Along about February the division received its orders for home. It drew
new equipment technically, which means that a certain large percentage
of it was old stuff done over—shoes that had been resoled, uniforms
sterilised and somewhat shrunken, but clean at least. And it was most
thoroughly and awfully deloused. There was a great run on the post-card
shop, and the chaplain got up a final boxing tournament and fought for
three rounds himself, while the division cheered itself black in the
face.
He came out of it rather the worse for wear, but nothing whatever to
Tommy, who had been his opponent.
“Fights like he works,” said the general, chuckling, to the chief of
staff. “No rules and no control, but gets results. Did you hear what he
said when Tommy got him that time on the ear?”
But the chief of staff had been discreetly deaf.
So the division prepared to move and the staff went ahead, taking a day
or two in Paris to buy souvenirs and eat at the Ritz and visit the
Folies Bergère. And with the general went Tommy and the other aides and
the chaplain and the C. of S. and Lewis and William and Sergeant Gray.
Sergeant Gray went along because of a rumour that food was scarce in
Paris, and in an extra kit bag he carried three loaves of real bread
baked with white army flour, a box of sugar, a tin pail of butter and
the general’s tea and tea ball. But there was plenty of food in Paris,
it developed, and so he _cached_ the bag under his bed in the hotel and
reported at the general’s door.
The general was not there, but Tommy was—and at the telephone.
“Can’t you hear me?” he was howling. “Confound these French phones,
anyhow. Hello! Hello!”
“Stick your head out the window and you won’t need a telephone,”
muttered Gray in the hall.
“Hello! That’s better. Yes, sailing from your town. Just learned it.
Isn’t that great?”
Sergeant Gray’s eyes narrowed.
“You fix things so you’ll have some free time. . . . But look here. You
know you promised. . . . I—there are some things I want to talk to you
about. All right. Good-bye.”
Something wild and reckless and very young surged in Sergeant Gray’s
breast. She’d promised all her time to him, had she? Very well! He could
have it. If she thought for a minute that he was going to hang round for
a word—
He went out—to find Lewis standing disconsolately on the curb.
“This is Paris, old-timer,” he said recklessly. “Let’s go to my bankers
and get some money and then see the town.”
Lewis eyed him.
“What d’you mean, see the town?” he inquired cautiously.
“Eat and drink. Mostly drink,” said Sergeant Gray with the devil of rage
in full control now.
“Not for mine,” said Lewis. “But if you’re hell bent for trouble I’ll go
along and keep an eye on you.”
But for all his wild talk Gray neither ate nor drank much. He was white
and silent and the eye Lewis kept on him was rather an alarmed one.
“If you call this seeing Paris,” he said finally in an aggrieved tone
when Gray had stood for some time leaning over a parapet looking at the
Seine, “I’m darned if I do. The Hudson’s got that creek beat a mile.”
“More people have drowned themselves in this river per square inch than
in all the rivers you ever saw,” said Sergeant Gray.
“Don’t be a damned fool,” said Lewis nervously.
But Gray only laughed. He intended his laugh to be hollow and it
was—rather.
“Come on, old-timer,” he said. “We’ll see Paris, all right.”
So they ate again and drank a trifle and became extremely dull with too
much food. And that night they did the most sensational thing they could
think of and went to a Montmartre restaurant, all red velvet and gilt
mirrors, with a band trying to play American ragtime and a considerable
percentage of the women not what they ought to be but undoubtedly what
they were.
And they were no sooner seated than Sergeant Gray said: “Why, look who’s
here!”
It was Tommy, of course.
Lewis was no fool and he was awfully uncomfortable. But Gray was quite
calm and slightly exhilarated. He bought a dozen vastly expensive roses
from the flower girl almost at once and sent them to Tommy, who looked
first puzzled and then extremely gratified. He pulled at the small
moustache he had grown in France and interrogated the flower girl. But
she professed entire ignorance.
“May start something,” said Gray, sitting rather low to escape
observation. “Watch him!”
Tommy was alone and rather plaintive about it. He sat for some time
staring at the flowers, and then he gathered them up and presented them
to the girl sitting next to him.
Gray yawned.
“He bit all right,” he said. “Don’t catch his eye, Lewis.”
Tommy was now in earnest conversation with the French girl. Gray was
silent but watchful. Soon he called the flower girl and bought from her
double his previous purchase. He gathered them up in his arms and rose.
“Watch again, Lewis,” he said, “and keep watching.”
He wandered across the room and bowed before the girl.
“Every morn I bring thee violets,” he said in English. And then in
French: “I, too, am laying a tribute at mademoiselle’s feet. But
perceive that it is double the other.”
Then he sat down on her other side. For some time the scandalised Lewis
watched a battle between the two—fought without speech between them.
Tommy bought lilies of the valley; Gray doubled his purchase. Violets;
Gray again.
“You darned idiot!” Tommy muttered. “If you think you can carry this on
indefinitely I’ll show you.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?” said Gray respectfully.
The restaurant was on to the game now and applauding. Tommy was hot and
perspiring and—what was more tragic—financially very low. At eleven
o’clock he was a beaten and a broken man and Sergeant Gray held the
field. Loud laughter greeted Tommy’s discomfited exit.
“And now,” said the French girl. “Why, monsieur?”
“It was a little game, mademoiselle.”
Some time later he prodded the exasperated and drowsing Lewis in the
chest.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll have to get a truck to get that girl’s
flowers home if she’s got a home. Call a taxi, will you?”
“You blamed young fool,” said Lewis savagely. But Gray only smiled.
“I got him again, Lewis,” he said. “Once more. And I’ll get him yet for
keeps.”
Lewis called the taxicab and helped to pile in the flowers and the girl,
and followed himself under protest.
Then to his horror he heard the door shut, and the taxi drove off,
leaving Gray on the pavement.
A half hour later Lewis got back to the hotel and banged furiously at
Sergeant Gray’s door. But the unmistakable sounds of that young
gentleman sweetly sleeping sent him raging off to bed.
Sergeant Gray spent the next day in the train in formulating a new plan
of campaign. Their stay at the seaport might be anything from one day to
three weeks. He went on the theory, therefore, that it was to be for one
day and proceeded on that hypothesis.
During the intervals between meals he sat in a compartment with Lewis,
who sulked and plotted. At the dinner signal he joined the procession
which followed the general’s majestic figure to the dining car, and
which carried:
The chief of staff—the tea ball.
Tommy—a loaf of bread.
First aide-de-camp—using the Shaksperean method—the pail of
butter.
Second ditto—a tin of chocolates.
Gray—the box of sugar.
The chaplain—a bottle of Scotch procured by various underground
methods from a British sergeant major.
As the day went on Sergeant Gray grew perceptibly more cheerful. He went
back to the day coach and fraternised there with Tommy’s striker by
shooting craps with him and losing, and by ignoring the fact that that
worthy was obviously carrying a contraband bottle in a method well known
to the army private—that is, buttoned under his blouse in exact centre
front and held there by his belt.
That night they reached the seaport. Sergeant Gray after a private
conversation with Tommy’s striker was in high good humour again and the
general eyed him with suspicion.
“There’s some new devilment in the air,” he confided to the chaplain.
“When that young rascal begins to sing he’s up to something.”
For Sergeant Gray, carrying kit bags to the various rooms, was carolling
blithely:
_Oh, promise me that some day you and I_
_Shall take our love together to some sky-y-y._
“I’ve got a hunch,” said the chaplain, whose speech had been strangely
changed by army life, “that I’d better keep an eye on Tommy.”
“Nothing of the sort!” the general observed pettishly. “Let him look
after himself. The next few days ought to settle it between them. Let
’em alone. I’m betting on Gray, myself.”
“Two to one on Tommy,” said the chaplain, who didn’t particularly care
for Tommy but wanted to brighten the days of waiting for the transport.
“Fifty francs,” said the general.
“Done,” said the chaplain. “But I make a condition. Don’t use your
influence, general.”
“My influence! You honour me. Don’t throw matches on my floor!”
It was rather late then and most of the party went to bed. Tommy gave
his boots to his striker and shaved, to save time in the morning. He
intended to get an early start. He also spent some time with a pair of
nail scissors and his trench mirror, trimming his hair at the back of
his neck, and set his alarm watch for seven o’clock.
Then he went to bed and dreamed that Sergeant Gray was sitting on the
foot of his bed in a major-general’s uniform and majesty—except that he
had his thumb to his nose.
But Gray did not go to bed early. He had a number of things to do.
First, he saw Tommy’s striker again and a certain sum of money changed
hands.
“Got ’em all?” he inquired first.
“He’s only got three pairs. Here they are. I’ll get a D. D. for this,
most likely.”
“For going A. W. O. L.? You will not. Anyhow, I’ll see to that,” said
Sergeant Gray largely. “You hide ’em and don’t tell me where they are.
That’s all. And then disappear. Get arrested. I only want about six
hours.”
Then with a clear conscience he went out into a drizzling rain and
wandered through the streets. He was, of course, immediately challenged
by an M. P., and addressed him solemnly.
“Approach, varlet,” he said in a deep, sonorous bass. “I would have
speech with thee.”
“You’re out of bounds and out of hours,” said the M. P.
“Wouldst know my errand?” queried Sergeant Gray in a deep, tense
whisper. “Then I will a tale unfold. Know, minion, that I seek a lost
child—my own, my littlest one. A tiny thing with curls that reached—”
“I guess I can take you to her,” said the M. P. cheerfully. “Come along,
old man. We’ve got a nice little place for lost kids.”
“Have a heart, old man,” said Sergeant Gray in his normal voice. “For
particular reasons this town means a lot to me. There’s somebody
here—well, I can’t sleep. That’s all.”
Even M. P.’s are human at times, and after a short further argument
Sergeant Gray passed on.
The M. P. watched him out of sight and then sighed. There was nobody in
the darned town he cared a whoop about. He sighed again, and from far
off in the rain floated back a blithe young voice:
_When we shall be alone and faith renew,_
_And find those hollows where the violets grew-ew-ew—_
He turned a corner and faded away into the night.
Now, Peggy had not slept much that night either. She was cold, for one
thing; and homesick, for another. Service was a wonderful thing, but
there were hours and places in one’s heart that it didn’t entirely fill.
And all this movement homeward, too, left her with a feeling sometimes
of being eternally left behind. The men came in and got their sweaters
or safety-razor blades or whatever they needed—she was in the supply
department now—and went out again for that final leg of the journey
home; and always she remained behind.
And now that the general was going home—she put it on the general—the
feeling of loneliness was rather acute.
She slept finally and rather overdid it toward morning, so she was late
and nearly cross and certainly cold to her very bones when she reached
her headquarters the next morning. She always opened up. She put her key
in the lock and then turned, somewhat startled, because a tall and
familiar figure was beside her, saluting.
“Let me open that for you,” said the figure out of the early-morning
mist.
“Good gracious!” she said. “I—why, Mr. Gray!”
“I’ve been here since five o’clock,” he offered. “Afraid I’d miss you.
It’s hard to tell how much time we have here, and I had a number of
things to settle.”
He did not mention that he had already settled one of them. It was a
full hour later when Tommy missed his boots.
They were inside by that time and she turned on the electric light. He
had a good look at her then, and he saw that she was thinner and
considerably pinched with cold.
“D’you mean to say you’ve been doing this all winter?” he demanded
fiercely.
“Doing what?”
“Coming to this barn, without a fire, and getting things going?”
“There’s a Frenchwoman. She’ll be along soon.”
“What have you had for breakfast?”
“Coffee. Coffee and a roll.”
“Exactly. You look it. Where d’you keep the coal?”
She had been on her own for such a long time that she was rather dazed.
She watched him build a roaring fire. Then he lifted her chair—with her
in it—up close to it and stood off and surveyed her grimly.
“Some things being a noncom has taught me,” he said. “I’ll be a darned
good wife for somebody some day. Now for the ham and eggs.”
“There isn’t such a thing.”
“Oh, isn’t there? You wait and see.”
He caught up his service cap and started out, but paused in the doorway.
“If you’re not sitting right there when I come back,” he threatened,
“I’ll court-martial you. And believe me, I’m some court-martialer.”
She was still rather stunned. The men of the organisation worked hard
enough, but they blew in somewhere about nine o’clock, when the house
was warm and things going. She had never resented it. After all, getting
a house going was woman’s work. But she was most awfully contented
before her fire, and rather like a kitten.
He came back in a surprisingly short time, having left consternation in
his wake at the hotel. He brought a frying pan and six eggs and most of
the general’s private stock of bread and butter and tea, including the
treasured tea ball. She recognised this last and fixed him with a
suspicious eye, but he was quite brazen.
“Yeah,” he said, grinning amiably. “It’s his. So are the butter and the
bread and the tea. The eggs I salvaged elsewhere. Now, if you can get
something to heat water in we’ll breakfast. A real breakfast.” His voice
changed and softened. “You poor little kid!” he said. “When I saw you
coming along in the cold, alone—”
That wouldn’t do. It was dangerous. He fell to breaking eggs violently.
“I’m some cook,” he boasted. “Watch me tie the pan to the end of the
poker, and then watch some more.”
It was about that time that the chaplain heard a fine hullabaloo in the
hotel corridor; and on inquiring the reason put on his bathrobe and paid
a visit to the general. He found that gentleman sitting up in bed with
the eiderdown comfort round his shoulders, drinking a cup of French
coffee and cursing it as he drank.
“About that wager, sir,” he said. “Does it stand in case of trickery on
either side?”
“Hog wash!” said the general angrily. “Slop! Swill!” He banged his cup
down. “What sort of trickery?”
“Gray has made off with Tommy’s boots.”
“All of them?” inquired the general.
“All of them.”
“D’you know,” observed the general genially, “the more I see of that boy
the more I think he’ll succeed in life. He has a way of getting what he
goes after. Now, the time he yanked me over that fence—”
“I remember, sir,” said the chaplain hastily. “But we said nothing last
night about conditions. If theft—”
“Fiddlesticks!” said the general rudely. “Let Tommy go out in his
stocking feet. Gray would. Why didn’t Tommy steal Gray’s boots? Not that
I won’t court-martial Gray. Do him good. Military discipline.”
But after the chaplain had gone the general lay back and lighted a
cigarette and smiled at the ceiling.
Now sometime later in the day, Tommy got a pair of boots. They pinched
his feet and affected his temper—which was bad enough, anyhow. And he
went to Peggy like a needle to the pole. He found her, too, but he found
Gray also—behind a counter and dealing out supplies with a lavish hand.
That is, it had been lavish, but the supplies were almost gone.
“Serve you anything, sir?” said Sergeant Gray in a businesslike manner.
“Soap? Talcum powder?”
Tommy ignored him and bent low over Peggy’s hand. He was in full
regalia—crop, spurs, cap, and gloves in left hand.
“He was the very picture of a modern major-general,” hummed Gray to
himself, but not too low to escape Tommy’s ears.
“I tried to get here earlier,” said Tommy in a tense voice, “but—”
“Sweater, sir?” said Sergeant Gray loudly. “Razor blades? We have the
best quality. Toothbrush? Best bristles—standard make.”
“Gray,” said Tommy coldly, “when I wish anything I shall ask for it.”
“You wouldn’t,” implored Sergeant Gray in a wistful tone, “care for a
pair of socks, sir? Or a—”
“Gray,” thundered Tommy, “report to the general and say that I shall be
here for some time unless he wants me!”
“Sir, I do not clearly understand. Will the captain please repeat?
Paragraph C, Lesson XV, Method of Instruction in Military Courtesy,” he
added in an undertone to Peggy.
“You heard me!” said Tommy in frenzied repression. “Go and do it. And if
I find out that you had any connection with the loss of my boots this
morning I’ll see that something is done about it.”
Gray looked at Peggy. There was perhaps the slightest twitch at the
corners of her mouth. That was all.
He took the message to the general, who was shaving with cold water and
who eyed him grimly over the lather.
“Very well,” said the general. “I’m going there myself soon. You’d
better go back there and wait for me. But—Gray.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Captain Trowbridge’s boots have been mislaid. Before I go I want to see
them outside his door. Don’t leave until they are found.”
The general was looking in the mirror just then. Through that medium
they exchanged a brief glance of understanding.
“Yes, sir,” said Gray.
But Tommy’s striker had gone most effectually A. W. O. L., and it being
necessary to get the general to Peggy as soon as possible Gray solved
that problem by taking two pairs of boots belonging to the chief of
staff and one pair of the adjutant’s and ranging them in a neat row
outside Tommy’s door. But Tommy’s boots had to be found. There had been
an air of cold finality about the general.
The morning passed and at noon he saw the general and Tommy and Peggy
lunching together in the hotel, and felt a cold chill of terror. The
general had missed his tea ball, too, and even the story of the
breakfast had not made up for his sense of personal indignity. Hang the
boy, anyhow! Was nothing safe when he was round?
In the afternoon came the word that they would sail the next day, and
Sergeant Gray’s heart fell lower and lower. But at four o’clock he
located the striker and the boots and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Now for it,” he muttered.
Now, the end of this story might have been different but for two things:
One was Gray’s popularity with the Headquarters Troop. And the other was
that the feud between Tommy and Gray was better known than either of
them guessed—cause and all. So it became in a small way a matter
between the officer personnel and the troop.
Late that afternoon Sergeant Gray raced to Peggy’s headquarters,
assuming when near the door an air of extreme if slightly breathless
leisure. And he found Peggy alone, except for about forty enlisted men
and three young women assistants.
“What’s happened to Trowbridge?” he asked. “Not dead, is he?”
“I don’t see why you don’t like Captain Trowbridge,” observed Peggy
primly. “He’s been very kind. Our trucks are all out or broken down and
we need all sorts of supplies. He’s gone to find a car and bring us
some.”
“Oh, he has, has he?” said Sergeant Gray bitterly.
“I was going to ask you to see about it. But you’ve not been here all
day.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t get back.”
“We always say here,” said Peggy sweetly, “that when we really want
anything done it is the army officers who do it for us.”
“Really? Well, he hasn’t got the stuff yet. Where’s he going to get a
car?” he asked disagreeably. “If he does get one he’ll ditch it
somewhere. I’ve seen him drive.”
“I think you are in a bad humour about something,” said Peggy, still
pleasantly, and left him.
He was frightfully ashamed of himself immediately, but Tommy was pretty
badly on his nerves by that time. He followed her and apologised and had
hard work not to tell her he worshipped her before the forty enlisted
men and the others.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Only—you’re so queer.”
She was of course young in things of that sort or she would have known
that men in love are mostly queer and frequently irritable—and always
unreasonable. She was simply puzzled.
“I hate the idea of his getting that stuff for you, that’s all,” he
said. “As far as that goes, I think I’ll get it, anyhow. What do you
want?”
“Everything,” she replied promptly.
“You shall have it.”
He stalked out, very tall and as much like the general as he could carry
himself, and on the pavement reflected that he stood committed to
something he couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination carry through.
Yet if ever he was to prove that he was a better man than Tommy, Sam
Browne belt or none, this was the time.
“Either I put it through,” he reflected, “or I don’t.”
But he really meant much more than that.
Down on the wharf the members of the Headquarters Troop had become
longshoremen. They played in their time many parts, it being the
particular function of the Headquarters Troop to do everything in the
army not otherwise definitely assigned, from surrounding major generals,
and stopping shells intended for them, to building bridges when the
engineers were engaged elsewhere. They froze their noses dispatch riding
and broke horses, when there were any, and looked after headquarters and
got the blame for everything that went wrong, being always handy and
expecting to be jumped on. Incidentally, of course, they had an intimate
personal knowledge of a number of extremely confidential military papers
that they were not supposed to have.
So that late afternoon they were longshoremen, working on the wharf
under gasoline flares and muttering things about getting to mess
sometime that week.
Now in certain ways Gray’s mind and the general’s worked alike. The
general, you remember, had picked Gray for Peggy by imagining himself
Peggy for a moment. And Sergeant Gray in similar fashion figured out
what he would do if he were Tommy. There was only one car in the outfit
by that time, and that was the general’s. If Gray had been Tommy he
would have commandeered the general’s car, and to do that he would have
had to wait until the general was out of it.
His whole chance, then, rested on the general being in it somewhere. He
went swiftly back to the hotel and the car was there and Tommy standing
beside it.
Now, it is one of a sergeant-orderly’s privileges to ride with the
chauffeur of a general’s car and open the doors when necessary and
generally give that air of military dignity without which no army can
really thrive. So Sergeant Gray saluted and opened the door for Tommy,
who eyed him suspiciously, and then saluted again and closed the door
and got in beside the chauffeur, who wanted food and was in a towering
rage.
Gray didn’t lose a minute.
“Look here, old man,” he said cautiously. “I’m in the devil of a mess
and you’ve got to help me out.”
“I have, have I?”
“All I want is to hang him up somewhere. I want an hour—that’s all.
I’ll fix it all right with you. You can stall the engine somewhere and
I’ll get out and examine it. Once I get under the hood—”
“Oh, is that all?” jeered the chauffeur, steering deliberately at an M.
P. and turning out with a grin as the M. P. leaped and bellowed. “And me
stuck all night fixing it up again! What d’you take me for, anyhow?”
“Fifty dollars if you’ll do it now,” said Gray desperately. “I’m up
against it, old man. Just stall ’er and leave the rest to me.”
Still cautiously, with Tommy’s suspicious eyes boring into his back,
Gray laid five American ten-dollar bills on the seat between them.
The engine stopped. The chauffeur, having shut off the magneto, made
various futile efforts to start.
“What the dickens is wrong?” came Tommy’s exasperated voice from within.
“If you fellows can’t drive this car I’ll do it myself.”
Sergeant Gray hopped out and raised the engine hood. In exactly thirty
seconds it was quite certain that the car would not start for an
indefinite period. Then he opened the door and saluted.
“Sorry, sir. Seems to be the wiring. Shall I get you a taxi?”
“Taxi!” shouted Tommy. “You know there isn’t a taxi in the whole ——
town.”
“Anyhow I can try, sir,” said Gray, and saluted again. “But I won’t,” he
added, and faded away in the general direction of the wharf.
An hour or so later Peggy was alone in her little office upstairs in her
bleak headquarters building. She was very low in her mind, for there was
a big troop movement on and her supplies were gone. The long line of men
waiting for sweaters for the cold homeward voyage had had to be turned
away sweaterless—and that with thousands of sweaters near at hand. The
district manager was in Paris begging for trucks and the other men
somehow didn’t act. And just now had come a frenzied note from Tommy
Trowbridge that he had broken down somewhere or other and couldn’t get
the supplies, but would she dine with him.
She wouldn’t dine with him. She didn’t want any dinner. Wasn’t there
anywhere anybody to depend on? It was always dinner with men. What she
wanted was razor blades and sweaters and toothbrushes and comfort bags.
Not food.
She got up and went to the window. There was a brisk tramping of
marching feet beneath in the street and a voice shouting orders. The
company stopped. Heavens! There were hundreds of them, and her shelves
were empty. She ran down and opened the door and there was Sergeant
Gray’s back very fierce and soldierly; and Sergeant Gray’s voice, most
triumphant, bellowing orders. Then he turned and looked down at her.
“If you’ll just stand aside,” he said, “I’ll give you a little
demonstration of the value of man power in the Army.”
They filed in then, grinning cheerfully, and every man of the troop
carried a crate or a box or a bundle. There were two hundred and fifty
men, to be exact, and they had stripped the warehouse as locusts strip a
tree.
“Say the word,” shouted Gray exultantly over the din, “and we’ll bring
the warehouse too. We had to rope and tie your warehouse man.”
At ten-thirty that night the general left a dinner party given him by
the officers of the port. He had had a very pleasant evening, having
told the story of being roped over the fence with great success and
having indicated the various weaknesses in the General Staff to the
exact degree of propriety. At the last minute he had taken Tommy with
him, but Tommy had added nothing to the general gaiety.
The general’s car had been mysteriously missing for several hours, but
the general had dined well and was not in a captious mood. So he footed
it round to Peggy’s lodging, to find she had not returned.
“They work these girls too hard, Tommy,” he observed. “They ought to
take it easier. _C’est l’armistice._” He liked the sound of that and he
repeated it. It reminded him of the chaplain, who used a great deal of
French, and that reminded him of the wager.
“I’ll see if my niece is at her headquarters,” he said. “You go back to
the hotel and get some sleep.”
“I’m not at all tired, sir,” offered Tommy desperately.
“In that case,” observed the general, “you might take a look round for
my car, and if I find out who took it from in front of the hotel this
afternoon I’ll make things pleasant for him.”
Tommy turned and with a sinking heart limped off. The general was rather
sorry for Tommy. But he had been his aide-de-camp for a good while and
there had always been a girl in the offing somewhere. He didn’t take
Tommy too hard.
He turned toward Peggy’s headquarters. At the foot of the street lay the
sea and beyond that—home. The war was over and they had had no active
part in it. Mingled with the general’s regret was a vast thankfulness.
The war was over and his boys and millions of other splendid boys were
turning their faces toward the setting sun—and home.
There was a prodigious sound of hammering from within Peggy’s building,
punctuated by the rip of rending wood. The general stood in a doorway
and observed a number of things. First of all Sergeant Gray, with a
hatchet in his hand and a checked gingham apron tied round his neck,
straightened up from a box and looked down at Peggy, who had an armful
of sweaters and was therefore helpless.
“Attention!” said Sergeant Gray sternly. “Eyes front! Unsling
equipment!”
“I will not!” said Peggy. “I’ve just got these sweaters—”
“Discipline,” observed Sergeant Gray, “is the instant and willing
obedience to orders. Paragraph I, section I, Manual of Instruction in
Military Courtesy. I’m going to kiss you.”
“Why didn’t you say that before?” Peggy demanded—and unslung equipment
immediately.
“The first one is for me,” said Sergeant Gray, “and the second one is
for me, and the third is for the general, bless him.”
“Sergeant!” said the general from the doorway. “There are certain duties
I prefer to attend to myself.”
* * * * *
At midnight that night the chaplain was wakened by a knocking at his
door and mumbled “_Entrez_” drowsily.
A uniformed shadow stepped inside, saluted and said in Sergeant Gray’s
voice, but with an almost lyric quality to it: “Sir, the general wishes
the chaplain to report to him in his room.”
“My compliments to the general, sergeant, and tell him to go to blazes.”
However, he reconsidered that instantly and added: “What’s up, Gray?
Have I got to get into uniform?”
“I believe not, sir. The general has had some recent information, I
think, sir.”
“You don’t see my bedroom slippers anywhere, do you?” asked the chaplain
peevishly. “Only death would make me do this at home. If I ever get out
of the Army—”
“It’s not so bad, sir,” said Sergeant Gray, restraining an impulse to
burst into song. “Here they are, sir. You’ve put them in the washbasin.”
“Gracious!” he said. “I meant to rub out a pair of socks and I must
have—”
Sometime later the chaplain, in a pair of army socks and a dressing
gown, knocked at the general’s door and entered. The general was in bed,
smoking the last of his best cigars, with the eiderdown over his
shoulders and a bottle of champagne and a glass and a toothbrush holder
beside him on the stand.
“Come in, chaplain,” said the general cheerfully, “and lock the door. If
any of my aides-de-camp knock, snore. They can smell champagne through a
brick wall.”
“I don’t drink and you know it.”
“Neither do I,” observed the general. “But we’re going home and home is
going to be a very dry place. Anyhow this is a toast.”
The chaplain was thrusting his feet into the general’s slippers but he
looked up at that.
“Then she’s settled it?”
“She has,” said the general. “You owe me fifty francs. And if any one
had told me three years ago that I’d be paying eight dollars to drink to
a noncom nephew-in-law I’d have said he was crazy.”
He poured the wine. Outside on the stairs a soldier was making a
leisurely and tuneful way to bed. Both men listened and smiled.
_The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,_
_Are as a string of pearls to me_,
warbled Sergeant Gray.
“To—them!” said the general, raising his toothbrush mug. “Sorry about
the fifty francs, chaplain.”
The chaplain took a modest sip.
“To them!” he said. “As to the fifty francs—_Ça ne fait rien_.”