“Probably I remember too vividly, that’s all. … Anyway, I’m a fool, Rosaline, because you’re a nice girl.”
There were steps on the plank that led to the shore. A shawl over her head and a big bundle under her arm, the old woman came up to them, panting wheezily. She looked from one to the other, trying to make out their faces in the dark.
“It’s a danger … like that … youth,” she muttered between hard short breaths.
“Did you find the clothes?” asked Andrews in a casual voice.
“Yes. That leaves you forty-five francs out of your money, when I’ve taken out for your food and all that. Does that suit you?”
“Thank you very much for your trouble.”
“You paid for it. Don’t worry about that,” said the old woman. She gave him the bundle. “Here are your clothes and the forty-five francs. If you want, I’ll tell you exactly what each thing cost.”
“I’ll put them on first,” he said, with a laugh.
He climbed down the ladder into the cabin.
Putting on new, unfamiliar-shaped clothes made him suddenly feel strong and joyous. The old woman had bought him corduroy trousers, cheap cloth shoes, a blue cotton shirt, woollen socks, and a second-hand black serge jacket. When he came on deck she held up a lantern to look at him.
“Doesn’t he look fine, altogether French?” she said.
Rosaline turned away without answering. A little later she picked up the perch and carried the parrot, that swayed sleepily on the crosspiece, down the ladder.
“Les bourgeois à la lanterne, nom de dieu!” came the old man’s voice singing on the shore.
“He’s drunk as a pig,” muttered the old woman. “If only he doesn’t fall off the gang plank.”
A swaying shadow appeared at the end of the plank, standing out against the haze of light from the houses behind the poplar trees.
Andrews put out a hand to catch him as he reached the side of the barge. The old man sprawled against the cabin.
“Don’t bawl me out, dearie,” he said, dangling an arm round Andrews’s neck, and a hand beckoning vaguely towards his wife. “I’ve found a comrade for the little American.”
“What’s that?” said Andrews sharply. His mouth suddenly went dry with terror. He felt his nails pressing into the palms of his cold hands.
“I’ve found another American for you,” said the old man in an important voice. “Here he comes.” Another shadow appeared at the end of the gangplank.
“Les bourgeois à la lanterne, nom de dieu!” shouted the old man.
Andrews backed away cautiously towards the other side of the barge. All the little muscles of his thighs were trembling. A hard voice was saying in his head: “Drown yourself, drown yourself. Then they won’t get you.”
The man was standing on the end of the plank. Andrews could see the contour of the uniform against the haze of light behind the poplar trees.
“God, if I only had a pistol,” he thought.
“Say, Buddy, where are you?” came an American voice.
The man advanced towards him across the deck.
Andrews stood with every muscle taut.
“Gee! You’ve taken off your uniform. … Say, I’m not an M.P. I’m A.W.O.L. too. Shake.” He held out his hand.
Andrews took the hand doubtfully, without moving from the edge of the barge.
“Say, Buddy, it’s a damn fool thing to take off your uniform. Ain’t you got any? If they pick you up like that it’s life, Kid.”
“I can’t help it. It’s done now.”
“Gawd, you still think I’m an M.P., don’t yer? … I swear I ain’t. Maybe you are. Gawd, it’s hell, this life. A feller can’t put his trust in nobody.”
“What division are you from?”
“Hell, I came to warn you this bastard frawg’s got soused an’ has been blabbin’ in the gin mill there how he was an anarchist an’ all that, an’ how he had an American deserter who was an anarchist an’ all that, an’ I said to myself: ‘That guy’ll git nabbed if he ain’t careful,’ so I cottoned up to the old frawg an’ said I’d go with him to see the camarade, an’ I think we’d better both of us make tracks out o’ this berg.”
“It’s damn decent. I’m sorry I was so suspicious. I was scared green when I first saw you.”
“You were goddam right to be. But why did yous take yer uniform off?”
“Come along, let’s beat it. I’ll tell you about that.”
Andrews shook hands with the old man and the old woman. Rosaline had disappeared.
“Goodnight. … Thank you,” he said, and followed the other man across the gangplank.
As they walked away along the road they heard the old man’s voice roaring:
“Les bourgeois à la lanterne, nom de dieu!”
“My name’s Eddy Chambers,” said the American.
“Mine’s John Andrews.”
“How long ’ve you been out?”
“Two days.”
Eddy let the air out through his teeth in a whistle.
“I got away from a labor battalion in Paris. They’d picked me up in Chartres without a pass.”
“Gee, I’ve been out a month an’ more. Was you infantry too?”
“Yes. I was in the School Detachment in Paris when I was picked up. But I never could get word to them. They just put me to work without a trial. Ever been in a labor battalion?”
“No, thank Gawd, they ain’t got my number yet.”
They were walking fast along a straight road across a plain under a clear star-powdered sky.
“I been out eight weeks yesterday. What’d you think o’ that?” said Eddy.
“Must have had plenty of money to go on.”
“I’ve been flat fifteen days.”
“How d’you work it?”
“I dunno. I juss work it though. … Ye see, it was this way. The gang I was with went home when I was in hauspital, and the damn skunks put me in class A and was goin’ to send me to the Army of Occupation. Gawd, it made me sick, goin’ out to a new outfit where I didn’t know anybody, an’ all the rest of my bunch home walkin’ down Water Street with brass bands an’ reception committees an’ girls throwing kisses at ’em an’ all that. Where are yous goin’?”
“Paris.”
“Gee, I wouldn’t. Risky.”
“But I’ve got friends there. I can get hold of some money.”
“Looks like I hadn’t got a friend in the world. I wish I’d gone to that goddam outfit now. … I ought to have been in the engineers all the time, anyway.”
“What did you do at home?”
“Carpenter.”
“But gosh, man, with a trade like that you can always make a living anywhere.”
“You’re goddam right, I could, but a guy has to live underground, like a rabbit, at this game. If I could git to a country where I could walk around like a man, I wouldn’t give a damn what happened. If the army ever moves out of here an’ the goddam M.P.’s, I’ll set up in business in one of these here little towns. I can parlee pretty well. I’d juss as soon marry a French girl an’ git to be a regular frawg myself. After the raw deal they’ve given me in the army, I don’t want to have nothin’ more to do with their damn country. Democracy!”
He cleared his throat and spat angrily on the road before him.
They walked on silently. Andrews was looking at the sky, picking out constellations he knew among the glittering masses of stars.
“Why don’t you try Spain or Italy?” he said after a while.
“Don’t know the lingo. No, I’m going to Scotland.”
“But how can you get there?”
“Crossing on the car ferries to England from Havre. I’ve talked to guys has done it.”
“But what’ll you do when you do get there?”
“How should I know? Live around best I can. What can a feller do when he don’t dare show his face in the street?”
“Anyway, it makes you feel as if you had some guts in you to be
out on your own this way,” cried Andrews boisterously.
“Wait till you’ve been at it two months, boy, and you’ll think what I’m tellin’ yer. … The army’s hell when you’re in it; but it’s a hell of a lot worse when you’re out of it, at the wrong end.”
“It’s a great night, anyway,” said Andrews.
“Looks like we ought to be findin’ a haystack to sleep in.”
“It’ld be different,” burst out Andrews, suddenly, “if I didn’t have friends here.”
“Oh, you’ve met up with a girl, have you?” asked Eddy ironically.
“Yes. The thing is we really get along together, besides all the rest.”
Eddy snorted.
“I bet you ain’t ever even kissed her,” he said. “Gee, I’ve had buddies has met up with that friendly kind. I know a guy married one, an’ found out after two weeks.”
“It’s silly to talk about it. I can’t explain it. … It gives you confidence in anything to feel there’s someone who’ll always understand anything you do.”
“I s’pose you’re goin’ to git married.”
“I don’t see why. That would spoil everything.”
Eddy whistled softly.
They walked along briskly without speaking for a long time, their steps ringing on the hard road, while the dome of the sky shimmered above their heads. And from the ditches came the singsong shrilling of toads. For the first time in months Andrews felt himself bubbling with a spirit of joyous adventure. The rhythm of the three green horsemen that was to have been the prelude to the Queen of Sheba began rollicking through his head.
“But, Eddy, this is wonderful. It’s us against the universe,” he said in a boisterous voice.
“You wait,” said Eddy.
When Andrews walked by the M.P. at the Gare-St. Lazare, his hands were cold with fear. The M.P. did not look at him. He stopped on the crowded pavement a little way from the station and stared into a mirror in a shop window. Unshaven, with a check cap on the side of his head and his corduroy trousers, he looked like a young workman who had been out of work for a month.
“Gee, clothes do make a difference,” he said to himself.
He smiled when he thought how shocked Walters would be when he turned up in that rig, and started walking with leisurely stride across Paris, where everything bustled and jingled with early morning, where from every café came a hot smell of coffee, and fresh bread steamed in the windows of the bakeries. He still had three francs in his pocket. On a side street the fumes of coffee roasting attracted him into a small bar. Several men were arguing boisterously at the end of the bar. One of them turned a ruddy, tow-whiskered face to Andrews, and said:
“Et toi, tu vas chômer le premier mai?”
“I’m on strike already,” answered Andrews laughing.
The man noticed his accent, looked at him sharply a second, and turned back to the conversation, lowering his voice as he did so. Andrews drank down his coffee and left the bar, his heart pounding. He could not help glancing back over his shoulder now and then to see if he was being followed. At a corner he stopped with his fists clenched and leaned a second against a house wall.
“Where’s your nerve. Where’s your nerve?” He was saying to himself.
He strode off suddenly, full of bitter determination not to turn round again. He tried to occupy his mind with plans. Let’s see, what should he do? First he’d go to his room and look up old Henslowe and Walters. Then he would go to see Geneviève. Then he’d work, work, forget everything in his work, until the army should go back to America and there should be no more uniforms on the streets. And as for the future, what did he care about the future?
When he turned the corner into the familiar street where his room was, a thought came to him. Suppose he should find M.P.’s waiting for him there? He brushed it aside angrily and strode fast up the sidewalk, catching up to a soldier who was slouching along in the same direction, with his hands in his pockets and eyes on the ground. Andrews stopped suddenly as he was about to pass the soldier and turned. The man looked up. It was Chrisfield.
Andrews held out his hand.
Chrisfield seized it eagerly and shook it for a long time.
“Jesus Christ! Ah thought you was a Frenchman, Andy. … Ah guess you got yer dis-charge then. God, Ah’m glad.”
“I’m glad I look like a Frenchman, anyway. … Been on leave long, Chris?”
Two buttons were off the front of Chrisfield’s uniform; there were streaks of dirt on his face, and his puttees were clothed with mud. He looked Andrews seriously in the eyes, and shook his head.
“No. Ah done flew the coop, Andy,” he said in a low voice.
“Since when?”
“Ah been out a couple o’ weeks. Ah’ll tell you about it, Andy. Ah was comin’ to see you now. Ah’m broke.”
“Well look, I’ll be able to get hold of some money tomorrow. … I’m out too.”
“What d’ye mean?”
“I haven’t got a discharge. I’m through with it all. I’ve deserted.”
“God damn! That’s funny that you an’ me should both do it, Andy. But why the hell did you do it?”
“Oh, it’s too long to tell here. Come up to my room.”
“There may be fellers there. Ever been at the Chink’s?”
“No.”
“I’m stayin’ there. There’re other fellers who’s A.W.O.L. too. The Chink’s got a gin mill.”
“Where is it.”
“Eight, rew day Petee Jardings.”
“Where’s that?”
“Way back of that garden where the animals are.”
“Look, I can find you there tomorrow morning, and I’ll bring some money.”
“Ah’ll wait for ye, Andy, at nine. It’s a bar. Ye won’t be able to git in without me, the kids is pretty scared of plainclothes men.”
“I think it’ll be perfectly safe to come up to my place now.”
“Naw, Ah’m goin’ to git the hell out of here.”
“But Chris, why did you go A.W.O.L.?”
“Oh, Ah doan know. … A guy who’s in the Paris detachment got yer address for me.”
“But, Chris, did they say anything to him about me?”
“No, nauthin’.”
“That’s funny. … Well, Chris, I’ll be there tomorrow, if I can find the place.”
“Man, you’ve got to be there.”
“Oh, I’ll turn up,” said Andrews with a smile.
They shook hands nervously.
“Say, Andy,” said Chrisfield, still holding on to Andrews’s hand, “Ah went A.W.O.L. ’cause a sergeant … God damn it; it’s weighin’ on ma mind awful these days. … There’s a sergeant that knows.”
“What you mean?”
“Ah told ye about Anderson. … Ah know you ain’t tole anybody, Andy.” Chrisfield dropped Andrews’s hand and looked at him in the face with an unexpected sideways glance. Then he went on through clenched teeth: “Ah swear to Gawd Ah ain’t tole another livin’ soul. … An’ the sergeant in Company D knows.”
“For God’s sake, Chris, don’t lose your nerve like that.”
“Ah ain’t lost ma nerve. Ah tell you that guy knows.” Chrisfield’s voice rose, suddenly shrill.
“Look, Chris, we can’t stand talking out here in the street like this. It isn’t safe.”
“But mebbe you’ll be able to tell me what to do. You think,Andy. Mebbe, tomorrow, you’ll have thought up somethin’ we can do. … So long.”
Chrisfield walked away hurriedly. Andrews looked after him a moment, and then went in through the court to the house where his room was.
At the foot of the stairs an old woman’s voice startled him.
“Mais, Monsieur André, que vous avez l’air étrange; how funny you look dressed like that.”
The concierge was smiling at him from her cubbyhole beside the stairs. She sat knitting with a black shawl round her head, a tiny old woman with a hooked bird-like nose and eyes sunk in depressions
full of little wrinkles, like a monkey’s eyes.
“Yes, at the town where I was demobilized, I couldn’t get anything else,” stammered Andrews.
“Oh, you’re demobilized, are you? That’s why you’ve been away so long. Monsieur Valters said he didn’t know where you were. … It’s better that way, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Andrews, starting up the stairs.
“Monsieur Valters is in now,” went on the old woman, talking after him. “And you’ve got in just in time for the first of May.”
“Oh, yes, the strike,” said Andrews, stopping half-way up the flight.
“It’ll be dreadful,” said the old woman. “I hope you won’t go out. Young folks are so likely to get into trouble … Oh, but all your friends have been worried about your being away so long.”
“Have they?’” said Andrews. He continued up the stairs.
“Au revoir, Monsieur.”
“Au revoir, Madame.”
III
“No, nothing can make me go back now. It’s no use talking about it.”
“But you’re crazy, man. You’re crazy. One man alone can’t buck the system like that, can he, Henslowe?”
Walters was talking earnestly, leaning across the table beside the lamp. Henslowe, who sat very stiff on the edge of a chair, nodded with compressed lips. Andrews lay at full length on the bed, out of the circle of light.
“Honestly, Andy,” said Henslowe with tears in his voice, “I think you’d better do what Walters says. It’s no use being heroic about it.”
“I’m not being heroic, Henny,” cried Andrews, sitting up on the bed. He drew his feet under him, tailor fashion, and went on talking very quietly. “Look. … It’s a purely personal matter. I’ve got to a point where I don’t give a damn what happens to me. I don’t care if I’m shot, or if I live to be eighty. … I’m sick of being ordered round. One more order shouted at my head is not worth living to be eighty … to me. That’s all. For God’s sake let’s talk about something else.”
“But how many orders have you had shouted at your head since you got in this School Detachment? Not one. You can put through your discharge application probably …” Walters got to his feet, letting the chair crash to the floor behind him. He stopped to pick it up. “Look here; here’s my proposition,” he went on. “I don’t think you are marked A.W.O.L. in the School office. Things are so damn badly run there. You can turn up and say you’ve been sick and draw your back pay. And nobody’ll say a thing. Or else I’ll put it right up to the guy who’s top sergeant. He’s a good friend of mine. We can fix it up on the records some way. But for God’s sake don’t ruin your whole life on account of a little stubbornness, and some damn fool anarchistic ideas or other a feller like you ought to have had more sense than to pick up. …”
Three Soldiers Page 38
