Part 46 (1/2)

The door still stood open, at the end of the corridor. Claude went down the steps until he could sight along the floor of the pa.s.sage, into the front room. The shutters were closed in there, and the sunlight came through the slats. In the middle of the floor, between the door and the windows, stood a tall chest of drawers, with a mirror attached to the top. In the narrow s.p.a.ce between the bottom of this piece of furniture and the floor, he could see a pair of boots. It was possible there was but one man in the room, shooting from behind his movable fort,--though there might be others hidden in the corners.

”There's only one fellow in there, I guess. He's shooting from behind a big dresser in the middle of the room. Come on, one of you, we'll have to go in and get him.”

w.i.l.l.y Katz, the Austrian boy from the Omaha packing house, stepped up and stood beside him.

”Now, w.i.l.l.y, we'll both go in at once; you jump to the right, and I to the left,--and one of us will jab him. He can't shoot both ways at once. Are you ready? All right--Now!”

Claude thought he was taking the more dangerous position himself, but the German probably reasoned that the important man would be on the right. As the two Americans dashed through the door, he fired. Claude caught him in the back with his bayonet, under the shoulder blade, but w.i.l.l.y Katz had got the bullet in his brain, through one of his blue eyes. He fell, and never stirred. The German officer fired his revolver again as he went down, shouting in English, English with no foreign accent,

”You swine, go back to Chicago!” Then he began choking with blood.

Sergeant Hicks ran in and shot the dying man through the temples.

n.o.body stopped him.

The officer was a tall man, covered with medals and orders; must have been very handsome. His linen and his hands were as white as if he were going to a ball. On the dresser were the files and paste and buffers with which he had kept his nails so pink and smooth. A ring with a ruby, beautifully cut, was on his little finger. Bert Fuller screwed it off and offered it to Claude. He shook his head. That English sentence had unnerved him. Bert held the ring out to Hicks, but the Sergeant threw down his revolver and broke out:

”Think I'd touch anything of his? That beautiful little girl, and my buddy--He's worse than dead, Dell is, worse!” He turned his back on his comrades so that they wouldn't see him cry.

”Can I keep it myself, sir?” Bert asked.

Claude nodded. David had come in, and was opening the shutters.

This officer, Claude was thinking, was a very different sort of being from the poor prisoners they had been scooping up like tadpoles from the cellars. One of the men picked up a gorgeous silk dressing gown from the bed, another pointed to a dressing-case full of hammered silver. Gerhardt said it was Russian silver; this man must have come from the Eastern front.

Bert Fuller and Nifty Jones were going through the officer's pockets. Claude watched them, and thought they did about right.

They didn't touch his medals; but his gold cigarette case, and the platinum watch still ticking on his wrist,--he wouldn't have further need for them. Around his neck, hung by a delicate chain, was a miniature case, and in it was a painting,--not, as Bert romantically hoped when he opened it, of a beautiful woman, but of a young man, pale as snow, with blurred forget-me-not eyes.

Claude studied it, wondering. ”It looks like a poet, or something. Probably a kid brother, killed at the beginning of the war.”

Gerhardt took it and glanced at it with a disdainful expression.

”Probably. There, let him keep it, Bert.” He touched Claude on the shoulder to call his attention to the inlay work on the handle of the officer's revolver.

Claude noticed that David looked at him as if he were very much pleased with him,--looked, indeed, as if something pleasant had happened in this room; where, G.o.d knew, nothing had; where, when they turned round, a swarm of black flies was quivering with greed and delight over the smears w.i.l.l.y Katz' body had left on the floor. Claude had often observed that when David had an interesting idea, or a strong twinge of recollection, it made him, for the moment, rather heartless. Just now he felt that Gerhardt's flash of high spirits was in some way connected with him. Was it because he had gone in with w.i.l.l.y? Had David doubted his nerve?

XVII

When the survivors of Company B are old men, and are telling over their good days, they will say to each other, ”Oh, that week we spent at Beaufort!” They will close their eyes and see a little village on a low ridge, lost in the forest, overgrown with oak and chestnut and black walnut... buried in autumn colour, the streets drifted deep in autumn leaves, great branches interlacing over the roofs of the houses, wells of cool water that tastes of moss and tree roots. Up and down those streets they will see figures pa.s.sing; themselves, young and brown and clean-limbed; and comrades, long dead, but still alive in that far-away village. How they will wish they could tramp again, nights on days in the mud and rain, to drag sore feet into their old billets at Beaufort! To sink into those wide feather beds and sleep the round of the clock while the old women washed and dried their clothes for them; to eat rabbit stew and pommes frites in the garden,--rabbit stew made with red wine and chestnuts. Oh, the days that are no more!

As soon as Captain Maxey and the wounded men had been started on their long journey to the rear, carried by the prisoners, the whole company turned in and slept for twelve hours--all but Sergeant Hicks, who sat in the house off the square, beside the body of his chum.

The next day the Americans came to life as if they were new men, just created in a new world. And the people of the town came to life... excitement, change, something to look forward to at last! A new flag, le drapeau etoile, floated along with the tricolour in the square. At sunset the soldiers stood in formation behind it and sang ”The Star Spangled Banner” with uncovered heads. The old people watched them from the doorways.

The Americans were the first to bring ”Madelon” to Beaufort. The fact that the village had never heard this song, that the children stood round begging for it, ”Chantez-vous la Madelon!”

made the soldiers realize how far and how long out of the world these villagers had been. The German occupation was like a deafness which nothing pierced but their own arrogant martial airs.

Before Claude was out of bed after his first long sleep, a runner arrived from Colonel Scott, notifying him that he was in charge of the Company until further orders. The German prisoners had buried their own dead and dug graves for the Americans before they were sent off to the rear. Claude and David were billeted at the edge of the town, with the woman who had given Captain Maxey his first information, when they marched in yesterday morning.

Their hostess told them, at their mid-day breakfast, that the old dame who was shot in the square, and the little girl, were to be buried this afternoon. Claude decided that the Americans might as well have their funeral at the same time. He thought he would ask the priest to say a prayer at the graves, and he and David set off through the brilliant, rustling autumn suns.h.i.+ne to find the Cure's house. It was next the church, with a high-walled garden behind it. Over the bell-pull in the outer wall was a card on which was written, ”Tirez fort.”

The priest himself came out to them, an old man who seemed weak like his doorbell. He stood in his black cap, holding his hands against his breast to keep them from shaking, and looked very old indeed,--broken, hopeless, as if he were sick of this world and done with it. Nowhere in France had Claude seen a face so sad as his. Yes, he would say a prayer. It was better to have Christian burial, and they were far from home, poor fellows! David asked him whether the German rule had been very oppressive, but the old man did not answer clearly, and his hands began to shake so uncontrollably over his ca.s.sock that they went away to spare him embarra.s.sment.