The Crimson Tide Part 12

"Yes."

"Over the top?"

"Yes."

"How many times?"

"Several. Recently it's been more open work, you know."

"And you were not hit?"

"No."

She regarded him smilingly: "You are like all soldiers have faced death," she said. "You are not communicative."

At that he reddened. "Well, everybody else was facing it, too, you know. We all had the same experience."

"Not all," she said, watching him. "Some died."

"Oh, of course."

The girl's face flushed and she nodded emphatically: "Of course! And _that_ is our Yankee secret;--embodied in those two words--'of course.' That is exactly why the boche runs away from our men. The boche doesn't know why he runs, but it is because you all say, 'of course!--of course we're here to kill and get killed. What of it? It's in the rules of the game, isn't it? Very well; we're playing the game!'

"But the rules of the hun game are different. According to their rules, machine guns are not charged on. That is not according to plan.

Oh, no! But it is in your rules of the game. So after the boche has killed a number of you, and you say, 'of course,' and you keep coming on, it first bewilders the boche, then terrifies him. And the next time he sees you coming he takes to his heels."

Shotwell, amused, fascinated, and entirely surprised, began to laugh.

"You seem to know the game pretty well yourself," he said. "You are quite right. That is the idea."

"It's a wonderful game," she mused. "I can understand why you are not pleased at being ordered home."

"It's rather rotten luck when the outfit had just been cited," he explained.

"Oh. I should think you _would_ hate to come back!" exclaimed the girl, with frank sympathy.

"Well, I was glad at first, but I'm sorry now. I'm missing a lot, you see."

"Why did they send you back?"

"To instruct rookies!" he said with a grimace. "Rather inglorious, isn't it? But I'm hoping I'll have time to weather this detail and get back again before we reach the Rhine."

"I want to get back again, too," she reflected aloud, biting her lip and letting her dark eyes rest on the foggy statue of Liberty, towering up ahead.

"What was your branch?" he inquired.

"Oh, I didn't do anything," she exclaimed, flushing. "I've been in Russia. And now I must find out at once what I can do to be sent to France."

"The war caught you over there, I suppose," he hazarded.

"Yes.... I've been there since I was twenty. I'm twenty-four. I had a year's travel and study and then I became the American companion of the little Russian Grand d.u.c.h.ess Marie."

"They all were murdered, weren't they?" he asked, much interested.

"Yes.... I'm trying to forget----"

"I beg your pardon----"

"It's quite all right. I, myself, mentioned it first; but I can't talk about it yet. It's too personal----" She turned and looked at the monstrous city.

After a silence: "It's been a rotten voyage, hasn't it?" he remarked.

"Perfectly rotten. I was so ill I could scarcely keep my place during life-drill.... I didn't see you there," she added with a faint smile, "but I'm sure you were aboard, even if you seem to doubt that I was."

And then, perhaps considering that she had been sufficiently amiable to him, she gave him his conge with a pleasant little nod.

"Could I help you--do anything--" he began. But she thanked him with friendly finality.

They sauntered in opposite directions; and he did not see her again to speak to her.

Later, jolting toward home in a taxi, it occurred to him that it might have been agreeable to see such an attractively informal girl again.

Any man likes informality in women, except among the women of his own household, where he would promptly brand it as indiscretion.

He thought of her for a while, recollecting details of the episode and realising that he didn't even know her name. Which piqued him.

"Serves me right," he said aloud with a shrug of finality. "I had more enterprise once."

Then he looked out into the sunlit streets of Manhattan, all brilliant with flags and posters and swarming with prosperous looking people--his own people. But to his war-enlightened and disillusioned eyes his own people seemed almost like aliens; he vaguely resented their too evident prosperity, their irresponsible immunity, their heedless preoccupation with the petty things of life. The acres of bright flags fluttering above them, the posters that made a gay back-ground for the scene, the sheltered, undisturbed routine of peace seemed to annoy him.

An odd irritation invaded him; he had a sudden impulse to stop his taxi and shout, "Fat-heads! Get into the game! Don't you know the world's on fire? Don't you know what a hun really is? You'd better look out and get busy!"

Fifth Avenue irritated him--shops, hotels, clubs, motors, the well-dressed throngs began to exasperate him.

On a side street he caught a glimpse of his own place of business; and it almost nauseated him to remember old man Sharrow, and the walls hung with plans of streets and sewers and surveys and photographs; and his own yellow oak desk----

"Good Lord!" he thought. "If the war ends, have I got to go back to that!----"

The family were at breakfast when he walked in on them--only two--his father and mother.

In his mother's arms he suddenly felt very young and subdued, and very glad to be there.

"Where the devil did you come from, Jim?" repeated his father, with twitching features and a grip on his son's strong hand that he could not bring himself to loosen.

Yes, it was pretty good to get home, after all-- ... And he might not have come back at all. He realised it, now, in his mother's arms, feeling very humble and secure.

His mother had realised it, too, in every waking hour since the day her only son had sailed at night--that had been the hardest!--at night--and at an unnamed hour of an unnamed day!--her only son--gone in the darkness----

On his way upstairs, he noticed a red service flag bearing a single star hanging in his mother's window.