Three Soldiers Part 37

"Ah swear to G.o.d Ah am."

"What's the use of getting all wrought up. The thing's over. You'll probably never see him again."

"Ah ain't all het up.... Ah'm goin' to do it though." He wrung the s.h.i.+rt out carefully and flipped Andrews in the face with it. "There ye are,"

he said.

"You're a good fellow, Chris, even if you are an a.s.s."

"Tell me we're going into the line in a day or two."

"There's been a devil of a lot of artillery going up the road; French, British, every old kind."

"Tell me they's raisin' h.e.l.l in the Oregon forest."

They walked slowly across the road. A motorcycle despatch-rider whizzed past them.

"It's them guys has the fun," said Chrisfield.

"I don't believe anybody has much."

"What about the officers?"

"They're too busy feeling important to have a real h.e.l.l of a time."

The hard cold rain beat like a lash in his; face. There was no light anywhere and no sound but the hiss of the rain in the gra.s.s. His eyes strained to see through the dark until red and yellow blotches danced before them. He walked very slowly and carefully, holding something very gently in his hand under his raincoat. He felt himself full of a strange subdued fury; he seemed to be walking behind himself spying on his own actions, and what he saw made him feel joyously happy, made him want to sing.

He turned so that the rain beat against his cheek. Under his helmet he felt his hair full of sweat that ran with the rain down his glowing face. His fingers clutched very carefully the smooth stick he had in his hand.

He stopped and shut his eyes for a moment; through the hiss of the rain he had heard a sound of men talking in one of the shanties. When he shut his eyes he saw the white face of Anderson before him, with its unshaven chin and the eyebrows that met across the nose.

Suddenly he felt the wall of a house in front of him. He put out his hand. His hand jerked back from the rough wet feel of the tar paper, as if it had touched something dead. He groped along the wall, stepping very cautiously. He felt as he had felt reconnoitering in the Bringy Wood. Phrases came to his mind as they had then. Without thinking what they meant, the words Make the world safe for Democracy formed themselves in his head. They were very comforting. They occupied his thoughts. He said them to himself again and again. Meanwhile his free hand was fumbling very carefully with the fastening that held the wooden shutter over a window. The shutter opened a very little, creaking loudly, louder than the patter of rain on the roof of the shack. A stream of water from the roof was pouring into his face.

Suddenly a beam of light transformed everything, cutting the darkness in two. The rain glittered like a bead curtain. Chrisfield was looking into a little room where a lamp was burning. At a table covered with printed blanks of different size sat a corporal; behind him was a bunk and a pile of equipment. The corporal was reading a magazine. Chrisfield looked at him a long time; his fingers were tight about the smooth stick. There was no one else in the room.

A sort of panic seized Chrisfield; he strode away noisily from the window and pushed open the door of the shack.

"Where's Sergeant Anderson?" he asked in a breathless voice of the first man he saw.

"Corp's there if it's anything important," said the man. "Anderson's gone to an O. T. C. Left day before yesterday."

Chrisfield was out in the rain again. It was beating straight in his face, so that his eyes were full of water. He was trembling. He had suddenly become terrified. The smooth stick he held seemed to burn him.

He was straining his ears for an explosion. Walking straight before him down the road, he went faster and faster as if trying to escape from it.

He stumbled on a pile of stones. Automatically he pulled the string out of the grenade and threw it far from him.

There was a minute's pause.

Red flame spurted in the middle of the wheatfield. He felt the sharp crash in his eardrums.

He walked fast through the rain. Behind him, at the door of the shack, he could hear excited voices. He walked recklessly on, the rain blinding him. When he finally stepped into the light he was so dazzled he could not see who was in the wine shop.

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned, Chris," said Andrews's voice. Chrisfield blinked the rain out of his lashes. Andrews sat writing with a pile of papers before him and a bottle of champagne. It seemed to Chrisfield to soothe his nerves to hear Andy's voice. He wished he would go on talking a long time without a pause.

"If you aren't the crowning idiot of the ages," Andrews went on in a low voice. He took Chrisfield by the arm and led him into the little back room, where was a high bed with a brown coverlet and a big kitchen table on which were the remnants of a meal.

"What's the matter? Your arm's trembling like the devil. But why.... O pardon, Crimpette. C'est un ami.... You know Crimpette, don't you?" He pointed to a youngish woman who had just appeared from behind the bed.

She had a flabby rosy face and violet circles under her eyes, dark as if they'd been made by blows, and untidy hair. A dirty grey muslin dress with half the hooks off held in badly her large b.r.e.a.s.t.s and flabby figure. Chrisfield looked at her greedily, feeling his furious irritation flame into one desire.

"What's the matter with you, Chris? You're crazy to break out of quarters this way?"

"Say, Andy, git out o' here. Ah ain't your sort anyway.... Git out o'

here."

"You're a wild man. I'll grant you that.... But I'd just as soon be your sort as anyone else's.... Have a drink."

"Not now."

Andrews sat down with his bottle and his papers, pus.h.i.+ng away the broken plates full of stale food to make a place on the greasy table. He took a gulp out of the bottle, that made him cough, then put the end of his pencil in his mouth and stared gravely at the paper.

"No, I'm your sort, Chris," he said over his shoulder, "only they've tamed me. O G.o.d, how tame I am."

Chrisfield did not listen to what he was saying. He stood in front of the woman, staring in her face. She looked at him in a stupid frightened way. He felt in his pockets for some money. As he had just been paid he had a fifty-franc note. He spread it out carefully before her. Her eyes glistened. The pupils seemed to grow smaller as they fastened on the bit of daintily colored paper. He crumpled it up suddenly in his fist and shoved it down between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Some time later Chrisfield sat down in front of Andrews. He still had his wet slicker on.

"Ah guess you think Ah'm a swine," he said in his normal voice. "Ah guess you're about right."

"No, I don't," said Andrews. Something made him put his hand on Chrisfield's hand that lay on the table. It had a feeling of cool health.

"Say, why were you trembling so when you came in here? You seem all right now."

"Oh, Ah dunno,'" said Chrisfield in a soft resonant voice.

They were silent for a long while. They could hear the woman's footsteps going and coming behind them.

"Let's go home," said Chrisfield.

"All right.... Bonsoir, Crimpette."

Outside the rain had stopped. A stormy wind had torn the clouds to rags.

Here and there cl.u.s.ters of stars showed through. They splashed merrily through the puddles. But here and there reflected a patch of stars when the wind was not ruffling them.

"Christ, Ah wish Ah was like you, Andy," said Chrisfield.

"You don't want to be like me, Chris. I'm no sort of a person at all.

I'm tame. O you don't know how d.a.m.n tame I am."