The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 5

"Yes, singing."

He puffed his cheeks and blew out a long breath--as if enjoying the effect of the steam in the icy light.

"Are they under fire?" he asked.

"You see them from here--how silent they are! The enemy does not fire until we reach the valley."

So he made no bones about his fears. Nothing of the charge would be required of him. He could withdraw after his inspiration.... Hate was growing within me. G.o.d, how I came to hate him--not for his cowardice--that was a novelty, and so freely acknowledged, but because he would sing the men to their death. This was the tame elephant that they use to subdue the wild ones--this the decoy--the little white b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"Very well, I will walk up and down the trenches, singing--" He said it a bit c.o.c.kily.

I was in no way a revolutionist, yet I vowed some time to get him, alone.... I seemed to see myself in a crowded city street at night--some city full of lights, as far as heaven from now--going in with the crowd under the lights--to hear him sing. There I could get him.... Not a revolutionist, at all; no man in the enlisted ranks more trusted than I; attached for dispatch-work at brigade-headquarters; in all likelihood of appearance so stupid, as to be accepted as a good soldier and nothing more.... Now I remembered how far I was from the lights of any city and crowded streets--here in the desperate winter fighting, our world crazed with punishment, and planning for real fighting in the Spring. The dead of the valley arose before my eyes.... Perhaps within an hour _my_ room would be ready. Still I should be sorry to pa.s.s, and leave Chautonville living on.

They beckoned me to his escort. I followed, hoping to see him die presently. This new hope was to watch him die--and not do it with my hands. Yes, I _trusted_ that Chautonville would not come back from the trenches.

The pits stretched out in either direction--bitten into the ground by the most miserable men the light of day uncovered--bitten through the snow and then through a thick floor of frost as hard as cement. I heard their voices--men of my own country--voices as from swooning men--lost to all mercy, ready to die, not as men, but preying, cornered animals--forgotten of G.o.d, it seemed, though that was illusion; forgotten of home which was worse to their hearts, and illusion, too.

For we could not hold the fact of home. It had proved too hard for us.

The bond had snapped. Only death seemed sure.

Chautonville opened his mouth.

It was like sitting by a fire, and falling into a dream.... He sang of our fathers and our boyhood; the good fathers who taught us all they knew, and whipped us with patience and the fear of G.o.d. He sang of the savory kitchen and the red fire-lit windows (bins full of corn and boxes high with wood); of the gray winter and the children of our house, the smell of wood-smoke and the low singing of the tea-kettle on the hearth.

And the officers followed him along the trenches, crying to us, "_Prepare to charge_!"

He sang of the ice breaking in the rivers--the groan of ice rotting in the lakes under the softness of the new life--of the frost coming up out of the fallows, leaving them wet-black and gleaming-rich. He sang of Spring, the spring-plowing, the heaviness of our labor, with spring l.u.s.t in our veins, and the crude love in our hearts which we could only articulate in kisses and pa.s.sion.

A roar from us at that--for the forgotten world was rushing home--the world of our maidens and our women.... He sang of the churches--sang of Poland, sang of Finland--of the churches and the long Sabbaths, the ministry of the gentle, irresistible Christ, of the Mary who mothered Him and mothered us all.

We were roaring like school-boys now behind him--the officer-men shouting to us to stand in our places and prepare to charge.

... He was singing of the Spring again--of the warm breath that comes up over the hills and plains--even to _our_ little fields. On he went singing, and I followed like a dog or a child--hundreds of others following--the menacing voices just stabbing in through the song of open weather and the smell of the ground.... My father had sung it to me--the song of the soil, the song _from_ the soil. And the smell of the stables came home, and the ruminating cattle at evening, the warm smell of the milking and the red that shot the dusk.... My mother taking the pails in the purple evening.

And this about us was the soldiery of Russia--the reek of powder, the iron frost, and the dead that moved for our eyes in the dip of the white valley. And each of us saw _our_ field, our low earth-thatched barns, and each of us saw our mothers, and every man's father sang.... We cried to him, when he halted a moment--and our hearts, they were burning in his steps--burning, and not with hatred.

Now he sang of the Springtime--and, my G.o.d--of our maidens! On the road from her house, I had sung it--coming home in the night from her house--when, in that great happiness which a man knows but once, I had leaped in the softness of the night, my heart traveling up the moon-ray in the driven flame of her kiss. (She did not sleep that night, nor I, for the husk of the world had been torn away.) ... He sang our maidens back to us--to each man, his maiden--their b.r.e.a.s.t.s near, and shaken with weeping. They held out our babes, to lure us home--crying "_Come back_!"

to us....

And some had not seen the latest babe at _her_ breast; and some of us only longed for that which we knew--the little hands and the wondering eyes at her skirts--hands that had helped us over the first rough mysteries of fatherhood.

And now I glimpsed the face of Chautonville in the ma.s.s--the open mouth.

It was not the face that I had seen. For he had lied to me, as he had lied to the officers, and this was the face of an angel, and so happy.

Long had he dreamed and long had he waited for this moment--and happy, he was, as a child on a great white horse. He was not singing us across the red-white valley. He was singing us home.

Then I heard the firing, and saw the officers trying to reach him, but we were there. We laughed and called to him, "Sing us the maidens again!"... "_For I have a maiden_--" a man said.... "Sing us the good Christ." ... "_For I was called to the ministry_--" another cried....

"Sing of the Spring and the mothers at the milking--" for we all had our mothers who do not die.... He was singing of our homes in the north country--singing as if he would sing the Austrians home--and the Germans--and would to G.o.d that he had!

Then his voice came through to us--not in the great dusky baritone of song, but like a command of the Father: "_Come on, men, we are going home!_"

... But I could not go. A pistol stopped me. So I lay on my elbow watching them turn back--a little circle of hundreds eager to die for him. All who had heard the singing turned homeward. And the lines came in from the east and from the west and deluged them.... Propped on my elbow, I saw them go down in the deluge of the obedient--watched until the blood went out and blurred the picture. But I saw enough in that darkening--that there was fine sanity in their dying. I wished that I could die with them. It was not slaughter, but martyrdom. It called me through the darkness--and I knew that some man's song would reach _all_ the armies--all men turning home together--each with his vision and unafraid.

LA DERNIeRE MOBILISATION[4]

BY W.A. DWIGGINS

From _The Fabulist_

[4] Copyright, 1915, by W.A. Dwiggins.

On the left the road comes up the hill out of a pool of mist; on the right it loses itself in the shadow of a wood. On the farther side of the highway a hedgerow, dusty in the moonlight, spreads an irregular border of black from the wood to the fog. Behind the hedgerow slender poplar trees, evenly s.p.a.ced, rule off the distance with inky lines.

A movement stirs the mist at the bottom of the hill. A monotonous rhythm grows in the silence. The mist darkens, and from it there emerges a strange shadowy column that reaches slowly up the hill, moving in silence to the sombre and m.u.f.fled beating of a drum. As it draws nearer the shadow becomes two files of marching men bearing between them a long dim burden.

The leaders advance into the moonlight. Each two men are carrying between them a pole, and from pole to pole have been slung planks making a continuous platform. But that which is heaped upon the platform is hidden with muddy blankets.

The uniforms of the men--of various sorts, indicating that they are from many commands--are in shreds and spotted with stains of mould and earth; their heads are bound in cloths so that their faces are covered. The single drummer at the side of the column carries slung from his shoulder the sh.e.l.l of a drum. No flag flies from the staff at the column's head, but the staff is held erect.

Slowly the head of the line advances to the shadow of the wood, touches it and is swallowed. The leaders, the bare flag-staff, the drummer disappear; but still from the shade is heard the m.u.f.fled rhythm of the drum. Still the column comes out of the mist, still it climbs the hill and pa.s.ses with its endless articulated burden. At last the rearmost couple disengages itself from the mist, ascends, and is swallowed by the shadow. There remain only the moonlight and the dusty hedgerow.

From the left the road runs from Belgium; to the right it crosses into France.

The dead were leaving their resting places in that lost land.

THE CITIZEN[5]

BY JAMES FRANCIS DWYER

From _Collier's Weekly_

[5] Copyright, 1915, by P.F. Collier and Son, Incorporated. Copyright, 1916, by James Francis Dwyer

The President of the United States was speaking. His audience comprised two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizenship.

They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen of the country they now claimed as their own.

Here and there among the newly made citizens were wives and children.

The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to time, their faces showing pride and awe.