Gray knew exactly what was happening inside the house when Tommy took
the general’s niece in to see him. She would go upstairs and speak to
the general from the door, and they would stand round bored and hardly
talking until she came down. And then they would all become animated and
tell anecdotes; and the chief of staff would sit at the piano and sing
wistfully; and an aide-de-camp would bring him some canary seed; and the
chaplain would give his imitation of Harry Lauder making a speech; and
Tommy—
“Get the hell out of here!” he snarled at a cow ambling gently along the
street.
The general entertained vicariously at dinner that night for his niece.
There were her visiting escort and part of the staff and the general’s
own household. And before dinner the chaplain, who had had the mumps,
came and sat with him.
“Well?” said the general.
The chaplain lighted one of the general’s cigarettes.
“She has seen him,” he observed. “He was as you arranged, in charge of a
detail cleaning out the town well. He was game all right. I thought he’d
probably hide, but he didn’t. I’m bound to say, however, that he’s been
in a fighting state of mind ever since.”
“But he didn’t hide. That’s the point. What’s she doing now?”
“They are having tea,” said the chaplain. “There are eight of them—and
at least seven are planning to sit beside her at dinner.”
The general chuckled. Lying there in the high bed, his face gave rather
the impression of a small barrel needing to be hooped.
“I’m going to have him wait at table to-night, Chaplain,” he rumbled.
“If there’s any nonsense about either of ’em, that’ll cure it.”
“I don’t know,” observed the chaplain in a doubtful voice. “I like Gray
and I don’t believe that you’ll do any good by humiliating him. He
enlisted to fight. It isn’t his fault that he isn’t fighting now.”
* * * * *
The above space represents what the general said just there about the
division not getting forward. But when he became calmer:
“Got to offset the idea she’s got about Gray,” he justified himself.
“She knows that story about him roping me over a fence, and like a fool
I spent a whole evening telling about the mischief he’s been up to at
different times. She’s got to see him with his claws clipped.”
The chaplain differed and said so:
“Life,” he pronounced in his best pulpit manner, “life clips all our
claws eventually. But why not leave to the young their illusions and
their dreams?”
“Piffle!” said the general rudely.
Now Peggy took off her uniform that night, which was forbidden in the
little book she carried round with her, and came down to dinner to meet
the waiting household in something rather unwarlike and very pleasing to
behold. Not real evening dress, you understand, for the war was still on
though dying fast. And had her hand kissed by a French officer who had
invented an errand so as to meet her. Then they all went in to dinner;
and there were commissary chocolates on the table; and four candles
standing in saucers; and on a side table a box of the general’s most
cherished cigars, which he had thought were safely hidden away in one of
his kit bags.
The chief of staff sat at the head of the table and Peggy sat on his
right.
The rest drew lots of an army cap to see who should sit next to her—and
Tommy won.
“How nice!” she said, when he sat down. She would have said the same
thing to any one, but Tommy grew quite lyric.
“It is Fate,” he said. “Kismet. Even though the rest of them fall on me
afterward and rend me, this hour is mine.”
“Think of it!” said Peggy in the exact words used by every girl who got
to France and met some one she knew over there. “Meeting here like this
so far from home!”
“If one wants a thing badly enough,” said Tommy, “it just naturally
comes.”
“Soup, sir?” said a deep bass at his elbow.
Tommy glanced up hurriedly, but all he saw was Sergeant Gray’s rather
fine profile as he placed the soup plate.
There was a very quiet little game played at dinner that night. Only
Peggy and the players knew about it. It consisted mainly of most
obsequious and zealous service on the part of Sergeant Gray, so that
Tommy had not a moment for any real conversation. Between courses Gray
stood firm and silent behind Tommy’s chair, and when he disappeared
kitchenward Tommy would try hastily to make up for lost time.
“If you could only know what this glimpse of you means to me, Miss
Peggy. You know, when you are thinking a lot about one particular
person—”
“More chicken, sir?”
“No!”
Gray would move on and Tommy would begin again, the light of desperation
in his eyes.
“It’s been hard to keep my mind on war, I can tell you. Ever since I
heard you were coming—”
“More potatoes, sir?”
“Look here,” Tommy said finally in a low and furious voice, “when I want
more food I’ll ask for it. D’you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Gray in the tone of a well-bred butler.
After that he offered Tommy nothing whatever and left him conspicuously
without dessert. Peggy, who had been rather flushed and silent during
the meal, smiled somewhat grimly at that. But she ate very little. The
plain truth was that Miss Peggy was having to reassort quite a number of
ideas, and among them was that mental picture of Sergeant Gray in a
steel helmet leading a forlorn hope across No Man’s Land and later being
decorated by her uncle, the general. Getting accustomed to having the
greatest military figure in the Army in bed upstairs with the mumps and
the devil of the Headquarters Troop carrying round the mashed potatoes
was rather a strain.
Her escort left that night and Peggy slept at a Red Cross hut in the
village, but before she left she had a few words with the general.
“I do think,” she began spiritedly, advancing into the sick room. “I do
think—”
“Go on out!” roared the general. “Do you want to go round with a face
like a balloon? Go on out!”
“Don’t waste that military tone on me,” said Peggy severely. “I don’t
care whether I get it or not. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think
about you.”
She then sat down on the general’s bed and stared at him coldly.
“Don’t you think,” she said, “that when you have gentlemen round you—”
“Get off the bed, Peggy,” begged the general in a different tone. “Don’t
you know there is always some fool inspector or other looking for things
to take back to G. H. Q.? Do you want to ruin me?”
“You ought to be ruined. Let me tell you, you haven’t fooled me for a
minute. And if you think it is funny to take a friend of mine and just
because you have the authority—”
Here—to the general’s horror—she curled up on the foot of his bed and
began to cry. He was really awfully disturbed. He sat up in his
blue-silk pajamas—he was president of the pajama club the aides had got
up, because he had a monogram on his left cuff; but he did not know he
was president—and patted her and in his anxiety revealed a great deal
he had not meant to reveal—vocally, not physically.
“Good heavens,” he said at last, “what do you want me to do, anyhow?
Kiss him?”
“He ought to be an officer and you know it,” she said in a smothered
tone. Her face was buried in the eiderdown comfort. “He’d be a good
officer, too, and you know that. He wants it more than anything.”
“I dare say,” said the general rather grimly. “Well, if you’ll get up
and behave according to the regulations and not have me court-martialed,
I’ll see what I can do.”
She sat up then and gave every evidence of being about to kiss his
inflated face, but he held her off.
“May I tell him?” she asked.
“You may not,” said the general sternly. “I may have my weak moments and
submit to being bullied when I’m sick. But the time hasn’t come yet when
I allow the women of my family to make my promotions, thank heaven! Now
run and have the chaplain take you home. And for heaven’s sake, remember
that he’s a married man and susceptible.”
Peggy left at the crack of dawn the next day. If she had expected to be
seen off with the éclat of her arrival she was disappointed. Not an aide
showed up; but a tall young man with a sergeant’s chevrons and a pair of
hungry eyes was standing outside the general’s doorway.
“I had to see you,” said Sergeant Gray rather huskily. “I hope you don’t
mind?”
“Well, if you hadn’t—” said Peggy.
“I made a fool of myself last night, you know. I was nearly crazy. Not,”
he added hastily, “that I cared a snap about what I was doing. That’s
all in the day’s work. But to have to listen to that— Am I ever going
to see you again?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Peggy briskly. But there was a shake in her
voice. Because after all there was a rather considerable chance against
it. Sooner or later they would move up, and then—
“Of course we’re going to meet again,” she said determinedly. And
because that was an emotional sort of subject she added: “Isn’t it queer
there is nobody up? I thought the Army rose at the crack of dawn.”
There was a scarcely perceptible twitch of Sergeant Gray’s upper lip and
inside the house the general’s bell was ringing furiously.
“Great luck for me they’re not here,” he said. “I’ll carry any message
you care to leave. I’m a sort of cross between a nursery maid and a
messenger boy, anyhow.”
“I shan’t leave any messages,” said Peggy coldly.
“You’ll—do you mind letting me know your address when you’re located?”
Of course this was only surface talk, because the car had come up which
was to take her back, and the chauffeur, who was from the troop, was
staring straight ahead and listening hard. Also, the general was now
beating a tattoo with his bell and the noise was horrible. What Sergeant
Gray was really saying with his eyes was that he worshipped her.
“I’ll be very glad to let you know,” replied Peggy primly, and got into
the car. It is entirely significant of the sort of girl Peggy was that
Sergeant Gray ran true to form and tucked her in.
“Are you sure your feet will be warm?” he asked tenderly.
Even Peggy, who was feeling awfully slighted by Tommy and the others,
smiled at that. It was so exactly the tone the maudlin captain had used
coming down. Gray gave a final pat to the rug, a tender pat because it
covered Peggy, and lowered his voice.
“I had a lot of things to say to you,” he said hurriedly. “But every
time I think of something I remember that he said it to you last night.
The only thing he didn’t say was—”
“Yes?” said Peggy expectantly.
But the chauffeur had planned that by starting early and going very fast
he could get four hours in Paris, and so moved off. Long after the car
had disappeared down the crooked little street, and while the general’s
bell gave evidence of hysteria, Sergeant Gray stood looking after it.
At least he had seen her alone. There would be a price to pay for it,
but it had been worth any price. As to punishment:
“_Ça ne fait rien_,” muttered Sergeant Gray. Which is army French for
not giving a tinker’s damn.
Exactly one hour late that morning, a shaking William took the general
his coffee.
“Clock an hour slow!” the general shouted in a frenzy. “Are you going to
tell me that every clock in this whole house is crazy?”
“’Pears like they are, sir,” quavered William. “The cook’s clock and
mine—they’re both off an hour. I just called the aides-de-camp, sir,
and Captain Trowbridge’s like he’s out of his head.”
The general put four lumps of sugar in his coffee and stirred it
reflectively.
“Who saw my niece off, William?”
“’Pears like nobody did, sir.”
“I see,” said the general thoughtfully. “William, find Sergeant Gray and
send him here.”
When Gray arrived, somewhat breathless, the general let him stand at
attention for some time. The feeling Gray had now and then that a touch
of spot remover would take him out entirely returned very strongly.
“For some curious reason, sergeant,” said the general, “two clocks in
this house lost an hour last night. Do you know anything about it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Humph!”
The general looked away. Drat the boy, anyhow! He wondered if he had
ever had such desperate eyes when he fell in love for the first time. He
had been in love in a perfectly nice way so many times since. But he
rather hoped he had never looked like a cross between a sheep and a
Bengal tiger.
“I’ll give you one minute to explain,” said the general coldly.
“I wanted a word alone with Miss Peggy, sir. I’m sorry if it caused any
trouble.”
“Trouble!” bawled the general, and sank back among his pillows. “The
plain truth is, Gray, that I’ve got to get rid of you. You’re making an
old man of me. I’m going to turn you over to somebody else.”
“Yes, sir,” said Gray, growing even paler.
“You will have a week’s C. B. and K. P.,” said the general. Which sounds
rather like the conferring of the Order of St. Michael and St. George,
but is not. “And after that I’m going to send you to an officers’
training school. And,” added the general grimly, “if you don’t behave
yourself may the Lord have mercy on your soul!”
So Sergeant Gray pared potatoes and did various menial duties for a week
in the headquarters kitchen and sang as he worked, mostly about wanting
a belt just like the belt that all the shavetails wore. He irritated the
cook considerably. And now and then he encountered Tommy and saluted him
according to the regulations and without any particular rancour. Because
very soon now he, too, would be clattering about in a belt and spurs,
and so on—and Tommy’s single advantage would be gone.
Now and then Tommy addressed him rather sharply, and at those times
Sergeant Gray bore himself with admirable humility and muttered: “_Ça ne
fait rien_.” He was unbelievably well behaved those days.
Then the time came to leave, and the general gave him a little talk on
the responsibilities of being an officer and the spirit that lay behind
service to his country and pretty nearly brought him to tears. After
that he went away, and with him from the general’s household went
something of gaiety and youth and irrepressible spirits. The division
drilled and waited, and outside his military family the general was his
rigid and soldierly self. He made rounds on horseback, accompanied
generally by Tommy, and discovered a number of things he wasn’t meant to
see; and then rode back to divisional headquarters and searched his
dispatches for the orders to move forward. But none came and the Germans
were breaking.
In his secret heart Tommy was a bit relieved. He was willing enough to
fight, but after all the end of the war would have its advantages. On
the long rides through the French lanes he took again to visualising the
little house somewhere and Peggy in it and golf for two on Saturday
afternoons. After all, if the Germans gave up it would be not only
because of the army in the field but of those—like themselves—who
waited behind the lines. He offered that to the general one day and the
general was unappreciative.
“Don’t talk like a jackass, Tommy,” was what he said.
So through all the early fall the Germans slowly retreated; and the
division waited, growing more and more down-spirited; and the girl in a
seaport French town poured innumerable cups of coffee and cut
innumerable sandwiches; and Candidate Gray worked for his commission. He
worked doggedly night and day. He sat up at night studying and dragged
his tired young body out of bed at reveille and shaved and made his bed
and ate his breakfast hurriedly, and was all that a candidate should be.
Now and then he got a very brief letter from Peggy. It would detail her
work carefully, but it would say very little about herself, and after a
time he grew jealous of her work. She seemed to be obsessed with it, and
the slow and painful fact dawned on him that she loved the whole Army.
“She doesn’t give a hang for me,” he said to himself more than once.
“She was nice to me because of the uniform and what it meant. And she’s
being just as nice to about six hundred a day right now.”
The sad part of it was that he was nearly right. The girl had just
discovered service and was enamoured of it. She went back at night to
her dreary room in a cold French house, and heated water and soaked her
tired feet in it and then crawled into bed to keep warm. But at daylight
she was up again, putting on all the extra clothing she had and drinking
a cup of execrable coffee sweetened with saccharin before starting on
her tramp through the incessant rain to the canteen.
She was too busy to think about Gray or Tommy in the daytime and too
tired at night. She began to feel old and matronly and rather like a
mother to all the world. And when the hospital trains arrived all the
love in her went out to the cheerful boys who were so grateful to her
for what she sometimes felt was so pitifully little.
So her letters grew detached and impersonal, and Candidate Gray,
studying them carefully, found no hope in them and set his teeth
doggedly. If only the Germans didn’t break entirely! If only he’d get
his chance!
Then the Germans broke.
It was too cruel! Too incredible! The thing was over and he had had no
part in it. The division had had no part in it. The day of the
armistice, that brought so much joy with it, brought to about two
million men a sickening sense of futility; of lost opportunity and
wasted effort.
Candidate Gray sat in his barracks and gloomed. After all the commission
had been only a means to an end. He wanted to fight. If he had had a
boyish feeling that he wanted to lead instead of being led—well, he was
very young. And he wanted terribly to prove that he was a man.
And after a time, however, he brightened up. The fellows in the trenches
would have a rest, anyhow. Of course he felt that the armistice was a
blunder. The Hun ought to have been licked to a finish. But at least the
war was over. He dreamed a dream of a little house within motoring
distance of town and Peggy in it and golf for two on Saturday
afternoons.
Having thus begun to see the brighter side of things he wandered into
town to look for the disbursing paymaster and buy him a drink or two,
this being preliminary to an appeal to get permission to sign a cash
receipt for his month’s pay, thus saving a certain amount of time in
case the armistice meant twenty-four hours’ leave—which was important.
It meant getting into the nearby city early and thus getting the best
room in its only hotel. And it meant, too, sending off as soon as
possible a letter to Peggy which was in his pocket.
“I’ve been recommended for my commission,” he had written, “and it ought
to be along pretty soon. I shall get a few days’ leave then, and I
thought if you didn’t mind I’d drop in and see you.” Dropping in to see
her meant travelling a day and a night in a French train and probably
sleeping on the floor or in a baggage rack. He had tried this last and
it wasn’t bad. “I’m pretty well knocked out by the armistice naturally,
but I suppose a lot of poor devils who have had it hard will be mighty
thankful.” He had hesitated over the signature and finally ended it
“yours.”
“And that’s God’s truth too,” he had muttered.
Then he went out and played the eternal game of the private soldier in a
small French village full of officers—did his best to avoid saluting by
trying to look as though he was invisible and, if that ruse failed,
never looking above the second blouse button of any uniform he met.
“What you don’t see won’t hurt you,” he muttered.
In ten days or so Peggy’s letter came back.
“How splendid to think you are going to be an officer,” she wrote. “But
I always knew you would be. And, of course, I shall be delighted to see
you, though I’m afraid I shall be awfully busy. Yesterday we served—”
All the balance was about her work. It was not entirely a satisfactory
letter, and there was a casual mention of a Red Cross major that set him
frowning. Of course those Red Cross chaps would be hanging round her.
There was always some one hanging round her. He added that day a new
jealousy to the ever-present one of Tommy, and had to go out and buy his
lieutenant’s insignia to cheer himself up.
Then one day a rumour spread through the camp; an incredible thing that
took all the courage out of the hundreds of expectant young hearts and
sent the weak sisters among them to the French wine shops to forget
their wrongs in cognac. The rumour was that all promotions were
cancelled.
Gray got it from the one-time mess sergeant of the Headquarters Troop
from the old division. The M. S. had been recommended, too, and was
looking blue round the lips.
“I don’t believe it,” said Gray stoutly, but with a sinking heart.
“All right. You’ll find out.”
“But—but why? We’ve worked like dogs. Sending us here was equivalent to
a promise that if we made good—”
“Any old time they’ll keep a promise they don’t want to! Come on and
have some cognac. I’m going to drink myself to death.”
Candidate Gray went back to his barracks and sat down on his bed. The
bottom had dropped out of his world. All that study and effort, and
now—nothing. Back where he had been. And not even a fight to look
forward to. Something of the fine faith he had in his Government and its
promises died that afternoon, never after to be wholly revived. For the
incredible rumour proved to be true. All promotions were cancelled. All
earned commissions were cancelled. From that time on effort in the Army
was to be without reward.
The Army generally adopted an attitude of _ça ne fait rien_. And
Sergeant Gray said it, too, but without any conviction. He was seared to
the very soul.
There were thirty-eight desertions from the Candidates’ School in the
first twenty-four hours. After that they lessened, for most of the weak
sisters had gone. But the spirit was gone out of the men.
On the tenth day Gray wrote again to Peggy—a cheerful letter which
almost made her cry.
“I had expected to put on a little side when I came to see you. But two
things have interfered. First, I won’t be able to come. Second, there
isn’t any side to put on. I have buried my officer’s equipment in an old
beet field and perhaps some day it will be recovered and hung in a
museum as a relic of the great war. Probably I wasn’t officer stuff,
anyhow, so it’s just as well. Way down in my little inside I’m a bit
disappointed, but _ça ne fait rien_.
“I’m not going to bother you with any more letters. I know you are busy
and I haven’t any right to take up your time.”
He hesitated a long time after that and then just wrote “God bless you”
in a shaky hand and sent it off before he lost his courage. Because his
courage was not quite so good as it had been. He was beginning to lose
faith in himself.
Of course his psychology was wrong. He felt this new and cruel army
order as a personal stigma. He was somehow less of a man for it. He gave
the girl up on the head of it and took to wandering round the camp at
night, giving her up again every minute.
He was entirely inarticulate and there was no one to voice his misery
to, so he did like most lovers and chose some other’s disconsolate words
to fit his case. On a bright night he was prone to sit on the barracks
steps, for instance, and plaintively bay at the moon:
_The hours I spent with thee, dear heart_
_Are as a string of pearls to me._
He would be carried away by emotion after a time and forget the one
hundred and eleven disgruntled candidates within.
_My rosary. My rose-a-a-a—ree._
His heartbroken wail would penetrate the thin walls and loose window
frames of the barracks, and a chorus of groans would echo from the
inside, followed by the opening of a window.
“Aw, go to bed and forget it!” a voice would say.
And after a time, chilled to the bone and having finally renounced her,
he would retire to his cot, take off his shoes and putties, his hat and
blouse, and turn in.
Once warmed through, he slept extremely well.
He went back to the old division after a time, to find things going on
much the same. The general was too good a soldier to tolerate any
slacking. But there was a subtle difference. Only the chaplain remained
the same, for only the chaplain had not hoped for promotion, and the
general, who had been in the Army a long time, and had therefore
developed a sort of armor-plate philosophy.
And on the third day of Gray’s return Tommy came back from seven days’
leave. Sergeant Gray saw him coming back, gay and debonair and clanking,
and viewed him with lowering suspicion. A little later Lewis came to the
door for a breath of air and Gray stalked up to him.
“Where has he been?” he asked. “Trowbridge?”
“He says he’s been to Paris,” said Lewis rather fretfully. The general’s
uncertain temper had been very certain the last few days.
“Like hell he’s been to Paris!”
“I don’t know where he’s been,” said Lewis, “and what’s more I don’t
care. I’ll tell you this, Gray: If the Old Man doesn’t stop working me
day and night I’m going to—”
“I know where he has been,” said Gray darkly, and stalked away.
That night, the chauffeur being laid up, Sergeant Gray drove the aides
to a Red Cross dance, and carefully and with extreme deliberation
ditched the lot of them six miles from anywhere. The aides, after
considerable conversation, walked back in the mud and Gray curled
himself up inside the car and gloomed for quite a length of time. After
which he went asleep and wakened in the cold dawn with a sort of
ready-made conviction that he was going to ditch Tommy as easily as he
had the car and much more permanently.
But that very day he had to acknowledge that the honours of the game
Tommy and he were playing were Tommy’s—to that point.
After nightfall it was the chaplain’s benevolent custom to show moving
pictures in the village square.
The chaplain considered it an excellent time to enlighten the French
population as to America; but as most of the pictures were of the old
Wild West, doubtless the French will continue to think it our native
pastime to shoot up gambling hells and ride madly on horseback with
drawn revolvers after people we do not happen to fancy.
In the square Gray met Lewis and paired off with him out of sheer
loneliness.
“The Old Man thinks we’ll be going home soon,” said Lewis.
“Humph!” said Sergeant Gray, whose faith in the general was moribund
along with other things.
“Well, don’t you want to go?”
“_Ça ne fait rien_,” observed Sergeant Gray out of a low mind.
The hero in the picture, having rescued the girl from eleven bandits and
fired sixteen shots without reloading his revolver, now took the girl in
his arms and turned Lewis’ mind into a new channel.
“Say,” he offered, “you were right about Trowbridge. He didn’t go to
Paris.”
“No?” observed Sergeant Gray indifferently, but with an extra heartbeat.
“He went to see that niece of the general’s. They’re kidding him to
death about it.”
This receiving no acknowledgment he turned toward Sergeant Gray, but
that young gentleman was moving rapidly away in the crowd. So that was
it. This then was what the Army did to a fellow. It took him over to
France and stuck him in a mudhole and didn’t let him fight and offered
him a commission and then took it away. And any stuffed shirt in a belt
and leather putties could amble all over France and give the impression
he’d won the war. Hell’s bells!
The winter passed slowly. Once he got a letter from Peggy and he walked
a mile out of town to read it alone.
“I was so sorry about your commission,” she wrote. “I think it’s a
perfect shame, and somebody ought to write to the War Department about
it. I know you had counted on it.”
Good heavens—sympathy! He didn’t want sympathy. If he wasn’t a better
man than a dozen aides-de-camp he’d cut his throat. He threw the letter
away and then got it out of the mud again and stood for quite a time
holding it in both hands. But he did not answer it. He had, you
understand, given her up.
So the winter passed and the general sent for the chaplain one day and
said: “There’s something wrong with Gray, chaplain, and I’m blessed if I
know what it is.”
“What’s he been doing now?” said the chaplain, helping himself to a tin
of commissary chocolates on the executive desk.
“Nothing! That’s what I’m wondering about. Don’t throw that paper on the
floor! It’s about six weeks now since he’s been up to any mischief. That
was when he ditched my aides.”
“Must be sick,” said the chaplain rather thickly through the chocolates.
“He ditched Tommy, you may recall, the night he returned from his
leave.”
“I see. Probably meant to kill the lot to get Tommy.”
“Very likely,” said the general calmly. “I could have spared one or two
of them too. However, I didn’t send for you about Gray—only I’m blamed
if I know what’s got into girls nowadays. They can’t see any farther
than their noses. What I want to know is, why the deuce when you get
twenty-four hours’ Paris leave you stay a week.”