Three Soldiers Part 21

"h.e.l.l, I don't know," muttered Fuselli. "I'm goin' to sleep."

His mind was a jumble. He remembered vast halls full of green and gold silks, and great beds with crowns over them where Napoleon and Josephine used to sleep. Who were they? O yes, the Empire,--or was it the Abdication? Then there were patterns of flowers and fruits and cupids, all gilded, and a dark pa.s.sage and stairs that smelt musty, where he and the man in Aviation fell down. He remembered how it felt to rub his nose hard on the gritty red plush carpet of the stairs. Then there were women in open-work skirts standing about, or were those the pictures on the walls? And there was a bed with mirrors round it. He opened his eyes.

Eisenstein was talking to him. He must have been talking to him for some time.

"I look at it this way," he was saying. "A feller needs a little of that to keep healthy. Now, if he's abstemious and careful..."

Fuselli went to sleep. He woke up again thinking suddenly: he must borrow that little blue book of army regulations. It would be useful to know that in case something came up. The corporal who had been in the Red Sox outfield had been transferred to a Base Hospital. It was t.

b. so Sergeant Osier said. Anyway they were going to appoint an acting corporal. He stared at the flickering little light in the ceiling.

"How did you get a pa.s.s?" Eisenstein was asking.

"Oh, the sergeant fixed me up with one," answered Fuselli mysteriously.

"You're in pretty good with the sergeant, ain't yer?" said Eisenstein.

Fuselli smiled deprecatingly.

"Say, d'ye know that little kid Stockton?"

"The white-faced little kid who's clerk in that outfit that has the other end of the barracks?"

"That's him," said Eisenstein. "I wish I could do something to help that kid. He just can't stand the discipline.... You ought to see him wince when the red-haired sergeant over there yells at him.... The kid looks sicker every day."

"Well, he's got a good soft job: clerk," said Fuselli.

"Ye think it's soft? I worked twelve hours day before yesterday getting out reports," said Eisenstein, indignantly. "But the kid's lost it and they keep ridin' him for some reason or other. It hurts a feller to see that. He ought to be at home at school."

"He's got to take his medicine," said Fuselli.

"You wait till we get butchered in the trenches. We'll see how you like your medicine," said Eisenstein.

"d.a.m.n fool," muttered Fuselli, composing himself to sleep again.

The bugle wrenched Fuselli out of his blankets, half dead with sleep.

"Say, Bill, I got a head again," he muttered. There was no answer. It was only then that he noticed that the cot next to his was empty. The blankets were folded neatly at the foot. Sudden panic seized him. He couldn't get along without Bill Grey, he said to himself, he wouldn't have anyone to go round with. He looked fixedly at the empty cot.

"Attention!"

The company was lined up in the dark with their feet in the mud puddles of the road. The lieutenant strode up and down in front of them with the tail of his trench coat sticking out behind. He had a pocket flashlight that he kept flas.h.i.+ng at the gaunt trunks of trees, in the faces of the company, at his feet, in the puddles of the road.

"If any man knows anything about the whereabouts of Private 1st-cla.s.s William Grey, report at once, as otherwise we shall have to put him down A. W. O. L. You know what that means?" The lieutenant spoke in short shrill periods, chopping off the ends of his words as if with a hatchet.

No one said anything.

"I guess he's S. O. L."; this from someone behind Fuselli.

"And I have one more announcement to make, men," said the lieutenant in his natural voice. "I'm going to appoint Fuselli, 1st-cla.s.s private, acting corporal."

Fuselli's knees were weak under him. He felt like shouting and dancing with joy. He was glad it was dark so that no one could see how excited he was.

"Sergeant, dismiss the company," said the lieutenant bringing his voice back to its military tone.

"Companee dis-missed!" said out the sergeant jovially.

In groups, talking with crisp voices, cheered by the occurrence of events, the company straggled across the great stretch of mud puddles towards the mess shack.

IV

Yvonne tossed the omelette in the air. It landed sizzling in the pan again, and she came forward into the light, holding the frying pan before her. Behind her was the dark stove and above it a row of copper kettles that gleamed through the bluish obscurity. She flicked the omelette out of the pan into the white dish that stood in the middle of the table, full in the yellow lamplight.

"Tiens," she said, brus.h.i.+ng a few stray hairs off her forehead with the back of her hand.

"You're some cook," said Fuselli getting to his feet. He had been sprawling on a chair in the other end of the kitchen, watching Yvonne's slender body in tight black dress and blue ap.r.o.n move in and out of the area of light as she got dinner ready. A smell of burnt b.u.t.ter with a faint tang of pepper in it, filled the kitchen, making his mouth water.

"This is the real stuff," he was saying to himself,--"like home."

He stood with his hands deep in his pockets and his head thrown back, watching her cut the bread, holding the big loaf to her chest and pulling the knife towards her, she brushed some crumbs off her dress with a thin white hand.

"You're my girl, Yvonne; ain't yer?" Fuselli put his arms round her.

"Sale bete," she said, laughing and pus.h.i.+ng him away.

There was a brisk step outside and another girl came into the kitchen, a thin yellow-faced girl with a sharp nose and long teeth.

"Ma cousine.... Mon 't.i.t americain." They both laughed. Fuselli blushed as he shook the girl's hand.

"Il est beau, hein?" said Yvonne gruffly.

"Mais, ma pet.i.te, il est charmant, vot' americain!" They laughed again. Fuselli who did not understand laughed too, thinking to himself, "They'll let the dinner get cold if they don't sit down soon."

"Get maman, Dan," said Yvonne. Fuselli went into the shop through the room with the long oak table. In the dim light that came from the kitchen he saw the old woman's white bonnet. Her face was in shadow but there was a faint gleam of light in her small beady eyes.

"Supper, ma'am," he shouted.

Grumbling in her creaky little voice, the old woman followed him back into the kitchen.

Steam, gilded by the lamplight, rose in pillars to the ceiling from the big tureen of soup.

There was a white cloth on the table and a big loaf of bread at the end.

The plates, with borders of little roses on them, seemed, after the army mess, the most beautiful things Fuselli had ever seen. The wine bottle was black beside the soup tureen and the wine in the gla.s.ses cast a dark purple stain on the cloth.

Fuselli ate his soup silently understanding very little of the French that the two girls rattled at each other. The old woman rarely spoke and when she did one of the girls would throw her a hasty remark that hardly interrupted their chatter.

Fuselli was thinking of the other men lining up outside the dark mess shack and the sound the food made when it flopped into the mess kits. An idea came to him. He'd have to bring Sarge to see Yvonne. They could set him up to a feed. "It would help me to stay in good with him," He had a minute's worry about his corporals.h.i.+p. He was acting corporal right enough, but he wanted them to send in his appointment.