Part 63 (1/2)
”A hogshead of jelly might be good to bathe in!” said the banker's son.
”I haven't had a bath for a month.”
”I have. I turned my underclothes inside out!” said the barber's son. He was aiming to take Hugo's place as humorist, in the confidence of one sprung from a talkative family.
Scanning the faces, the judge's son found many new ones--those of the older reservists--while many of the faces of barrack days were missing.
”Whom have we lost?” he asked.
The answer, given with dull matter-of-factness, revealed that, of the group that had talked so light-heartedly of war six weeks before, only little Peterkin, the valet's son, and Pilzer, the butcher's son, and the barber's and the banker's sons survived. They were sitting in a row, from the instinct that makes old a.s.sociates keep together even though they continually quarrel. The striking thing was that Peterkin looked the most cheerful and well-kept of the four. As the proud possessor of a pair of scissors, he had trimmed a surprisingly heavy beard Van Dyck fas.h.i.+on, which emphasized his peaked features and a certain consciousness of superiority; while the barber's son sported only a few scraggly hairs. The scant, reddish product of Pilzer's cheeks, leaving bare the liver patch, only accentuated its repulsiveness and a savagery in his voice and look which was no longer latent under the conventional discipline of every-day existence. The company had not been in the first Engadir a.s.sault, but, being near the Engadir position, had suffered heavily in support.
”You were in the big attack night before last?” asked the judge's son.
”We started in,” said Peterkin, ”but Captain Fraca.s.se brought us back,”
he added in a way that implied that only orders had kept him from going on.
Peterkin, the trembling little Peterkin of the baptismal charge across the line of white posts, had been the first out of the redoubt on to the glacis in that abortive effort, living up to the bronze cross on his breast. He was one of the half dozen out of the score that had started to return alive. The psychology of war had transformed his gallantry; it had pa.s.sed from simulation to reality, thanks to his established conviction that he led a charmed life. Little Peterkin, always pale but never getting paler, was ready to lead any forlorn hope. A superst.i.tious nature, which, at the outset of the war, had convinced him that he must be killed in the first charge, now, as the result of his survival, gave him all the faith of Eugene Aronson that the bullet would never be made that could kill him.
”Was the attack general all along the front?” some one asked. ”We couldn't tell. All we knew was the h.e.l.l around us.”
”Yes,” answered the judge's son.
”Did we accomplish anything?”
”A few minor positions, I believe.”
”But we will win!” said Peterkin. ”The colonel said so.”
”And the news--what is the news?” demanded the barber's son. ”You needn't be afraid,” he added. ”The officers are on the other side of the redoubt. They get sick of the sight of us and we of them and this is their recess and ours from the eternal digging.”
”Yes, the news from home!”
”Yes, from home! We don't even get letters any more. They've shut off all the mails.”
”I met a man from our town,” said the judge's son. ”He said that after that story was published in the press about Hugo's d.a.m.ning patriotism and hurrahing for the Browns--it was fearfully exaggerated--his old father and mother shut themselves up in the house and would not show their faces for shame. But his sweetheart, however much her parents stormed, refused to renounce him. She held her head high and said that the more they abused him the more she loved him, and she knew he could do nothing wrong.”
”Hugo was not a patriot. It takes red blood to make a patriot!” said Peterkin. In the pride of heroism and prestige, he was becoming an oracular enunciator of commonplaces from the lips of his superiors.
”The absence of any word from the front only increases the suspense of the people. They do not know whether their sons and brothers and husbands are living or dead,” continued the judge's son.
”Up to a week ago they let us write,” said Pilzer, ”though they wouldn't let us say anything except that we were well.”
”That was because it might give information to the enemy,” said Peterkin.
”As if I didn't know that!” grumbled Pilzer. ”The enemy seems to be always ready for us, anyway,” he added.
”The chief of staff stopped the letters because he said that mothers who received none took it for granted that their sons were dead,” explained the judge's son. ”Besides, he a.s.serts that casualties are not heavy and asks for patience in the name of patriotism.”
”The--!” exclaimed Pilzer, referring to Westerling. He who had set out to be an officers' favorite had become bitter against all officers, high and low.
Peterkin was speechlessly aghast. The others said nothing. They were used to Pilzer's oaths and obscenity, with a growing inclination to profanity on their own part. Besides, they rather agreed with his view of the chief of staff.