FRANK SACOBIE OBJECTS
WITHIN ten days of the battle of Courcelette, Lieut. Richard Starkley
was able to see; and twenty days after that he was able to walk. His
walking at first was an extraordinary thing, and extraordinary was the
amount of pleasure that he derived from it. With a crutch under one
shoulder and Sister Gilbert under the other, bandaged and padded from
hip to neck, and with his battered but entire legs wavering beneath him,
he crossed the ward that first day without exceeding the speed limit.
Brother officers in various stages of repair did not refrain from
expressing their opinions of his performance.
"Try to be back for tea, old son," said a New Zealand major.
"Are those your legs or mine you're fox-trotting with?" asked an English
subaltern; and an elderly colonel called, "I'll hop out and show you how
to walk in a minute, if you don't do better than that!"
The colonel laughed, and the inmates of the other beds laughed, and Dick
and Sister Gilbert laughed, for that, you must know, was a very good
joke. The humor of the remark lay in the fact that the elderly colonel
had not a leg to his name.
Day by day Dick improved in pace and gait, and his activities inspired a
number of his companions to shake an uncertain leg or two. The elderly
colonel organized contests; and the great free-for-all race twice round
the ward was one of the notable sporting events of the war.
At last Dick was shipped to Blighty and admitted to a hospital for
convalescent Canadian officers. There Capt. J. A. Starkley-Davenport
soon found him. No change that the eye could detect had taken place in
Jack Davenport. His face was as thin and colorless as when Dick had
first seen it; his eyes were just as bright, and their glances as kindly
and intent; his body was as frail and as immaculately garbed. Dick
wondered how one so frail could exist a week without either breaking
utterly or gaining in strength.
"You're a wonder, Dick!" exclaimed Davenport.
"It strikes me that you are the wonder," said Dick.
"But they tell me that you stopped a whiz-bang and will be as fit as
ever, nerve and body, in a little while."
"I stopped bits of it--but I don't think it actually detonated on me.
All I got was some of the splash. I was lucky!"
"You were indeed," said the other, with a shadow in his eyes. "I was
lucky, too--though there have been times when I have been fool enough to
wish that I had been left on the field." Then he straightened his thin
shoulders and laughed quietly. "But if I had gone west I should have
missed Frank Sacobie and Hiram Sill. They lunched with me last week and
have promised to turn up on Sunday. You'll be right for Sunday, Dick,
and I'll have a pucka party in your honor."
"How are they, and what are they up to?" asked Dick.
"They are at the top of their form, both of them, and up to anything,"
replied Davenport. "Your Canadian cadet course is the stiffest thing of
its kind in England, but it doesn't seem to bother those two. Frank is
smarter than anything the Guards can show and is believed to be a rajah;
and Hiram writes letters to Washington urging the formation of an
American division to be attached to the Canadian Corps and suggesting
his appointment to the command of one of the brigades."
"Those letters must amuse the censors," said Dick with a grin.
"I imagine they do. Washington hasn't answered yet; and so Hiram is
getting his dander up and is pitching each letter a little higher than
the one before it. Incidentally, he has a great deal to say to our War
Office, and his novel suggestions for developing trench warfare seem to
have awakened a variety of emotions in the brains and livers of a lot of
worthy _brass hats_."
Dick laughed. "What are his ideas for developing trench warfare?"
"One is the organization of a shot-gun platoon in every battalion. The
weapon is to be the duck gun, number eight bore, I believe. Hiram
maintains that, used within a range of one hundred and fifty yards,
those weapons would be superior to any in repulsing attacks in mass and
in cleaning up raided trenches. He is a great believer in the deadly and
demoralizing effects of point-blank fire."
"He is right in that--once you get rid of the parapet."
"He gets rid of the parapet with the point-blank fire of what he calls
trench cannon--guns, three feet long, mounted so that they can be
carried along a trench by four men; they are to fire ten- or
twelve-pound high explosive shells from the front line smack against the
opposite parapet."
"It sounds right, too; but so many things sound right that work all
wrong. What are his other schemes?"
"One has to do with a thundering big six-hooked grapnel, with a wire
cable attached, that is to be shot into the hostile lines from a big
trench mortar and then winched back by steam. He expects his
grapnel--give him power enough--to tear out trenches, machine-gun posts
and battalion headquarters, and bring home all sorts of odds and ends of
value for identification purposes. Can't you see the brigadier stepping
out before brekker to take a look at the night's haul?"
"My hat! What did the War Office think of that?"
"An acting assistant something or other of the name of Smythers and the
rank of major was inspired by it to ask Hiram whether he had ever served
in France. Hiram put over a twenty-page narrative of his exploits with
the battalion, with appendixes of maps and notes and extracts from
brigade and battalion orders, and, so far as I know, the major has not
yet recovered sufficiently to retaliate."
"Well, I hope Frank Sacobie has left the War Office alone."
"Frank writes nothing and says very little more than that. He seems to
give all his attention to his kit; but I have a suspicion that he is a
deep thinker. However that may be, his taste in dress is astonishingly
good, and his deportment in society is in as good taste as his
breeches."
"So he has a good time?"
"He is very gay when he comes up to town," answered Davenport.
"He deserves a good time, but he can't get it and at the same time doll
himself up, even in uniform, on his pay. How does he do it?"
"You have guessed it, Dick."
"I think I have."
"Then there is no need of my saying much about it. I live on one sixth
of my income. That leaves five sixths for my friends; and often, Dick,
it is the thought of the spending of the five parts that gives me
courage to go on keeping life in this useless body with the one part.
Sometimes a soldier's wife buys food for herself and children, or pays
the rent, with my money; and the lion's share of the pleasure of that
transaction is mine. Sometimes a chap on leave spends a fistful of my
treasury notes on dinners for himself and his girl; and those dinners
give me more pleasure than the ones I eat myself. I haven't much of a
stomach of my own now, you know; and I haven't a girl of my own to take
out to one--even if Wilson would let me go out at night. It is not
charity. I satisfy my own lost hunger for food through the medium of
poor people with good appetites: I have my fun and cut a dash in new
breeches and swagger service jackets through the medium of hard fighting
fellows from France. I am not apologizing, you understand."
"You needn't," said Dick dryly; and then they both laughed.
Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie called on Dick at the hospital soon after
ten o'clock on Sunday morning. They had come up to town the evening
before. The greetings of the three friends were warm. Sacobie's pleasure
at the reunion found no voice, but shone in his eyes and thrilled in the
grip of his hand. Hiram Sill added words to the message of his beaming
face. He expressed delighted amazement at Dick's appearance.
"I couldn't quite believe it until now," he said. "Neither could you if
you had seen yourself as we saw you when you were picked up. Nothing the
matter with your face, except a dimple or two that you weren't born
with. All your legs and arms still your own. I'd sooner see this than a
letter from Washington. With your luck you'll live to command the
battalion."
Dick grinned. His greetings to his friends had been as boyishly
impulsive and cheery as ever; yet there was something looking out
through the affection in his eyes that would have puzzled his people in
New Brunswick if they had seen it. There was a question in the look and
a hint of anxiety and perhaps the faintest shade of the airs of a fond
father, a sympathetic judge and a hopeful appraiser. Frank and Hiram
recognized and accepted it without thought or question. The look was
nothing more than the shadow of the habit of responsibility and command.
Hiram talked about Washington and the War Office, and discussed his
grapnel idea with considerable heat. Frank Sacobie took no part in that
discussion and little in the general conversation. Soon after twelve
o'clock all three set out in a taxicab for Jack Davenport's house.
The luncheon was successful. The other guests were three women--a cousin
of Jack's on the Davenport side and her two daughters. The host and
Hiram Sill both conversed brilliantly. Frank was inspired to make at
least five separate remarks of some half dozen words each. Dick soon let
the drift of the general conversation escape him, so interested did he
become in the girl on his right.
Kathleen Kingston seemed to him a strange mixture of shyness and
self-possession, of calmness and vivacity. The coloring of her small
face was wonderfully mobile--so Dick expressed it to himself--and yet
her eyes were frank, steady and unembarrassed. Her voice was curiously
low and clear.
Dick was conscious of feeling a vague and unsteady wonder at himself.
Why this sudden interest in a girl? He had never felt anything of the
kind before. Had this something to do with the wounds in his head? He
could not entertain that suggestion seriously. However that might be, he
felt that his sudden interest in this young person whom he had not so
much as heard of an hour ago greatly increased his interest in many
things. He was conscious of a sure friendship for her, as if he had
known her for years. He knew that this friendship was a more important
thing to him than his friendships with Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie--and
yet those friendships had grown day by day, strengthened week by week
and stood the test of suffering and peril.
She told him that her father was still in France, but safe now at
General Headquarters, that her eldest brother had been killed in action
in 1914, that another was fighting in the East, and that still another
was a midshipman on the North Sea. Also, she told him that she wanted to
go to France as a V. A. D., that she had left school six months ago and
was working five hours every day making bandages and splints, and that
she was seventeen years old. Those confidences melted Dick's tongue. He
told her his own age and that he had added a little to it at the time of
enlisting; he spoke of night and daylight raids and major offensive
operations in which he had taken part, of the military careers of Henry
and Peter and of life at Beaver Dam. She seemed to be as keenly
interested in his confidences as he had been in hers. In the library,
where coffee was served, Dick continued to cling to his new friend.
The party came to an end at last, leaving Dick in a somewhat scattered
state of mind. Before leaving with her daughters, Mrs. Kingston gave her
address and a cordial invitation to make use of it to each of the three.
Before long Wilson took Jack off to bed. Then Hiram left to keep an
appointment at the Royal Automobile Club with a captain who knew some
one at the War Office. That left Frank and Dick with Jack Davenport's
library to themselves. One place was much the same as another to Dick
just then. He was again wondering if he could possibly be suffering in
some subtle and painless way from the wounds in his head. With enquiring
fingers he felt the spotless bandage that still adorned the top of his
head.
Sacobie got out of his chair suddenly, with an abruptness of movement
that was foreign to him, and walked the length of the room and back. He
halted before Dick and stared down at him keenly for several seconds
without attracting that battered youth's attention. So he fell again to
pacing the room, walking lightly and with straight feet, the true Indian
walk. At last he halted again in front of Dick's chair.
"I am not going back to the battalion," he said.
Dick sat up with a jerk and stared at him.
"I am not going back," repeated Sacobie. "I shall get my commission,
that is sure; but I shall not be an officer in the battalion."
"Why the mischief not?" exclaimed Dick. "What's the matter with the
battalion, I'd like to know?"
"Nothing," replied the other. He moved away a few paces, then turned
back again. "A good battalion. I was a good sergeant there. But I met
Capt. Dodds, on leave, one day, and we had lunch together at Scott's;
and he feel pretty good--he felt pretty good--and he talked a lot. He
told me how some officers and other ranks say the colonel didn't do
right when he put in my name for cadet course and a commission. You know
why, Dick. So I don't go back to the infantry with my two stars."
"Do you mean because you are an Indian? That is rot!"
"No, it is good sense. You think about it hard as I have thought about
it day and night. They don't say I don't know my job. The captain told
me the colonel was right and everybody knew it when he said I should
make the best scout officer in the brigade; and the men like me, you
know that; but the men don't want an Injun for an officer. They are
white men. I am a Malecite--red. That is right. I don't go back with my
officer stars."
"Do you mean that you won't take your commission?" asked Dick.
"No. I take it, sure. But not in the 26th."
Dick did not argue. He had never considered his friend's case in that
light before, but now he knew that Sacobie was right. The
noncommissioned officers and men would not question Frank's military
qualifications, his ability or his personal merits. His race was the
only thing about him to which they objected--and that appeared
objectionable in him only when they considered him as an officer. As a
"non-com" he was one of themselves, but as an officer they must consider
him impersonally as a superior. There was where the New Brunswick
soldiers would cease to consider their friend and comrade Frank Sacobie
and see only a member of an inferior race. Their point of view would
immediately revert to that of the old days before the war, when they
would have laughed at a Malecite's undertaking to perform any task
except paddling a canoe.
"Will you transfer to another battalion?" asked Dick, as a result of his
reflections.
Frank shook his head but made no reply.
"Then to an English battalion?" Dick persisted. "There are dozens that
would be glad to have you, Frank. A Canadian with your record would not
have to look far for a job in this war. Jack Davenport's old regiment
would snap you up quick as a wink, commission and all, I bet a dollar."
The other smiled gravely. "That is right," he said. "Capt. Davenport is
my friend and knows what I am; but most English people want me to be
some kind of prince from India. I am myself--a Canadian soldier. I don't
want to play the monkey. Two-Blanket Sacobie was a big chief, with his
salmon spear and sometimes nothing to eat. His squaw chopped the wood
and carried the water. I am not a prince, nor I'm not a monkey. I come
to the war, and the English people call me rajah; but the Englishman
come to our country and hire me for a guide in the woods and call me a
nigger. No, I am myself with what good I have in me. I can do to fight
the Germans, and that is all I want, Dick. I try to be a gentleman, like
Peter and Capt. Davenport, and the King will make me an officer. That is
good. I will join the Royal Flying Corps. Then they will name me for
what I am by what I do."
Dick gripped Frank's right hand in a hearty clasp of respect and
admiration.
"You're a brick!" he said. "Jack was right when he said you were a deep
thinker."
"I got to think deep--deeper than you," said Frank. "I got to think all
for myself, because my fathers didn't think at all."