

"It ought to last!" Lambert cried. "I hope it does."

"Pray that it doesn't," Wandel said. "I fancy the real hell of war comes after the war is over. We'll find that out, if we live. As for me, even now when we're all beloved brothers, I'd give a good deal to be sitting in a Fifth Avenue club looking out on lesser men."

"I would, too," George said, fervently.

Lambert spoke with abysmal seriousness.

"I'd rather have some of the splendid lesser men sitting on the same side of the window with me."

George stared at him. What had happened to this aristocrat who had once made a medieval gesture with a horse whip? Certainly he, the plebeian victim of that attack, had no such wish. Put these men on the same side of a club window, or a factory window, for that matter, and they'd drag the whole business down to their level, to eternal smash fast enough. Why, hang Lambert! It amounted to visualizing his sister as a slattern. He smiled with a curious pride. Reddest revolution couldn't make her that. She wouldn't come down off her high horse if a dozen bayonets were at her throat. What the deuce was he thinking about? Why should he be proud of that? For, if he lived, he was going to drag her off himself, but he wouldn't make her a slattern.

"You talk like Allen," he said, "and you haven't even his excuse."

"I've seen the primeval for the first time," Lambert answered.

"I'll admit it has qualities," Wandel yawned. "Anyway, I'm off."

Mrs. Planter came back to George's mind, momentarily as primeval as a man surrendered to the battle lust. What one saw, except in self-destructive emergencies, he told himself, was all veneer. Ages, epochs, generations, merely determined its depth. The hell after war! Did Wandel mean there was danger then of an attempt to thin the veneer? Was Lambert, of all people, going to assist the Allens to plane it away?

"It would mean another dark ages," he mused.

His own little self-imposed coat he saw now had gone on top of a far thicker one without which he would have been as helpless as a bushman or some anthropoidal creature escaped from an unexplored country.

He laughed, but uncomfortably. Those two had made him uneasy, and Squibs, naturally, was at Lambert's folly. There had been a letter a day or two ago which he had scarcely had time to read because of the demands of an extended movement and the confusion of receiving replacements and re-equipping the men he had. He read it over now. "Understanding," "Brotherhood."

"You are helping to bring it about, because you are helping to win this war."

In a fit of irritation he tore the letter up. What the devil was he fighting the war for?

The question wouldn't let him asleep. Lambert, Wandel, and Squibs between them had made him for the first time in his life thoroughly, uncomfortably, abominably afraid--physically afraid--afraid of being killed. For all at once there was more than Sylvia to make him want to live. He didn't see how he could die without knowing what the deuce he was fighting this man's war for, anyway.

XI

He hadn't learned any more about it when Lambert and he were caught on the same afternoon a week later.

In the interminable, haggard thicket the attack had abruptly halted. Word reached George that Lambert's company was falling back. To him that was beyond belief if Lambert was still with his men. He hurried forward before regimental headquarters had had a chance to open its distant mouth. There were machine-gun nests ahead, foolish stragglers told him. Of course. Those were what he had ordered Lambert to take. The company was disorganized. Little groups slunk back, dragging their rifles as if they were too heavy. Others squatted in the underbrush, waiting apparently for some valuable advice.

George found the senior lieutenant, crouched behind a fallen log, getting the company in hand again through runners.

"Where's Captain Planter?"

The lieutenant nodded carelessly ahead.

"Hundred yards or so out there. He ran the show too much himself," he complained. "Bunch of Jerries jumped out of the thicket and threw potato mashers, then crawled back to the guns. When the captain went down the men near him broke. Sort of thing spreads like a pestilence."

"Dead?" George asked.

"Don't know. Potato mashers!"

"Why haven't you found out?" George asked, irritably.

The complaining note increased in the other's voice.

"He's at the foot of that tree. Hear those guns? They're just zipping a few while they wait for someone to get to him."

"Pull your company together," George said with an absurd feeling that he spoke to Mrs. Planter. "I'll go along and see that we get him and those nests. They're spoiling the entire afternoon."

The lieutenant glanced at him, startled.

"I can do it----"

"You haven't," George reminded him.

He despatched runners to the flank companies and to regimental headquarters announcing that he was moving ahead. When the battalion advanced, like a lot of fairly clever Indians, he was in the van, making straight for the tree. He had a queer idea that Mrs. Planter quietly searched in the underbrush ahead of him. The machine guns, which had been trickling, gushed.

"You're hit, sir," the lieutenant said.

George glanced at his right boot. There was a hole in the leather, but he didn't feel any pain. He dismissed the lieutenant's suggestion of stretcher bearers. He limped ahead. Why should he assume this risk for Lambert? Sylvia wouldn't thank him for it. She wouldn't thank him for anything, but her mother would. He had to get Lambert back and complete his task, but he was afraid to examine the still form he saw at last at the base of the tree, and he knew very well that that was only because Lambert was his friend. He designated a man to guide the stretcher bearers, and bent, his mind full of swift running and vicious tackles, abrupt and brutal haltings of this figure that seemed to be asleep, that would never run again.

Lambert stirred.

"Been expecting you, George," he said, sleepily.

"Anything besides your leg?" George asked.

"Guess not," Lambert answered. "What more do you want? Thanks for coming."

George left him to the stretcher bearers and hurried on full of envy; for Lambert was going home, and George hadn't dared stop to urge him to forget that dangerous nonsense he had talked the other night. Nonsense! You had only to look at these brown figures trying to flank the spouting guns. Why did they have to glance continually at him? Why had they paused when he had paused to speak to Lambert? Same side of the window! But a few of them stumbled and slept as they fell.

He had just begun to worry about the blood in his right boot when something snapped at the bone of his good leg, and he pitched forward helplessly.

"Some tackle!" he thought.

Then through his brain, suddenly confused, flashed an overwhelming gratitude. He couldn't walk. He couldn't go forward. He wouldn't have to take any more risks beyond those shared with the stretcher bearers who would carry him back. Like Lambert, he was through. He was going home--home to Sylvia, to success, to the coveted knowledge of why he had fought this war.

The lieutenant, frightened, solicitous, crawled to him, summoning up the stretcher bearers, for the advance had gone a little ahead, the German range had shortened to meet it.

"How bad, sir?"

George indicated his legs.

"Never learned how to walk on my hands."

The lieutenant straightened, calling out cursing commands. George managed to achieve a sitting posture. By gad! This leg hurt! It made him a little giddy. Only once before, he thought vaguely, had he experienced such pain. What was the trouble here? The advance had halted, probably because the word had spread that he was down.

What was it Lambert had said about putting the rank and file on the same side of the window? The rank and file wanted an officer, and the higher the officer the farther it would go. That was answer enough for Lambert, Squibs, Allen----And he would point it out to them all, for the stretcher bearers had come up, had lifted him to the stretcher, were ready to start him back to decency, to safety----

Thank God there wasn't any multitude or an insane trainer here to order him about.

"They've stopped again," the lieutenant sobbed. "Some of them are coming back."

That sort of thing did spread like a pestilence, but there was nothing George could do about it. He had done his job. Good job, too. Soft billet now. Decency. Sylvia. No Green. No multitude----

"You make a touchdown!"

And he became aware at last of the multitude--raving higher officers in comfortable places; countless victims of invasion, waiting patiently to go home; myriads in the cities, intoxicated with enthusiasm and wine, tumbling happily from military play to patriotic bazaar; but most eloquent of all in that innumerable company were the silent and cold brown figures lying about him in the underbrush.

His brain, a little delirious, was filled with the roaring from the stands. The crowd was commanding him to get ahead somehow, to wipe out those deadly nests, to let the regiment, the army, tired nations, sweep on to peace and the end of an unbelievable madness.

Once more he glanced through blurred eyes at his clothing and saw livery, and this time he had put it on of his own free will. He seemed to hear Squibs:

"World lives by service."

"I'm in the service," he thought. "Got to serve."

It impressed him as quite pitiful that now he would never know just why.

"Where you going?" he demanded of the stretcher bearers who had begun to carry him back.

They tried to explain, hurrying a little. He threatened them with his revolver.

"Turn around. Let's go--with the battalion."

The lieutenant saw, the men saw, these frightened figures running with loping steps, carrying a stretcher which they jerked and twitched so that the figure lying on it with arm raised, holding a revolver, suffered agonies and struggled not to be flung to the ground. And the lieutenant and the men sprang to their feet, ran forward, shouted:

"Follow the Major!"

The German gunners, caught by surprise, hesitated, had trouble, therefore, shortening their ranges; and as panic spreads so does the sudden spirit of victory.

"Same side of the window!" George grumbled as the bearers set him down behind the captured guns.

"Just the same," he rambled, "fine fellows. Who said they weren't fine fellows?"

He wanted to argue it angrily with a wounded German propped against a shattered tree, but the lieutenant interrupted him, bringing up a medical orderly, asking him if he had any instructions. George answered very pleasantly:

"Not past me, Mr. Planter! Rank and file myself!"

The lieutenant glanced significantly at the medical orderly. He looked sharply at George's hair and suddenly pointed.

"They nicked him in the head, too."

The orderly knelt and examined the place the lieutenant had indicated.

"Oh, no, sir. That's quite an old scar."

XII

"Lost a leg or two?" Allen asked.

"Not yet. Don't think I shall. Planter's not so lucky, but he'll get home sooner."

Allen brought George his one relief from the deadly monotony of the base hospital. He had sent for him because he wanted his opinion as to the possibility of an armistice. Blodgett, however, hadn't waited for the result of the conference. The day Allen arrived a letter came from him, telling George not to worry.

"King Ferdy along about the last of September whispered I'd better begin to unload. It's a killing, George."

With his mind clear of that George could be amused by Allen. The friend of the people wore some striking clothes from London tailors and haberdashers. He carried a cunning little cane. He had managed something extremely neat in moustaches. He spoke with a perceptible West End accent. But in reply to George's sneering humour he made this astonishing remark:

"It isn't nearly as much fun being a top-hole person as I thought it was going to be."

"You're lucky to have found it out," George said, "for your job's about over. Of course I could get you something in Wall Street."

"Doubt if I should want it," Allen said. "I've always got my old job."

George whistled.

"You mean you'd go back to long hair, cheap clothes, and violent words?"

"Why not? I only took your offer, Morton, because I was inclined to agree with you that in the outside world's anxiety to look at what was going on over the fence people'd stop thinking. Russia didn't stop thinking, and after the armistice you watch America begin to use its brain."

"You mean the downtrodden," George sneered.

"That's the greater part of any country," Allen said, his acquired accent forgotten, his perfectly clean hands commencing to gesture.

But George wouldn't listen to him, got rid of him, turned to the wall with an ugly feeling that he had gone out of his way to nurture one of the makers of the hell after war.