The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 57

Suddenly Europe was aflame. France stood still and waited. And as he waited, with Europe, Raoul for a moment forgot his torment. War is a great destroyer, but among other things it destroys the smaller emotions. Its licking flame shrivels up personal loves and hates. When war was declared, old hates were blotted out, and hopeless lovers trembling on the brink of suicide were cured overnight. Small human atoms were drowned in the larger hate and the larger love. Men ceased to have power over their own lives since their lives belonged to France.

So when war was declared, choice was taken from Raoul's hands. A high feeling of liberation possessed him. He walked along the street, and suddenly he realized that instead of going toward his home he was seeking his other half, the dark shadow to whom he had been so bound.

On Hazelton's door a note was pinned, addressed to him.

"My friend," it said, "you have luck! You will have your regiment, while nothing better than the ambulance, like a _sale embusque_, for me. If harm comes to you, don't fear for your mother."

This letter made him feel as though Hazelton had clasped his hand. He no longer felt toward Hazelton as an enemy, since France had also claimed him.

Madness had brushed him with its dark wings. By so slender a thread his life and Hazelton's had hung! Yes-and his honor!

"Thank G.o.d!" he said, "for an honorable death!" It was the last personal thought that was his for a long time. War engulfed him. Instead of an individual he was a soldier of France, and his life was broken away from the old life which now seemed illusion, the days which streamed past him like pennants torn in the wind.

Later, in the monotony of trench warfare, he had time to think of Hazelton. He desired two things-to serve France, and to see Hazelton.

Raoul wanted a word of friendship to pa.s.s between them, and especially he wanted to tell Hazelton that he need not worry about his wife. He wrote to him, but got no answer. Life went on; war had become the normal thing. The complexities of his former life receded further and further from him, and became more phantasmal, but the desire to see Hazelton before either of them should die remained with Raoul.

When he was wounded it was his last conscious thought before oblivion engulfed him. There followed a half-waking-pain-a penumbral land through which shapes moved vaguely; the smell of an anesthetic, an awakening, and again sleep. When he wakened fully he was in a white hospital ward with a sister bending over him.

"In the next bed," she said, "there is a _grand blesse_." She looked at him significantly. "He wishes to speak to you-he is a friend of yours."

In the next bed lay Hazelton, the startling black of his s.h.a.ggy hair framing the pallor of his face.

With difficulty Raoul raised his head. They smiled at each other. From the communion of their silence came Hazelton's deep voice.

"Why the devil," he said, "did we ever hate each other?"

Raoul shook his head. He didn't know. He, too, had wanted to ask Hazelton this.

"It has bothered me," said Hazelton. "I wanted to see you-" His voice trailed off. "I've wanted to ask you why we have needed this war-death-to make us know we don't hate each other."

"I don't know," said De Vilmarte. It was an effort for him to speak; his voice sounded frail and broken.

"Raoul," Hazelton asked, tenderly, "where are you wounded? Is it bad?"

"I don't know," Raoul answered again.

"It's his head," the sister answered for him, "and his right hand."

Hazelton raised his great head; a red mounted to his face; his old sardonic laughter boomed out through the ward. With a sharply indrawn breath of pain: "Oh, la-la!" he shouted. "_'Cre nom! 'Cre nom!_ What luck-imperishable! I'm dying-your right hand-your _right_ hand!" He sank back, his ironic laughter drowned in a swift crimson tide.

The nurse beckoned to an orderly to bring a screen....

Tears of grief and weakness streamed down Raoul's face. To the last his ill luck had held. He hadn't been able to make his friend understand, or to make amends. His right hand was wounded, and he could no longer serve France.

The sister looked at him with pity. She tried to console him.

"Death is not always so mercifully quick with these strong men," she said.

THE WHITE BATTALION

_By_ FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD From _The Bookman_ _Copyright, 1918, by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc._ _Copyright, 1919, by Frances Gilchrist Wood._

An orderly ushered two officers of the Foreign Legion, young men in mud-stained khaki, through the door of a dugout back of the fighting line in France. As they entered the hut a French officer in horizon blue, equally muddy, rose and returned the American's salute.

"You will be seated?" He pushed camp chairs toward them.

A guttering candle, stuck in a bottle neck, veiled rather than revealed the sordid interior. The light flickered across the young Frenchman's face, threw gaunt shadows under his eyes emphasized the look of utter weariness and-there was something more.

The senior officer of the Legion, Captain Hailes, looked at him keenly.

"Major Fouquet, we report at headquarters in an hour, sir. Lieutenant Agor, commanding platoon at extreme right-contact platoon with your battalion, sir, reports we lost touch with the French forces between the advance and the first trench. Thought it might have been his watch, but the timepiece checks up to a second."

The captain hesitated uneasily, "We are not presuming to question, sir, but Lieutenant Agor says he saw-we felt there might have been some cause, some reason that did not appear, so we came-"

The Frenchman lifted his head in a stupid way altogether foreign to his usual manner.

"Merci, Captain Hailes. We were-forty seconds slow in attacking the first trench, sir." He went on mechanically as if delivering a rehea.r.s.ed report. "Caught up and reached the second trench on time. Few prisoners besides the children. Enemy practically wiped out."

He concluded heavily, a dazed look blotting all expression.

"There was a cause for the forty seconds delay, Major?"

Fouquet struggled up out of the curious apathy. He cleared his throat, made several attempts to speak and finally blurted out.

"You won't believe it-I saw it and I cannot! But there are the children-and a first-line trench full of dead Huns-without a mark on them! Barres was flying over us-he saw the Battalion-knew them for old comrades. The women-all of them saw the faces of their dead! I don't believe it, sir,-but how did we do it? The women never thrust once in the first trench-the children haven't a wound-that's got to prove it!"

He stopped abruptly-looking from one to the other with a gesture of hopeless protest. The Americans regarded him with puzzled eyes.

"Was it some new trick of the Huns? G.o.d knows they've given them to us in plenty! Can you tell us-it might-?"

Fouquet pulled himself forward, his knuckles whitening with his grip of the table edge.

"You know the history of the section of the Front the Avengers retook to-day?"

"No, Major Fouquet. We came in later, with the Canadians."

"It began with the great retreat of 1914, sir, when the Germans were driving us back toward Paris. They had crowded our army against the river. Between the slow crossing and their terrible artillery fire, new to us then, we faced annihilation!"

There was a rustle at the door of the dugout and a whispered pa.s.sword.

Fouquet did not pause.

"To the -nth Battalion was given the honor of acting as rear guard. Ah, sir,-" his voice steadied-guttural with pride and emotion, "our men stood like a barricade of rock against which the waves of German infantry dashed themselves, only to break and be withdrawn for re-formation. Each receding wave showed where it had bit into the red and blue barrier, for we were wearing the old uniform then, but the bits slid together, closing up the gaps to stand against the next flood. When the eroded wall went down, undermined and over-whelmed at last, the main army of France was across the river and safe.

"Only two of us lived to rejoin our army, Lieutenant Barres and myself.

Barres's leg was shattered, hopelessly crippling him for the infantry, but when the wounds healed-France could not spare so brave a man, so they strapped him to the seat of a plane in the winged section of the army, where he is still fighting!"