Part 23 (1/2)

'That will do.' snorted the Meter. 'March your company back to barracks!'

Ruggs replaced his whistle in his pocket in a hang-dog way which showed that he was convinced that his doom was sealed.

'Squads right!' he commanded. 'As you were! I mean, squads left!--Oh, steady! Squads right about! March!'

The company, at route step, had become a ripple of mirth from end to end.

'O Ruggsie!' shouted the Duke, 'I know a good civilian tailor!'

The remark brought on a quant.i.ty of local laughter, and Naughty did not help matters much by starting, 'Keep the home fires burning.'

That evening the flank of Company Number 1 individually condoled with Ruggs, who was trying to decipher how he could be so full of so many different kinds of mistakes.

'He's got the raspberry all right,' commented the Duke, before a large group, including Ruggs.

The 'raspberry,' be it said, was the name applied to the Sword of Damocles suspended by the Meter. When he called a failing candidate into the orderly room and implied that a resignation would be in order, that lost soul was known the company over as 'getting the raspberry,' or 'rasp.'

II

Just before taps, after life had become subdued through study, the small red-headed form of Squirmy was observed making its way to the centre of the long room. He was dressed in a black overcoat fished from the bottom of a trunk. A white tie torn from a stricken sheet made a flaring bow at his neck, and goggles and an old cap-cover served as headgear. He carried in his hand a Webster's Unabridged, which he placed on an old box previously used for the same purpose.

'_St!_ The Exhorter of Squad 21!' came in whispers from a dozen throats; and the room became still.

Squirmy searched his half-dressed congregation witheringly over the tops of his spectacles. Then from his small body proceeded slow tones of thunder,--

'And the Lord said unto Moses, ”Squads right!” (Dramatic pause.)

'But Moses--not being a military man--commanded, ”Squads left!” (Longer pause.)

'And great--was the confusion--among the candidites.

'Peace be with you,' he concluded, pointing an accusing finger at Ruggs; and the company went to bed holding their abdomens.

After the last drill on Sat.u.r.day Alice arrived with her machine, chauffeur, and chaperone. When she spied Ruggs across the parade, with twenty-two pounds of office flabbiness gone, his hardened muscles holding his shoulders and neck erect underneath his khaki, an unmistakable admiration filled her wide hazel eyes.

For a moment his gladness was unalloyed, and the disappointments of crowded barracks and tangled drills faded utterly away. But as the day wore on, the pleasure grew limp in the face of the bleak future. His mind was repeatedly met with the question, 'Shall I tell her?' and he always turned on himself with the reply, 'I am not yet through.'

The unacknowledged dullness between them finally drove them into the distraction of a movie theatre. There, in the darkness, she caught stealthy glimpses of his tightened jaw and distressed face.

'It's going to be very hard on him; he'll be so disappointed,' she said to herself.

At the same time, while apparently following the antics of Mary Pickford, he was thinking, 'It's going to be so hard on her! She'll be so disappointed in me!'

When she had gone, and he found himself once more seated on his bunk in desolation, he berated himself violently:--

'I must have treated her badly. This will not do. I've never given up before. I've got to pull myself up to my best if it's only a corporal's job. It's better to be a _man_ than a higher-up anyway. Good G.o.d, I can serve better by going where I'm put than where I want to _be put_! True patriotism, after all, is filling the niche, whatever--'

'Say, Ruggsie,' burst in the Duke from the side door, 'big doin's here Monday. Big review for a Russian general. This company is goin' to be divided into two--A and B companies.'

Ruggsie was silent.