war-cross--oh, my word! Think of me! Then, couldn't you forget this
business I've been telling you? Do you think you could marry me then?"
What was the matter? Why did she stand so still with her head bending
lower and lower, the color deepening on the bit of cheek that his
anxious eyes could see.
"Mary!"
Suddenly she was clutching his collar as if in deadly fear.
"Mary, what's the matter? I'm such a fool, but--oh, Mary, dear!"
With that Mary-dear straightened and, slipping her clutch to the lapel
of his old coat, spoke. She looked into his eyes with a smile that was
sweeter--oh, much sweeter!--for tears that dimmed it, and she choked
most awfully between words. "Jim"--and a choke. "Jim, I'm terrified to
think I nearly let you get away. You. And me not worthy to lace your
shoes--" ("Oh, gracious, Mary--don't!") "me--the idiot, backing and
filling when I had the chance of my life at--at a hero. Oh, Jim!"
"Here! Mary, don't you understand? I've been telling you I was scared
blue. I hated to tell you Mary, and it's the devil to tell you twice--"
What was this? Did Heaven then sometimes come down unawares on the head
of an every-day citizen with great lapses of character? Jim Barlow,
entranced, doubted his senses yet could not doubt the touch of soft
hands clasped in his neck. He held his head back a little to be sure
that they were real. Yes, they were there, the hands--Barlow's next
remark was long, but untranslatable. Minutes later. "Mary, tell me what
you mean. Not that I care much if--if this." Language grows elliptical
under stress. "But--did you get me? I'm--a coward." A hand flashed
across his mouth.
"Don't you dare, Jim, you're the bravest--bravest--"
The words died in a sharp break. "Why, Jim it was a hundred thousand
times pluckier to be afraid and then go. Can't you see that, you big
stupid?"
"But, Mary, you said you admired it when--when you thought I was a lion
of courage."
"Of course. I admired you. Now I adore you."
"Well," summed up, Barlow bewildered, "if women aren't the blamedest!"
And Mary squealed laughter. She put hands each side of his face.
"Jim--listen. I'll try to explain because you have a right to
understand."
"Well, yes," agreed Jim.
"It's like this. I thought you'd enlist and I never dreamed you were
balky. I didn't know you hated it so. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Go on," urged Jim.
"I thought you were mad to be going, like--like these light-headed boys.
That you didn't mind leaving me compared to the adventure. That you
didn't care for danger. But now--now." She covered his eyes with her
fingers, "Now Jim, you need me. A woman can't love a man her best unless
she can help him. Against everything--sorrow, mosquitoes, bad
food--drink--any old bother. That's the alluring side of tipplers. Women
want to help them. So, now I know you need me," the soft, unsteady voice
wandered on, and Jim, anchored between, the hands, drank in her look
with his eyes and her tones with his ears and prayed that the situation
might last a week. "You need me so, to tell you how much finer you are
than if you'd gone off without a quiver."
Barlow sighed in contentment. "And me thinking I was the solitary
'fraid-cat of America!"
"Solitary! Why, Jim, there must be at least ten hundred thousand men
going through this same battle. All the ones old enough to think,
probably. Why Jim--you're only one of them. In that speech the other
night the man said this war was giving men their souls. I think it's
your kind he meant, the kind that realizes the bad things over there and
the good things over here and goes just the same. The kind--you are."
"I'm a hero from Hero-ville," murmured Barlow. "But little Mary, when I
come back mangled will you feel the same? Will you marry me then, Mary?"
"I'll marry you any minute," stated Mary, "and when you come back I'll
love you one extra for every mangle."
"Any minute," repeated Barlow dramatically. "Tomorrow?"
And summed up again the heaven that he could not understand and did not
want to, "Search me," he adjured the skies in good Americanese, "if
girls aren't the blamedest."
THE V.C.
I had forgotten that I ordered frogs' legs. When mine were placed before
me I laughed. I always laugh at the sight of frogs' legs because of the
person and the day of which they remind me. Nobody noticed that I
laughed or asked the reason why, though it was an audible chuckle, and
though I sat at the head of my own dinner-party at the Cosmic Club.
The man for whom the dinner was given, Colonel Robert Thornton, my
cousin, a Canadian, who got his leg shot off at Vimy Ridge, was making
oration about the German Crown Prince's tactics at Verdun, and that was
the reason that ten men were not paying attention to me and that I was
not paying attention to Bobby. When the good chap talks human talk,
tells what happened to people and what their psychological processes
seemed to be, he is entertaining. He has a genuine gift of sympathy and
a power to lead others in the path he treads; in short, he tells a good
story. But like most people who do one thing particularly well he is
always priding himself on the way he does something else. He likes to
look at Colonel Thornton as a student of the war, and he has the time of
his life when he can get people to listen to what he knows Joffre and
Foch and Haig and Hindenberg ought to have done. So at this moment he
was enjoying his evening, for the men I had asked to meet him, all
strangers to him, ignorant of his real powers, were hanging on his
words, partly because no one can help liking him whatever he talks
about, and partly because, with that pathetic empty trouser-leg and the
crutch hooked over his chair, he was an undoubted hero. So I heard the
sentences ambling, and reflected that Hilaire Belloc with maps and a
quiet evening would do my tactical education more good than Bobby
Thornton's discursions. And about then I chuckled unnoticed, over the
silly frogs' legs.
"Tell me, Colonel Thornton, do you consider that the French made a
mistake in concentrating so much of their reserve--" It was the
Governor himself who was demanding this earnestly of Bobby. And I saw
that the Governor and the rest were hypnotized, and did not need me.
So I sat at the head of the table, and waiters brooded over us, and
cucumbers and the usual trash happened, and Bobby held forth while the
ten who were bidden listened as to one sent from heaven. And, being
superfluous, I withdrew mentally to a canoe in a lonely lake and went
frogging.
Vicariously. I do not like frogging in person. The creature smiles. Also
he appeals because he is ugly and complacent. But for the grace of God I
might have looked so. He sits in supreme hideousness frozen to the end
of a wet log, with his desirable hind legs spread in view, and smiles
his bronze smile of confidence in his own charm and my friendship. It is
more than I can do to betray that smile. So, hating to destroy the beast
yet liking to eat the leg, about once in my summer vacation in camp I go
frogging, and make the guides do it.
It would not be etiquette to send them out alone, for in our club guides
are supposed to do no fishing or shooting--no sport. Therefore, I sit in
a canoe and pretend to take a frog in a landing-net and miss two or
three and shortly hand over the net to Josef. We have decided on
landing-nets as our tackle. I once shot the animals with a .22 Flobert
rifle, but almost invariably they dropped, like a larger bullet, off the
log and into the mud, and that was the end. We never could retrieve
them. Also at one time we fished them with a many-pronged hook and a bit
of red flannel. But that seemed too bitter a return for the bronze
smile, and I disliked the method, besides being bad at it. We took to
the landing-net.
To see Josef, enraptured with the delicate sport, approach a net
carefully till within an inch of the smile, and then give the old graven
image a smart rap on the legs in question to make him leap headlong into
the snare--to see that and Josef's black Indian eyes glitter with joy at
the chase is amusing. I make him slaughter the game instantly, which
appears supererogatory to Josef who would exactly as soon have a
collection of slimy ones leaping around the canoe. But I have them dead
and done for promptly, and piled under the stern seat. And on we paddle
to the next.
The day to which I had retired from my dinner-party and the tactical
lecture of my distinguished cousin was a late August day of two years
before. The frogging fleet included two canoes, that of young John
Dudley who was doing his vacation with me, and my own. In each canoe, as
is Hoyle for canoeing in Canada, were two guides and a "m'sieur." The
other boat, John's, was somewhere on the opposite shore of Lac des
Passes, the Lake of the Passes, crawling along edges of bays and
specializing in old logs and submerged rocks, after frogs with a
landing-net, the same as us. But John--to my mind coarser--was doing his
own frogging. The other boat was nothing to us except for an occasional
yell when geography brought us near enough, of "How many?" and envy and
malice and all uncharitableness if the count was more, and hoots of
triumph if less.
In my craft sailed, besides Josef and myself, as bow paddler, The Tin
Lizzie. We called him that except when he could hear us, and I think it
would have done small harm to call him so then, as he had the brain of a
jack-rabbit and managed not to know any English, even when soaked in it
daily. John Dudley had named him because of the plebeian and reliable
way in which he plugged along Canadian trails. He set forth the queerest
walk I have ever seen--a human Ford, John said. He was also quite mad
about John. There had been a week in which Dudley, much of a doctor, had
treated, with cheerful patience and skill, an infected and painful hand
of the guide's, and this had won for him the love eternal of our Tin
Lizzie. Little John Dudley thought, as he made jokes to distract the
boy, and worked over his big throbbing fist, the fist which meant daily
bread--little John thought where the plant of love springing from that
seed of gratitude would at last blossom. Little he thought as the two
sat on the gallery of the camp, and the placid lake broke in silver on
pebbles below, through what hell of fire and smoke and danger the
kindliness he gave to the stupid young guide would be given back to him.
Which is getting ahead of the story.
I suggested that the Lizzie might like a turn at frogging, and Josef,
with Indian wordlessness, handed the net to him. Whereupon, with his
flabby mouth wide and his large gray eyes gleaming, he proceeded to miss
four easy ones in succession. And with that Josef, in a gibberish which
is French-Canadian patois of the inner circles, addressed the Tin Lizzie
and took away the net from him, asking no orders from me. The Lizzie,
pipe in mouth as always, smiled just as pleasantly under this punishment
as in the hour of his opportunities. He would have been a very handsome
boy, with his huge eyes and brilliant brown and red color and his
splendid shoulders and slim waist of an athlete if only he had possessed
a ray of sense. Yet he was a good enough guide to fill in, for he was
strong and willing and took orders amiably from anybody and did his
routine of work, such as chopping wood and filling lamps and bringing
water and carrying boats, with entire efficiency. That he had no
initiative at all and by no chance did anything he was not told to, even
when most obvious, that he was lacking in any characteristic of
interest, that he was moreover a supreme coward, afraid to be left alone
in the woods--these things were after all immaterial, for, as John
pointed out, we didn't really need to love our guides.
John also pointed out that the Lizzie--his name was, incidentally,
Aristophe--had one nice quality. Of course, it was a quality which
appealed most to the beneficiary, yet it seemed well to me also to have
my guests surrounded with mercy and loving kindness. John had but to
suggest building a fire or greasing his boots or carrying a canoe over
any portage to any lake, and the Lizzie at once leaped with a bright
smile as who should say that this was indeed a pleasure. "C'est bien,
M'sieur," was his formula. He would gaze at John for sections of an
hour, with his flabby mouth open in speechless surprise as if at the
unbelievable glory and magnificence of M'sieur. A nice lad, John Dudley
was, but no subtle enchanter; a stocky and well-set-up young man with a
whole-souled, garrulous and breezy way, and a gift of slang and a
brilliant grin. What called forth hero-worship towards him I never
understood; but no more had I understood why Mildred Thornton, Colonel
Thornton's young sister, my very beautiful cousin, should have selected
him, from a large assortment of suitors, to marry. Indeed I did not
entirely understand why I liked having John in camp better than anyone
else; probably it was essentially the same charm which impelled Mildred
to want to live with him, and the Tin Lizzie to fall down and worship.
In any case the Lizzie worshipped with a primitive and unashamed and
enduring adoration, which stood even the test of fear. That was the
supreme test for the Tin Lizzie, who was a coward of cowards. Rather
cruelly I bet John on a day that his satellite did not love him enough
to go out to the club-house alone for him, and the next day John was in
sore need of tobacco, not to be got nearer than the club.
"Aristophe will go out and get it for me," he announced as
Aristophe--the Lizzie--trotted about the table at lunch-time purveying
us flapjacks.
The Tin Lizzie stood rooted a second, petrified at the revolutionary
scheme of his going to the club, companions unmentioned. There one saw
as if through glass an idea seeking a road through his smooth gray
matter. One had always gone to the club with Josef, or Maxime or
Pierre--certainly M'sieur meant that; one would of course be glad to
go--with Josef or Maxime or Pierre--to get tobacco for M'sieur John. Of
course, the idea slid through the old road in the almost unwrinkled gray
matter, and came safely to headquarters.
"C'est bien, M'sieur," answered the Lizzie smiling brightly.
And with that I knocked the silly little smile into a cocked hat. "You
may start early tomorrow, Aristophe," I said, "and get back by dark,
going light, I can't spare any other men to go with you. But you will
certainly not mind going alone--to get tobacco for M'sieur John."
The poor Tin Lizzie turned red and then white, and his weak mouth fell
open and his eyebrows lifted till the whites of his eyes showed above
the gray irises. And one saw again, through the crystal of his
unexercised brain, the operation of a painful and new thought. M'sieur
John--a day alone in the woods--love, versus fear--which would win. John
and I watched the struggle a bit mercilessly. A grown man gets small
sympathy for being a coward. And yet few forms of suffering are keener.
We watched; and the Tin Lizzie stood and gasped in the play of his
emotions. Nobody had ever given this son of the soil ideals to hold to
through sudden danger; no sense of inherited honor to be guarded came to
help the Lizzie; he had been taught to work hard and save his
skin--little else. The great adoration for John which had swept him off
his commonplace feet--was it going to make good against life-long
selfish caution? We wondered. It was curious to watch the new big
feeling fight the long-established petty one. And it was with a glow of
triumph quite out of drawing that we saw the generous instinct win the
battle.
"Oui, M'sieur," spoke Aristophe, unconscious of subtleties or watching.
"I go tomorrow--alone. _C'est bien, M'sieur_."
It was about the only remark I ever heard him make, that gracious:
"_C'est bien, M'sieur_!" But he made it remarkably well. Almost he
persuaded me to respect him with that hearty response to the call of
duty, that humble and high gift of graciousness. One remembers him as
his dolly face lighted at John's order to go and clean trout or carry in
logs, and one does not forget the absurd, queer little fast trot at
which his powerful young legs would instantaneously swing off to obey
the behest. Such was the Tin Lizzie, the guide who paddled bow in my
canvas canoe on the day of the celebrated frog hunt.
That the frog hunt was celebrated was owing to the Lizzie. He should
have been in John's boat, as one of John's guides, but at the last
moment, there was a confusion of tongues and Lizzie was shipped aboard
my canoe. In the excitement of the chase Josef, stern man, had faced
about to manipulate his landing-net; Aristophe also slewed around and,
sitting on the gunwale, became stern paddler. I was in the middle
screwed anyhow, watching the frog fishing and enjoying the enjoyment of
the men. Poor chaps, it was the only bit of personal play they got out
of our month of play. Aristophe, the Tin Lizzie, was quite mad with the
excitement even from his very second fiddle standpoint of paddler to
Josef's frogging. His enormous gray eyes snapped, his teeth showed white
and gold around his pipe--which he nearly bit off--and he even used
language.
"_Tiens! Encore un!_" hissed the Lizzie in a blood-curdling whisper as a
new pair of pop eyes lifted from the edge of a rotten log.
And Josef, who had always seen the frog first, fired a guttural
sentence, full of contempt, full of friendliness, for he sized up the
Lizzie, his virtues and his limitations, accurately. And then the boat
was pushed and pulled in the shallow water till Josef and the net were
within range. With, that came the slow approach of the net to the smile,
the swift tap on the eatable legs, and headlong into his finish leaped
M. Crapaud. Which is rot his correct name, Josef tells me, in these
parts, but M. Guarron. And that, being translated, means Mr.
Very-Big-Bull-Frog.
Business had prospered to fourteen or fifteen head of frogs, and we
calculated that the other boat might have a dozen when, facing towards
Aristophe, I saw his dull, fresh face suddenly change. My pulse missed a
beat at that expression. It was adequate to an earthquake or sudden
death. How the fatuous doll-like features could have been made to
register that stare of a soul in horror I can't guess. But they did. The
whites of his eyes showed an eighth of an inch above the irises and his
black eyebrows were shot up to the roots of his glossy black hair. In
the gleaming white and gold of his teeth the pipe was still gripped. And
while I gazed, astonished, his unfitting deep voice issued from that
mask of fear:
"_Tiens! Encore un!_" And I screwed about and saw that the Lizzie was
running the boat on top of an enormous frog which he had not spied till
the last second. With that Josef exploded throaty language and leaning
sidewise made a dive at the frog. Aristophe, unbalanced with emotion and
Josef's swift movement shot from his poise at the end of the little
craft, and landed, in a foot of water, flat on his buck, and the frog
seized that second to jump on his stomach.
I never heard an Indian really laugh before that day. The hills
resounded with Josef's shouts. We laughed, Josef and I, till we were
weak, and for a good minute Aristophe sprawled in the lake, with the
frog anchored as if till Kingdom come on his middle, and howled lusty
howls while we laughed. Then Josef fished the frog and got him off the
Tin Lizzie's lungs. And Aristophe, weeping, scrambled into the boat. And
as we went home in the cool forest twilight, up the portage by the
rushing, noisy rapids, Josef, walking before us, carrying the
landing-net full of frogs' legs, shook with laughter every little while
again, as Aristophe, his wet strong young legs, the only section of him
showing, toiled ahead up the winding thread of a trail, carrying the
inverted canoe on his head.
It was this adventure which came to me and seized me and carried me a
thousand miles northward into Canadian forest as I looked at the frogs'
legs on my plate at the Cosmic Club, and did not listen to my cousin,
the Colonel, talking military tactics.
The mental review took an eighth of the time it has taken me to tell it.
But as I shook off my dream of the woods, I realized that, while
Thornton still talked, he had got out of his uninteresting rut into his
interesting one. Without hearing what he said I knew that from the look
of the men's faces. Each man's eyes were bright, through a manner of
mistiness, and there was a sudden silence which was perhaps what had
recalled me.
"It's a war which is making a new standard of courage," spoke the young
Governor in the gentle tone which goes so oddly and so pleasantly with
his bull-dog jaw. "It looks as if we were going to be left with a world
where heroism is the normal thing," spoke the Governor.
"Heroism--yes," said Bobby, and I knew with satisfaction that he was off
on his own line, the line he does not fancy, the line where few can
distance him. "Heroism!" repeated Bobby, "It's all around out there. And
it crops out--" he begun to smile--"in unsuspected places, from varied
impulses."
He was working his way to an anecdote. The men at the table, their
chairs twisted towards him, sat very still.
"What I mean to say is," Bobby began, "that this war, horrible as it is,
is making over human, nature for the better. It's burning out
selfishness and cowardice and a lot of faults from millions of men, and
it's holding up the nobility of what some of them do to the entire
world. It takes a character, this débâcle, and smashes out the
littleness. Another thing is curious. If a small character has one good
point on which to hang heroism, the battle-spirit searches out that
point and plants on it the heroism. There was a stupid young private in
my command who--but I'm afraid I'm telling too many war stories," Bobby
appealed, interrupting himself. "I'm full of it, you see, and when
people are so good, and listen--" He stopped, in a confusion which is
not his least attractive manner.
From down the table came a quick murmur of voices. I saw more than one
glance halt at the crutch on the back of the soldier's chair.
"Thank you. I'd really like to tell about this man. It's interesting,
psychologically to me," he went on, smiling contentedly. He is a lovable
chap, my cousin Robert Thornton. "The lad whom I speak of, a
French-Canadian from Quebec Province, was my servant, my batman, as the
Indian army called them and as we refer to them often now. He was so
brainless that I just missed firing him the first day I had him. But
John Dudley, my brother-in-law and lieutenant, wanted me to give him a
chance, and also there was something in his manner when I gave him
orders which attracted me. He appeared to have a pleasure in serving,
and an ideal of duty. Dudley had used him as a guide, and the man had a
dog-like devotion to 'the lieutenant' which counted with me. Also he
didn't talk. I think he knew only four words. I flung orders at him and
there would be first a shock of excitement, then a second of tense
anxiety, then a radiant smile and the four words: '_C'est bien, Mon
Capitaine_.' I was captain then."
At that point I dropped my knife and fork and stared at my cousin. He
went on.
"'_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_.' That was the slogan. And when the
process was accomplished, off he would trot, eager to do my will. He was
powerful and well-built, but he had the oddest manner of locomotion ever
I saw, a trot like--like a Ford car. I discovered pretty soon that the
poor wretch was a born coward. I've seen him start at the distant sound
of guns long before we got near the front, and he was nervous at going
out alone at night about the camp. The men ragged him, but he was such
a friendly rascal and so willing to take over others' work that he got
along with a fraction of the persecution most of his sort would have
had. I wondered sometimes what would happen to the poor little devil
when actual fighting came. Would it be '_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_,' at
the order to go over the top, or would the terrible force of fear be too
much for him and land him at last with his back to a wall and a firing
squad in front--a deserter? Meantime he improved and I got dependent on
his radiant good will. Being John Dudley's brother-in-law sanctified me
with him, and nothing was too much trouble if I'd give him a chance
sometimes to clean John's boots. I have a man now who shows no ecstacy
at being ordered to do my jobs, and I don't like him.