Soldiers Pay Part 17

Sergeant Madden, however, got along quite well with his officers, particularly with a lieutenant named Powers. And with the men, too. Even after a training period with dummies and a miniature sector he got along with them. They had become accustomed to the sounds of far guns (shooting at other people, however) and the flickering horizon at night; they had been bombed by aeroplanes while lined up for mess at a field kitchen, while the personnel of a concealed French battery watched them without interest from a dugut; they had received much advice from troops that had been in the lines At last they were going in themselves after a measureless s.p.a.ce of aimless wandering here and there, and the sound of guns though seemingly no nearer was no longer impersonal. They tramped by night, feeling their feet sink, then hearing them suck in mud. Then they felt sloping ground and were in a ditch. It was as if they were burying themselves, descending into their own graves in the bowels of the wet black earth, into a darkness so dense as to constrict breathing, constrict the heart. They stumbled on in the darkness.

Out of the gratis advice they had received, they recalled strongest to drop when a gun went off or when they heard a sh.e.l.l coming; so when a machine gun, far to the right, stuttered, breaking the slow hysteria of decay which buried them, someone dropped, someone stumbled over him, then they all went down as one man. The officer cursed them, non-coms kicked them erect again. Then while they stood huddled in the dark, smelling death, the lieutenant ran back along the line making them a brief bitter speech.

"Who in h.e.l.l told you to lie down? The only guns within two miles of you are those things in your hands there. Feel this? this thing here"-slapping the rifles-"this is a gun. Sergeants, if another man drops, tramp him right into the mud and leave him."

They ploughed on, panting and cursing in whispers. Suddenly they were among men, and a veteran of four days, sensing that effluvia of men new to battle, said: "Why, look at the soldiers come to fight in the war."

"Silence there!" a non-com's voice, and a sergeant came jumping along saying, Where is your officer? Men going out brushed them, pa.s.sing on in the pitch wet darkness, and a voice whispered wickedly, Look out for gas. The word Gas pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth and Authority raged them into silence again. But the mischief had been done.

Gas. Bullets and death and d.a.m.nation. But Gas. It looked like mist, they had been told. First thing you know you are in it. And then-Good night.

Silence broken by muddy movements of unrest and breathing. Eastward the sky paled impalpably, more like a death than a birth of anything; and they peered out in front of them, seeing nothing. There seemed to be no war here at all, though to the right of them a rumorous guttural of guns rose and fell thickly and heavily on the weary dawn. Powers, the officer, had pa.s.sed from man to man. No one must fire: there was a patrol out there somewhere in the darkness. Dawn grew grey and slow; after a while the earth took a vague form and someone seeing a lesser darkness screamed, "Gas!"

Powers and Madden sprang among them as they fought blindly, fumbling and tearing at their gas masks, trampling each other, but they were powerless. The lieutenant laid about him with his fists, trying to make himself heard, and the man who had given the alarm whirled suddenly on the fire-step, his head and shoulders sharp against the sorrowful dawn.

"You got us killed," he shrieked, shooting the officer in the face at point-blank range.

III.

Sergeant Madden thought of Green again on a later day as he ran over broken ground at Cantigny, saying, Come on, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, do you want to live forever? He forgot Green temporarily as he lay beside a boy who had sold him shoes back home, in a sh.e.l.lhole too small for them, feeling his exposed leg whipped by a gale as a tufted branch is whipped by a storm. After a while night came and the gale pa.s.sed away and the man beside him died.

While in hospital he saw Captain Green's name in a published casualty list. He also discovered in hospital that he had lost his photograph. He asked hospital orderlies and nurses about it, but no one recalled having seen it among his effects. It was just as well, though. She had in the meantime married a lieutenant on the staff of a college R.O.T.C. unit.

IV.

Mrs. Burney's black was neat and completely airproof: she did not believe in air save as a necessary adjunct to breathing. Mr. Burney, a morose, silent man, whose occupation was that of languidly sawing boards and then mildly nailing them together again, took all his ideas from his wife, so he believed this, too.

She toiled, neat as a pin, along the street, both fretted with and grateful to the heat because of her rheumatism, making a call. When she thought of her destination, of her changed status in the town, above her dull and quenchless sorrow she knew a faint pride: the stroke of Fate which robbed her likewise made of her an aristocrat. The Mrs. Worthingtons, the Mrs. Saunderses, all spoke to her now as one of them, as if she, too, rode in a car and bought a half-dozen new dresses a year. Her boy had done this for her, his absence accomplishing that which his presence had never done, could never do.

Her black gown drank heat and held it in solution about her, her cotton umbrella became only a delusion. How hot for April, she thought, seeing cars containing pliant women's bodies in cool, thin cloth pa.s.sing her. Other women walking in delicate, gay shades nodded to her bent small rotundity, greeting her pleasantly. Her flat "common sense" shoes carried her steadily and proudly on.

She turned a corner and the sun through maples was directly in her face. She lowered her umbrella to it, and remarking after a while a broken drain, and feeling an arching thrust of poorly laid concrete, she slanted her umbrella back. Pigeons in the spire were coolly remote from the heat, unemphatic as sleep, and she pa.s.sed through an iron gate, following a gravelled path. The rambling facade of the rectory dreamed in the afternoon above a lawn broken by geranium beds and a group of chairs beneath a tree. She crossed gra.s.s and the rector rose, huge as a rock, black and shapeless, greeting her.

(Oh, the poor man, how bad he looks. And so old, so old we are for this to happen to us. He was not any good, but he was my son. .And now Mrs. Worthington and Mrs. Saunders and Mrs. Wardle speak to me, stop in to chat about this and that while there is my Dewey dead. They hadn't no sons and now his son come back and mine didn't, and how grey his face, poor man.) She panted with heat, like a dog, feeling pain in her bones, and she hobbled horribly across to the grouped figures. It was because the sun was in her eyes that she couldn't see, sun going down beyond a lattice wall covered with wistaria. Pigeons crooned liquid gutturals from the spire, slanting like smears of paint, and the rector was saying: "This is Mrs. Powers, Mrs. Burney, a friend of Donald's. Donald, here is Mrs. Burney. You remember Mrs. Burney: she is Dewey's mother, you remember."

Mrs. Burney took a proffered chair blindly. Her dress held heat, her umbrella tripped her bonelessly, then bonelessly avoided her. The rector closed it and Mrs. Powers settled her in the chair. She rubbed at her eyes with a black-bordered cotton handkerchief.

Donald Mahon waked to voices. Mrs. Powers was saying: "How good of you to come. All Donald's old friends have been so nice to him. Especially the ones who had sons in the war. They know, don't they?"

(Oh, the poor man, the poor man. And your scarred face. Madden didn't tell me your face was scarred, Donald.) Pigeons like slow sleep, afternoon pa.s.sing away, dying. Mrs. Burney, in her tight, hot black, the rector, huge and black and shapeless, Mrs. Burney with an unhealed sorrow, Mrs. Powers-(d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k. How young, how terribly young: tomorrow must never come. Kiss me, kiss me through my hair. d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k. My body flowing away from me, dividing. How ugly men are, naked. Don't leave me, don't leave me! No, no! we don't love each other! we don't! we don't! Hold me close, close: my body's intimacy is broken, unseeing: thank G.o.d my body cannot see. Your body is so ugly, d.i.c.k! Dear d.i.c.k. Your bones, your mouth hard and shaped as bone: rigid. My body flows away: you cannot hold It! Why do you sleep, d.i.c.k? My body flows on and on. You cannot hold it, for yours is so ugly, dear d.i.c.k. . . . "You may not hear from me for some time. I will write when I can. . . .") Donald Mahon, hearing voices, moved in his chair. He felt substance he could not see, heard what did not move him at all. "Carry on, Joe."

The afternoon dreamed on, unbroken. A negro, informal in an undershirt, restrained his lawn mower, and stood beneath a tree, talking to a woman across the fence. Mrs. Burney in her rigid unbearable black; Mrs. Worthington speaks to me, but Dewey is dead. Oh, the poor man, his grey face. My boy is dead, but his boy has come home, come home . . . with a woman. What is she doing here? Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l says . . . Mrs. Mitch.e.l.l says . . . that Saunders girl is engaged to him. She is downtown yesterday almost nekkid. With the sun on her. . . . She wiped her eyes again under inevitable spring.

Donald Mahon, hearing voices: "Carry on, Joe."

"I come to see how your boy is getting along, what with everything." (Dewey, my boy.) (I miss you like the devil, d.i.c.k. Someone to sleep with? I don't know. Oh, d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k. You left no mark on me, nothing. Kiss me through my hair, d.i.c.k, with all your ugly body, and let's don't ever see each other again, ever. . . . No, we won't, dear, ugly d.i.c.k.) (Yes, that was Donald. He is dead.) "He is much better, thank you. Give him a few weeks' rest and he will be well again."

"I am so glad, so glad," she answered, pitying him, envying him. (My son died, a hero: Mrs. Worthington, Mrs. Saunders, chat with me about nothing at all.) "Poor boy, don't he remember his friends at all?"

"Yes, yes." (This was Donald, my son.) "Donald, don't you remember Mrs. Burney? She is Dewey's mother, you know."

( . . . but not forever. I wish you all the luck and love in the world. Wish me luck, dear d.i.c.k. . . . ) Donald Mahon, hearing voices: "Carry on, Joe."

The way that girl goes on with men! she thought exultantly. Dewey may be dead, but thank G.o.d he ain't engaged to her. "Your boy is home, he'll be married soon and everything. So nice for you, so nice. . . . "

"There, there," the rector said, touching her shoulder kindly, "you must come often to see him."

"Yes, I will come often," she replied through her black-bordered cotton handkerchief. "It's so nice he come home safe and well. Some didn't." (Dewey, Dewey.) The sun flamed slowly across the wistaria, seeking interstices. She would see Mrs. Worthington downtown now, probably. Mrs. Worthington would ask her how she was, how her husband was. (My rheumatism, but I am old. Yes, yes. When we get old. . . . You are old, too, she would think with comfortable malice, older than me. Old, old, too old for things like this to happen to us. He was so good to me, so big and strong: brave. . . . ) She rose and someone handed her the cotton umbrella.

"Yes, yes. I will come again to see him." (poor boy. Poor man, his face: so grey.) The lawn mower chattered slowly, reluctantly breaking the evening. Mrs. Burney, disturbing bees, crossed gra.s.s blindly. Someone pa.s.sed her at the gate and remarking an arching thrust of poorly laid concrete and a broken drain, she slanted her umbrella backward, shielding her neat, black-clad, airproof black.

Sucking silver sound of pigeons slanting to and from the spire like smears of soft paint on a cloudless sky., The sun lengthened the shadow of the wistaria-covered wall, immersing the grouped chairs in cool shadow. Waiting for sunset.

(d.i.c.k, my love, that I did not love, d.i.c.k, your ugly body breaking into mine like a burglar, my body flowing away, washing away all traces of yours. . . . Kiss and forget me: remember me only to wish me luck, dear, ugly, dead d.i.c.k. . . . ) (This was my son, Donald. He is dead.) Gilligan, crossing the lawn, said: "Who was that?"

"Mrs. Burney," the rector told him. "Her son was killed. You've probably heard of him downtown."

"Yeh, I've heard of him. He was the one under indictment for stealing fifty pounds of sugar and they let him go to enlist, wasn't he?"

"There were stories. . . ." The rector's voice died away. Donald Mahon, hearing silence: "You stopped, Joe."

Gilligan stood near him, settling the coloured gla.s.ses over his eyes. "Sure, Loot. More Rome?"

The shadow of the wall took them completely and at last he said: "Carry on, Joe."

V.

She missed Mrs. Worthington. She saw the old woman drive smoothly away from Price's in her car, alone in the back seat. The negro driver's head was round as a cannon ball and Mrs. Burney watched it draw away, smelling gasoline. The shadow of the courthouse was like thinned tobacco smoke filling one side of the square, and standing in the door of a store she saw an acquaintance, a friend of her son's. He had been in Dewey's company, an officer or something, but he hadn't got killed, not him! Trust them generals and things.

(No, no! I won't feel like this! He done the best he could. It ain't his fault if he wasn't brave enough to get killed, like Dewey was. They are all jealous of Dewey anyway: won't talk about him except that he done what was right. Done what was right! Didn't I know he would? Dewey, Dewey. So young he was, so big and brave. Until that Green man took him off and got him killed.) She felt sorry for the man, felt kindly toward him, pitying him. She stopped him. Yes, ma'am, he was all right. Yes, the other boys were all right.

"But then you wasn't killed," she explained. "All soldiers wasn't like Dewey: so brave-foolhardy, almost. . . . I always told him not to let that Green get him-get him-"

"Yes, yes," he agreed, looking at her meticulous, bent neatness.

"He was all right? He didn't want for nothing?"

"No, no, he was all right," he a.s.sured her. Sunset was almost come. Sparrows in a final delirium in the dusty elms, the last wagons going slowly countryward.

"Men don't know," she said bitterly. "You probably never done for him what you could. That Mr. Green . . . I always mis...o...b..ed him."

"He is dead, too, you know," he reminded her.

(I won't be unjust to him!) "You was a officer or something: seems like you'd have took better care of a boy you knowed."

"We did all we could for him," he told her patiently. The square, empty of wagons, was quiet. Women went slowly in the last of the sun, meeting husbands, going home to supper. She felt her rheumatism more, now that the air was getting cooler, and she became restive in her fretful black.

"Well. You seen his grave, you say. . . . You are sure he was all right?" So big and strong he was, so good to me.

"Yes, yes. He was all right."

Madden watched her bent, neat rotundity going down the street among shadows, beneath metallic awnings. The shadow of the courthouse had taken half the town like a silent victorious army, not firing a shot. The sparrows completed a final dusty delirium and went away, went away across evening into morning, retracing months: a year.

Someone on a fire-step had shouted Gas and the officer leaped among them striking, imploring. Then he saw the officer's face in red and bitter relief as the man on the fire-step, sharp against the sorrowful dawn, turned screaming, You have got us killed, and shot him in the face at point-blank range.

VI.

San Francisco, Cal.

April 14, 1919.

Dear Margaret, I got your letter and I intended to answering it sooner but I have been busy running around. Yes she was not a bad kid she has shown me a good time no she is not so good looking but she takes a good photo she wants to go in the movies. And a director told her she photographs better than any girl he has seen. She has a car and she is a swell dancer but of course I just like to play around with her she is to young for me. To really care for. No I have not gone to work yet. This girl goes to the U and she is talking about me going there next year. So I may go there next year. Well there is no news I have done a little flying but mostly dancing and rurining around. I have got to go out on a party now or I would write more. Next time more next time give my reguards to everybody I know.

Your sincere friend Julian Lowe.

VII.

Mahon liked music; so Mrs. Worthington sent her car for them. Mrs. Worthington lived in a large, beautiful old house which her husband, conveniently dead, had bequeathed, with a colourless male cousin who had false teeth and no occupation that anyone knew of, to her. The male cousin's articulation was bad (he had been struck in the mouth with an axe in a dice game in Cuba during the Spanish-American War): perhaps this was why he did nothing, Mrs. Worthington ate too much and suffered from gout and a flouted will. So her church connection was rather trying to the minister and his flock. But she had money-that panacea for all ills of the flesh and spirit. She believed in rights for women, as long as women would let her dictate what was right for them.

One usually ignored the male relation, But sometimes one pitied him.

But she sent her car for them and with Mrs. Powers and Mahon in the rear, and Gilligan beside the negro driver, they rolled smootly beneath elms, seeing stars in a clear sky, smelling growing things, hearing a rhythmic thumping soon to become music.

VIII.

This, the spring of 1919, was the day of the boy, of him who had been too young for soldiering. For two years he had had a dry time of it. Of course, girls had used him during the scarcity of men, but always in such a detached, impersonal manner. Like committing fornication with a beautiful woman who chews gum steadily all the while. O Uniform, O Vanity. They had used him, but when a uniform showed up he got the air.

Up to that time uniforms could all walk: they were not only fashionable and romantic, but they were also quite keen on spending what money they had and they were also going too far away and too immediately to tell on you. Of course it was silly that some uniforms had to salute others, but it was nice, too. Especially if the uniform you had caught happened to be a salutee. And heaven only knows how much damage among feminine hearts a set of pilot's wings was capable of, And the shows: Beautiful, pure girls (American) in afternoon or evening gowns (doubtless under Brigade Orders) caught in deserted fire trenches by Prussian Ha.s.sars (on pa.s.ses signed by Belasco) in parade uniform ; courtesans in Paris frocks demoralizing Brigade staffs, having subalterns with arrow collar profiles and creased breech, whom generals all think may be German spies, and handsome old generals, whom the subalterns all think may be German spies, glaring at each other across her languid body while corporal comedians entertain the beautiful-limbed and otherwise idle Red Cross nurses (American). The French women present are either marquises or wh.o.r.es or German spies, sometimes both, sometimes all three. The marquises may be told immediately because they all wear sabots, having given their shoes with the rest of their clothing to the French army, retaining only a pair of forty carat diamond earrings. Their sons are all aviators who have been out on a patrol since the previous Tuesday, causing the marquises to be a trifle distrait. The regular wh.o.r.es patronize them, while the German spies make love to the generals.

A courtesan (doubtless also under Brigade Orders) later saves the sector by s.e.x appeal after gun-powder had failed, and the whole thing is wound up with a sort of garden party near a papier-mache dugout in which the army sits in sixty-pound packs, all three smoking cigarettes, while the Prussian Guard gnashes its teeth at them from an adjacent trench.

A chaplain appears who, to indicate that the soldiers love him because he is one of them, achieves innuendoes about home and mother and fornication. A large new flag is flown and the. enemy fires at it vainly with .22 rifles. The men on our side cheer, led by the padre.

"What," said a beautiful, painted girl, not listening, to James Dough who had been for two years a corporal-pilot in a French cha.s.se escadrille, "is the difference between an American Ace and a French or British aviator?"

"About six reels," answered James Dough glumly (such a dull man! Where did Mrs. Wardle get him?) who had shot down thirteen enemy craft and had himself been crashed twice, giving him eleven points without allowing for evaporation.

"How nice. Is that so, really? You had movies in France, too, then?"

"Yes. Gave us something to do in our spare time."

"Yes," she agreed, offering him her oblivious profile. "You must have had an awfully good time while we poor women were slaving here rolling bandages and knitting things. I hope woman can fight in the next war: I had much rather march and shoot guns than knit. Do you think they will let women fight in the next war?" she asked, watching a young man dancing, limber as a worm.

"I expect they'll have to," James Dough shifted his artificial leg, nursing his festering arm between the bones of which a tracer bullet had pa.s.sed. "If they want to have another one."

"Yes." She yearned toward the agile, prancing youth. His body was young in years, his hair was glued smoothly to his skull. His face, under a layer of powder, was shaved and pallid, sophisticated, and he and his blonde and briefly-skirted partner slid and poised and drifted like a dream. The negro cornetist stayed his sweating crew and the a.s.sault arrested withdrew, leaving the walls of silence people by the un-conquered defenders of talk. Boys of both s.e.xes swayed arm in arm, taking sliding tripping steps, waiting for the music and the agile youth, lounging immaculately, said: "Have this dance?"

She said "Hel-lo," sweetly drawling. "Have you met Mr. Dough? Mr. Rivers, Mr. Dough. Mr. Dough is a visitor in town."

Mr. Rivers patronized Mr. Dough easily and repeated: "Dance the next?" Mr. Rivers had had a year at Princeton.

"I'm sorry. Mr. Dough doesn't dance," answered Miss Cecily Saunders faultlessly. Mr. Rivers, well bred, with all the benefits of a year at a cultural centre, mooned his blank face at her.

"Aw, come on. You aren't going to sit out all evening, are you? What did you come here for?"

"No, no: later, perhaps. I want to talk to Mr. Dough. You hadn't thought of that, had you?"

He stared at her quietly and emptily. At last he mumbled "Sorry," and lounged away.

"Really," began Mr. Dough, "not on my account, you know. If you want to dance--"

"Oh, I have to see those-those infants all the time. Really, it is quite a relief to meet someone who knows more than dancing and-and-dancing. But tell me about yourself. Do you like Charlestown? I can see that you are accustomed to larger cities, but don't you find something charming about these small towns?"

Mr. Rivers roved his eye, seeing two girls watching him in poised invitation, but he moved on toward a group of men standing and sitting near the steps, managing in some way to create the illusion of being both partic.i.p.ants and spectators at the same time. They were all of a kind: there was a kinship like an odour among them, a belligerent self-effacement. Wallflowers. Wallflowers. Good to talk to the hostess and dance with the duds. But even the talkative hostess had given them up now. One or two of them, bolder than the rest, but disseminating that same faint identical odour stood beside girls, waiting for the music to start again, but the majority of them herded near the steps, touching each other as if for mutual protection. Mr. Rivers heard phrases in bad French and he joined them, aware of his own fitted dinner jacket revealing his matchless linen.

"May I see you a minute, Madden?"

The man quietly smoking detached himself from the group. He was not big, yet there was something big and calm about him: a sense of competent inertia after activity.

"Yes?" he said.

"Do me a favour, will you?"

"Yes?" the man repeated courteously non-committal.

"There's a man here who can't dance, that nephew of Mrs. Wardle's that was hurt in the war. Cecily-I mean Miss Saunders-has been with him all evening. She wants to dance."

The other watched him with calm intentness and Mr. Rivers suddenly lost his superior air.

"To tell the truth, I want to dance with her. Would you mind sitting with him a while? I'd be awfully obliged to you if you would."

"Does Miss Saunders want to dance?"

"Sure she does. She said so." The other's gaze was so penetrating that he felt moisture and drew his handkerchief, wiping his powdered brow lightly, not to disarrange his hair. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it," he burst out, "you soldiers think you own things, don't you?"

Columns, imitation Doric, supported a remote small balcony, high and obscure, couples strolled in, awaiting the music, talk and laughter and movement distorted by a lax transparency of curtains inside the house. Along the bal.u.s.trade of the veranda red eyes of cigarettes glowed; a girl stooping ostrich-like drew up her stocking and light from a window found her young shapeless leg. The negro cornetist, having learned in his thirty years a century of the white man's l.u.s.t, blinked his dispa.s.sionate eye, leading his crew in a fresh a.s.sault. Couples erupted in, clasped and danced; vague blurs locked together on the lawn beyond the light.

". . . Uncle Joe, Sister Kate, all shimmy like jelly on a plate. . . ."

Mr. Rivers felt like a chip in a current: he knew a sharp puerile anger. Then as they turned the angle of the porch he saw Cecily clothed delicately in a silver frock, fragile as spun gla.s.s. She carried a green feather fan and her slim, animated turned body, her nervous prettiness, filled him with speculation. The light falling diffidently on her, felt her arm, her short body, suavely indicated her long, virginal legs.

". . . Uncle Bud, ninety-two, shook his cane and shimmied too. . . ."

Dr. Gary danced by without his gla.s.s of water: they avoided him and Cecily looked up, breaking her speech.

"Oh, Mr. Madden! How do you do?" She gave him her hand and presented him to Mr. Dough. "I'm awfully flattered that you decided to speak to me-or did Lee have to drag you over? Ah, that's how it was. You were going to ignore me, I know you were. Of course we can't hope to compete with French women-"

Madden protested conventionally and she made room for him beside her.