Troy, burning with fever, lay on a hospital bed.
He was not very clear where the hospital was, nor how he had got there;
and he did not greatly care. All that was left of clearness in his brain
was filled with the bitter sense of his failure. He had abandoned his
job to plunge into battle, and before he had seen a German or fired a
shot he found himself ignominiously laid by the heels in a strange place
full of benevolent-looking hypocrites whose least touch hurt him a
million times more than the German bullet.
It was all a stupid agitating muddle, in the midst of which he tried in
vain to discover what had become of Jacks, what had happened to the
ambulance, and whether the old people and the wounded territorial had
been heard of. He insisted particularly on the latter point to the cruel
shaved faces that were always stooping over him, but they seemed unable
to give him a clear answer--or else their cruelty prompted them to
withhold what they knew. He groaned and tossed and got no comfort, till,
suddenly opening his eyes, he found Jacks sitting by his bed.
He poured out his story to Jacks in floods and torrents: there was no
time to listen to what his friend had to say. He went in and out of the
whole business with him, explaining, arguing, and answering his own
arguments. Jacks, passive and bewildered, sat by the bed and murmured:
"All right--all right" at intervals. Then he too disappeared, giving
way to other unknown faces.
The third night (some one said it was the third night) the fever dropped
a little. Troy felt more quiet, and Jacks, who had turned up again, sat
beside him, and told him all the things he had not been able to listen
to the first day--all the great things in which he had played an
unconscious part.
"Battle of the Marne? Sure you were in it--in it up to the hilt, you
lucky kid!"
And what a battle it had been! The Americans had taken Vaux and driven
the Germans back across the bridge at Château-Thierry, the French were
pressing hard on their left flank, the advance on Paris had been
checked--and the poor old couple and the territorial in the ambulance
had not fallen into enemy hands, but had been discovered by Jacks where
Troy had left them, and hurried off to places of safety the same night.
As Troy lay and listened, tears of weakness and joy ran down his face.
The Germans were back across the Marne, and he had really been in the
action that had sent them there! The road to Paris was barred--and Sophy
Wicks was somewhere in France.... He felt as light as a feather, and if
it had not been for his deathly weakness he would have jumped out of bed
and insisted on rejoining the ambulance. But as it was he could only lie
flat and feebly return Jacks's grin....
* * * * *
There was just one thing he had not told Jacks: a little thing that
Jacks would not have understood. Out in the wheat, when he had felt that
tap on the shoulder, he had turned round quickly, thinking that a friend
had touched him. At the same instant he had stumbled and fallen, and
his eyes had grown dark; but through the darkness he still felt
confusedly that a friend was near, if only he could lift his lids and
look.
He did lift them at last; and there in the dawn he saw a French soldier,
haggard and battle-worn, looking down at him. The soldier wore the
uniform of the _chasseurs à pied_, and his face was the face of Paul
Gantier, bending low and whispering: "_Mon petit--mon pauvre petit
gars...._" Troy heard the words distinctly, he knew the voice as well as
he knew his mother's. His eyes shut again, but he felt Gantier's arms
under his body, felt himself lifted, lifted, till he seemed to float in
the arms of his friend.
He said nothing of that to Jacks or any one, and now that the fever had
dropped he was glad he had held his tongue. Some one told him that a
sergeant of the _chasseurs à pied_ had found him and brought him in to
the nearest _poste de secours_, where Jacks, providentially, had run
across him and carried him back to the base. They told him that his
rescue had been wonderful, but that nobody knew what the sergeant's name
was, or where he had gone to.... ("If _ever_ a man ought to have had the
Croix de Guerre--!" one of the nurses interjected emotionally.)
Troy listened and shut his lips. It was really none of his business to
tell these people where the sergeant had gone to; but he smiled a little
when the doctor said: "Chances are a man like that hasn't got much use
for decorations ..." and when the emotional nurse added: "Well, you must
just devote the rest of your life to trying to find him."
Ah, yes, he would do that, Troy swore--he would do it on the
battlefields of France.