II

The snow beat against the windows and pattered on the tin roof of the

lean-to, built against the side of the hospital, that went by the name

of sun parlor. It was a dingy place, decorated by strings of dusty

little paper flags that one of the “Y” men had festooned about the

slanting beams of the ceiling to celebrate Christmas. There were tables

with torn magazines piled on them, and a counter where cracked white

cups were ranged waiting for one of the rare occasions when cocoa could

be bought. In the middle of the room, against the wall of the main

building, a stove was burning, about which sat several men in hospital

denims talking in drowsy voices. Andrews watched them from his seat by

the window, looking at their broad backs bent over towards the stove and

at the hands that hung over their knees, limp from boredom. The air was

heavy with a smell of coal gas mixed with carbolic from men's clothes,

and stale cigarette smoke. Behind the cups at the counter a “Y” man, a

short, red-haired man with freckles, read the Paris edition of the New

York Herald. Andrews, in his seat by the window, felt permeated by the

stagnation about him: He had a sheaf of pencilled music-papers on his

knees, that he rolled and unrolled nervously, staring at the stove and

the motionless backs of the men about it. The stove roared a little,

the “Y” man's paper rustled, men's voices came now and then in a drowsy

whisper, and outside the snow beat evenly and monotonously against the

window panes. Andrews pictured himself vaguely walking fast through the

streets, with the snow stinging his face and the life of a city swirling

about him, faces flushed by the cold, bright eyes under hatbrims,

looking for a second into his and passing on; slim forms of women

bundled in shawls that showed vaguely the outline of their breasts

and hips. He wondered if he would ever be free again to walk at random

through city streets. He stretched his legs out across the floor in

front of him; strange, stiff, tremulous legs they were, but it was not

the wounds that gave them their leaden weight. It was the stagnation

of the life about him that he felt sinking into every crevice of his

spirit, so that he could never shake it off, the stagnation of dusty

ruined automatons that had lost all life of their own, whose limbs had

practised the drill manual so long that they had no movements of their

own left, who sat limply, sunk in boredom, waiting for orders.

Andrews was roused suddenly from his thoughts; he had been watching the

snowflakes in their glittering dance just outside the window pane, when

the sound of someone rubbing his hands very close to him made him look

up. A little man with chubby cheeks and steel-grey hair very neatly

flattened against his skull, stood at the window rubbing his fat little

white hands together and making a faint unctuous puffing with each

breath. Andrews noticed that a white clerical collar enclosed the little

man's pink neck, that starched cuffs peeped from under the well-tailored

sleeves of his officer's uniform. Sam Brown belt and puttees, too,

were highly polished. On his shoulder was a demure little silver cross.

Andrews' glance had reached the pink cheeks again, when he suddenly

found a pair of steely eyes looking sharply into his.

“You look quite restored, my friend,” said a chanting clerical voice.

“I suppose I am.”

“Splendid, splendid.... But do you mind moving into the end of the

room.... That's it.” He followed Andrews, saying in a deprecatory tone:

“We're going to have just a little bit of a prayer and then I have some

interesting things to tell you boys.”

The red-headed “Y” man had left his seat and stood in the center of the

room, his paper still dangling from his hand, saying in a bored voice:

“Please fellows, move down to the end.... Quiet, please.... Quiet,

please.”

The soldiers shambled meekly to the folding chairs at the end of the

room and after some chattering were quiet. A couple of men left, and

several tiptoed in and sat in the front row. Andrews sank into a chair

with a despairing sort of resignation, and burying his face in his hands

stared at the floor between his feet.

“Fellers,” went on the bored voice of the “Y” man, “let me introduce the

Reverend Dr. Skinner, who--” the “Y” man's voice suddenly took on deep

patriotic emotion--“who has just come back from the Army of Occupation

in Germany.”

At the words “Army of Occupation,” as if a spring had been touched,

everybody clapped and cheered.

The Reverend Dr. Skinner looked about his audience with smiling

confidence and raised his hands for silence, so that the men could see

the chubby pink palms.

“First, boys, my dear friends, let us indulge in a few moments of silent

prayer to our Great Creator,” his voice rose and fell in the suave

chant of one accustomed to going through the episcopal liturgy for the

edification of well-dressed and well-fed congregations. “Inasmuch as He

has vouchsafed us safety and a mitigation of our afflictions, and let us

pray that in His good time He may see fit to return us whole in limb and

pure in heart to our families, to the wives, mothers, and to those whom

we will some day honor with the name of wife, who eagerly await our

return; and that we may spend the remainder of our lives in useful

service of the great country for whose safety and glory we have offered

up our youth a willing sacrifice.... Let us pray!”

Silence fell dully on the room. Andrews could hear the selfconscious

breathing of the men about him, and the rustling of the snow against the

tin roof. A few feet scraped. The voice began again after a long pause,

chanting:

“Our Father which art in Heaven...”

At the “Amen” everyone lifted his head cheerfully. Throats were cleared,

chairs scraped. Men settled themselves to listen.

“Now, my friends, I am going to give you in a few brief words a little

glimpse into Germany, so that you may be able to picture to yourselves

the way your comrades of the Army of Occupation manage to make

themselves comfortable among the Huns.... I ate my Christmas dinner in

Coblenz. What do you think of that? Never had I thought that a Christmas

would find me away from my home and loved ones. But what unexpected

things happen to us in this world! Christmas in Coblenz under the

American flag!”

He paused a moment to allow a little scattered clapping to subside.

“The turkey was fine, too, I can tell you.... Yes, our boys in Germany

are very, very comfortable, and just waiting for the word, if necessary,

to continue their glorious advance to Berlin. For I am sorry to say,

boys, that the Germans have not undergone the change of heart for which

we had hoped. They have, indeed, changed the name of their institutions,

but their spirit they have not changed.... How grave a disappointment it

must be to our great President, who has exerted himself so to bring the

German people to reason, to make them understand the horror that they

alone have brought deliberately upon the world! Alas! Far from it.

Indeed, they have attempted with insidious propaganda to undermine

the morale of our troops....” A little storm of muttered epithets went

through the room. The Reverend Dr. Skinner elevated his chubby pink

palms and smiled benignantly... “to undermine the morale of our troops;

so that the most stringent regulations have had to be made by the

commanding general to prevent it. Indeed, my friends, I very much fear

that we stopped too soon in our victorious advance; that Germany should

have been utterly crushed. But all we can do is watch and wait, and

abide by the decision of those great men who in a short time will be

gathered together at the Conference at Paris.... Let me, boys, my dear

friends, express the hope that you may speedily be cured of your wounds,

ready again to do willing service in the ranks of the glorious army that

must be vigilant for some time yet, I fear, to defend, as Americans and

Christians, the civilization you have so nobly saved from a ruthless

foe.... Let us all join together in singing the hymn, 'Stand up, stand

up for Jesus,' which I am sure you all know.”

The men got to their feet, except for a few who had lost their legs, and

sang the first verse of the hymn unsteadily. The second verse petered

out altogether, leaving only the “Y” man and the Reverend Dr. Skinner

singing away at the top of their lungs.

The Reverend Dr. Skinner pulled out his gold watch and looked at it

frowning.

“Oh, my, I shall miss the train,” he muttered. The “Y” man helped him

into his voluminous trench coat and they both hurried out of the door.

“Those are some puttees he had on, I'll tell you,” said the legless man

who was propped in a chair near the stove.

Andrews sat down beside him, laughing. He was a man with high cheekbones

and powerful jaws to whose face the pale brown eyes and delicately

pencilled lips gave a look of great gentleness. Andrews did not look at

his body.

“Somebody said he was a Red Cross man giving out cigarettes.... Fooled

us that time,” said Andrews.

“Have a butt? I've got one,” said the legless man. With a large shrunken

hand that was the transparent color of alabaster he held out a box of

cigarettes.

“Thanks.” When Andrews struck a match he had to lean over the legless

man to light his cigarette for him. He could not help glancing down the

man's tunic at the drab trousers that hung limply from the chair. A cold

shudder went through him; he was thinking of the zigzag scars on his own

thighs.

“Did you get it in the legs, too, Buddy?” asked the legless man,

quietly.

“Yes, but I had luck.... How long have you been here?”

“Since Christ was a corporal. Oh, I doan know. I've been here since two

weeks after my outfit first went into the lines.... That was on November

16th, 1917.... Didn't see much of the war, did I?... Still, I guess I

didn't miss much.”

“No.... But you've seen enough of the army.”

“That's true.... I guess I wouldn't mind the war if it wasn't for the

army.”

“They'll be sending you home soon, won't they?”

“Guess so.... Where are you from?”

“New York,” said Andrews.

“I'm from Cranston, Wisconsin. D'you know that country? It's a great

country for lakes. You can canoe for days an' days without a portage.

We have a camp on Big Loon Lake. We used to have some wonderful times

there... lived like wild men. I went for a trip for three weeks once

without seeing a house. Ever done much canoeing?”

“Not so much as I'd like to.”

“That's the thing to make you feel fit. First thing you do when you

shake out of your blankets is jump in an' have a swim. Gee, it's great

to swim when the morning mist is still on the water an' the sun just

strikes the tops of the birch trees. Ever smelt bacon cooking? I mean

out in the woods, in a frying pan over some sticks of pine and beech

wood.... Some great old smell, isn't it?... And after you've paddled all

day, an' feel tired and sunburned right to the palms of your feet, to

sit around the fire with some trout roastin' in the ashes and hear the

sizzlin' the bacon makes in the pan.... O boy!” He stretched his arms

wide.

“God, I'd like to have wrung that damn little parson's neck,” said

Andrews suddenly.

“Would you?” The legless man turned brown eyes on Andrews with a smile.

“I guess he's about as much to blame as anybody is... guys like him.... I

guess they have that kind in Germany, too.”

“You don't think we've made the world quite as safe for Democracy as it

might be?” said Andrews in a low voice.

“Hell, how should I know? I bet you never drove an ice wagon.... I did,

all one summer down home.... It was some life. Get up at three o'clock

in the morning an' carry a hundred or two hundred pounds of ice into

everybody's ice box. That was the life to make a feller feel fit. I was

goin' around with a big Norwegian named Olaf, who was the strongest man

I ever knew. An' drink! He was the boy could drink. I once saw him put

away twenty-five dry Martini cocktails an' swim across the lake on top

of it.... I used to weigh a hundred and eighty pounds, and he could pick

me up with one hand and put me across his shoulder.... That was the life

to make a feller feel fit. Why, after bein' out late the night before,

we'd jump up out of bed at three o'clock feeling springy as a cat.”

“What's he doing now?” asked Andrews.

“He died on the transport coming 'cross here. Died of the flu.... I met

a feller came over in his regiment. They dropped him overboard when

they were in sight of the Azores.... Well, I didn't die of the flu. Have

another butt?”

“No, thanks,” said Andrews.

They were silent. The fire roared in the stove. No one was talking. The

men lolled in chairs somnolently. Now and then someone spat. Outside of

the window Andrews could see the soft white dancing of the snowflakes.

His limbs felt very heavy; his mind was permeated with dusty stagnation

like the stagnation of old garrets and lumber rooms, where, among

superannuated bits of machinery and cracked grimy crockery, lie heaps of

broken toys.

John Andrews sat on a bench in a square full of linden trees, with the

pale winter sunshine full on his face and hands. He had been looking up

through his eyelashes at the sun, that was the color of honey, and he

let his dazzled glance sink slowly through the black lacework of twigs,

down the green trunks of the trees to the bench opposite where sat two

nursemaids and, between them, a tiny girl with a face daintily colored

and lifeless like a doll's face, and a frilled dress under which showed

small ivory knees and legs encased in white socks and yellow sandals.

Above the yellow halo of her hair floated, with the sun shining through

it, as through a glass of claret, a bright carmine balloon which

the child held by a string. Andrews looked at her for a long time,

enraptured by the absurd daintiness of the figure between the big

bundles of flesh of the nursemaids. The thought came to him suddenly

that months had gone by,--was it only months?--since his hands had

touched anything soft, since he had seen any flowers. The last was a

flower an old woman had given him in a village in the Argonne, an orange

marigold, and he remembered how soft the old woman's withered lips had

been against his cheek when she had leaned over and kissed him. His

mind suddenly lit up, as with a strain of music, with a sense of the

sweetness of quiet lives worn away monotonously in the fields, in the

grey little provincial towns, in old kitchens full of fragrance of

herbs and tang of smoke from the hearth, where there are pots on the

window-sill full of basil in flower.

Something made him go up to the little girl and take her hand. The

child, looking up suddenly and seeing a lanky soldier with pale lean

face and light, straw-colored hair escaping from under a cap too small

for him, shrieked and let go the string of the balloon, which soared

slowly into the air trembling a little in the faint cool wind that

blew. The child wailed dismally, and Andrews, quailing under the furious

glances of the nursemaids, stood before her, flushed crimson, stammering

apologies, not knowing what to do. The white caps of the nursemaids

bent over and ribbons fluttered about the child's head as they tried to

console her. Andrews walked away dejectedly, now and then looking up

at the balloon, which soared, a black speck against the grey and

topaz-colored clouds.

“Sale Americain!” he heard one nursemaid exclaim to the other. But

this was the first hour in months he had had free, the first moment of

solitude; he must live; soon he would be sent back to his division. A

wave of desire for furious fleshly enjoyments went through him, making

him want steaming dishes of food drenched in rich, spice-flavored

sauces; making him want to get drunk on strong wine; to roll on thick

carpets in the arms of naked, libidinous women. He was walking down the

quiet grey street of the provincial town, with its low houses with red

chimney pots, and blue slate roofs and its irregular yellowish cobbles.

A clock somewhere was striking four with deep booming strokes, Andrews

laughed. He had to be in hospital at six. Already he was tired; his legs

ached.

The window of a pastry shop appeared invitingly before him, denuded as

it was by wartime. A sign in English said: “Tea.” Walking in, he sat

down in a fussy little parlor where the tables had red cloths, and

a print, in pinkish and greenish colors, hung in the middle of the

imitation brocade paper of each wall. Under a print of a poster bed with

curtains in front of which eighteen to twenty people bowed, with the

title of “Secret d'Amour,” sat three young officers, who cast cold,

irritated glances at this private with a hospital badge on who invaded

their tea shop. Andrews stared back at them, flaming with dull anger.

Sipping the hot, fragrant tea, he sat with a blank sheet of music paper

before him, listening in spite of himself to what the officers were

saying. They were talking about Ronsard. It was with irritated surprise

that Andrews heard the name. What right had they to be talking about

Ronsard? He knew more about Ronsard than they did. Furious, conceited

phrases kept surging up in his mind. He was as sensitive, as humane, as

intelligent, as well-read as they were; what right had they to the cold

suspicious glance with which they had put him in his place when he

had come into the room? Yet that had probably been as unconscious, as

unavoidable as was his own biting envy. The thought that if one of those

men should come over to him, he would have to stand up and salute and

answer humbly, not from civility, but from the fear of being punished,

was bitter as wormwood, filled him with a childish desire--to prove his

worth to them, as when older boys had illtreated him at school and he

had prayed to have the house burn down so that he might heroically save

them all. There was a piano in an inner room, where in the dark the

chairs, upside down, perched dismally on the table tops. He almost

obeyed an impulse to go in there and start playing, by the brilliance

of his playing to force these men, who thought of him as a coarse

automaton, something between a man and a dog, to recognize him as an

equal, a superior.

“But the war's over. I want to start living. Red wine, streets of the

nightingale cries to the rose,” said one of the officers.

“What do you say we go A.W.O.L. to Paris?”

“Dangerous.”

“Well, what can they do? We are not enlisted men; they can only send us

home. That's just what I want.”

“I'll tell you what; we'll go to the Cochon Bleu and have a cocktail and

think about it.”

“The lion and the lizard keep their courts where... what the devil was

his name? Anyway, we'll glory and drink deep, while Major Peabody keeps

his court in Dijon to his heart's content.”

Spurs jingled as the three officers went out. A fierce disgust took

possession of John Andrews. He was ashamed of his spiteful irritation.

If, when he had been playing the piano to a roomful of friends in New

York, a man dressed as a laborer had shambled in, wouldn't he have felt

a moment of involuntary scorn? It was inevitable that the fortunate

should hate the unfortunate because they feared them. But he was so

tired of all those thoughts. Drinking down the last of his tea at a

gulp, he went into the shop to ask the old woman, with little black

whiskers over her bloodless lips, who sat behind the white desk at the

end of the counter, if she minded his playing the piano.

In the deserted tea room, among the dismal upturned chairs, his

crassened fingers moved stiffly over the keys. He forgot everything

else. Locked doors in his mind were swinging wide, revealing forgotten

sumptuous halls of his imagination. The Queen of Sheba, grotesque as a

satyr, white and flaming with worlds of desire, as the great implacable

Aphrodite, stood with her hand on his shoulder sending shivers of warm

sweetness rippling through his body, while her voice intoned in his ears

all the inexhaustible voluptuousness of life.

An asthmatic clock struck somewhere in the obscurity of the room.

“Seven!” John Andrews paid, said good-bye to the old woman with the

mustache, and hurried out into the street. “Like Cinderella at the

ball,” he thought. As he went towards the hospital, down faintly lighted

streets, his steps got slower and slower. “Why go back?” a voice kept

saying inside him. “Anything is better than that.” Better throw himself

in the river, even, than go back. He could see the olive-drab clothes

in a heap among the dry bullrushes on the river bank.... He thought

of himself crashing naked through the film of ice into water black as

Chinese lacquer. And when he climbed out numb and panting on the other

side, wouldn't he be able to take up life again as if he had just been

born? How strong he would be if he could begin life a second time! How

madly, how joyously he would live now that there was no more war.... He

had reached the door of the hospital. Furious shudders of disgust went

through him.

He was standing dumbly humble while a sergeant bawled him out for being

late.

Andrews stared for a long while at the line of shields that supported

the dark ceiling beams on the wall opposite his cot. The emblems

had been erased and the grey stone figures that crowded under the

shields,--the satyr with his shaggy goat's legs, the townsman with

his square hat, the warrior with the sword between his legs,--had been

clipped and scratched long ago in other wars. In the strong afternoon

light they were so dilapidated he could hardly make them out. He

wondered how they had seemed so vivid to him when he had lain in his

cot, comforted by their comradeship, while his healing wounds itched and

tingled. Still he glanced tenderly at the grey stone figures as he left

the ward.

Downstairs in the office where the atmosphere was stuffy with a smell

of varnish and dusty papers and cigarette smoke, he waited a long time,

shifting his weight restlessly from one foot to the other.

“What do you want?” said a red-haired sergeant, without looking up from

the pile of papers on his desk.

“Waiting for travel orders.”

“Aren't you the guy I told to come back at three?”

“It is three.”

“H'm!” The sergeant kept his eyes fixed on the papers, which rustled

as he moved them from one pile to another. In the end of the room a

typewriter clicked slowly and jerkily. Andrews could see the dark back

of a head between bored shoulders in a woolen shirt leaning over the

machine. Beside the cylindrical black stove against the wall a man with

large mustaches and the complicated stripes of a hospital sergeant was

reading a novel in a red cover. After a long silence the red-headed

sergeant looked up from his papers and said suddenly:

“Ted.”

The man at the typewriter turned slowly round, showing a large red face

and blue eyes.

“We-ell,” he drawled.

“Go in an' see if the loot has signed them papers yet.”

The man got up, stretched himself deliberately, and slouched out through

a door beside the stove. The red-haired sergeant leaned back in his

swivel chair and lit a cigarette.

“Hell,” he said, yawning.

The man with the mustache beside the stove let the book slip from his

knees to the floor, and yawned too.

“This goddam armistice sure does take the ambition out of a feller,” he

said.

“Hell of a note,” said the red-haired sergeant. “D'you know that they

had my name in for an O.T.C.? Hell of a note goin' home without a Sam

Browne.”

The other man came back and sank down into his chair in front of the

typewriter again. The slow, jerky clicking recommenced.

Andrews made a scraping noise with his foot on the ground.

“Well, what about that travel order?” said the red-haired sergeant.

“Loot's out,” said the other man, still typewriting.

“Well, didn't he leave it on his desk?” shouted the red-haired sergeant

angrily.

“Couldn't find it.”

“I suppose I've got to go look for it.... God!” The red-haired sergeant

stamped out of the room. A moment later he came back with a bunch of

papers in his hand.

“Your name Jones?” he snapped to Andrews.

“No.”

“Snivisky?”

“No.... Andrews, John.”

“Why the hell couldn't you say so?”

The man with the mustaches beside the stove got to his feet suddenly. An

alert, smiling expression came over his face.

“Good afternoon, Captain Higginsworth,” he said cheerfully.

An oval man with a cigar slanting out of his broad mouth came into the

room. When he talked the cigar wobbled in his mouth. He wore greenish

kid gloves, very tight for his large hands, and his puttees shone with a

dark lustre like mahogany.

The red-haired sergeant turned round and half-saluted.

“Goin' to another swell party, Captain?” he asked.

The Captain grinned.

“Say, have you boys got any Red Cross cigarettes? I ain't only got

cigars, an' you can't hand a cigar to a lady, can you?” The Captain

grinned again. An appreciative giggle went round.

“Will a couple of packages do you? Because I've got some here,” said the

red-haired sergeant reaching in the drawer of his desk.

“Fine.” The captain slipped them into his pocket and swaggered out doing

up the buttons of his buff-colored coat.

The sergeant settled himself at his desk again with an important smile.

“Did you find the travel order?” asked Andrews timidly. “I'm supposed to

take the train at four-two.”

“Can't make it.... Did you say your name was Anderson?”

“Andrews.... John Andrews.”

“Here it is.... Why didn't you come earlier?”

The sharp air of the ruddy winter evening, sparkling in John Andrews's

nostrils, vastly refreshing after the stale odors of the hospital, gave

him a sense of liberation. Walking with rapid steps through the grey

streets of the town, where in windows lamps already glowed orange, he

kept telling himself that another epoch was closed. It was with relief

that he felt that he would never see the hospital again or any of the

people in it. He thought of Chrisfield. It was weeks and weeks since

Chrisfield had come to his mind at all. Now it was with a sudden clench

of affection that the Indiana boy's face rose up before him. An oval,

heavily-tanned face with a little of childish roundness about it yet,

with black eyebrows and long black eyelashes. But he did not even know

if Chrisfield were still alive. Furious joy took possession of him. He,

John Andrews, was alive; what did it matter if everyone he knew died?

There were jollier companions than ever he had known, to be found in the

world, cleverer people to talk to, more vigorous people to learn from.

The cold air circulated through his nose and lungs; his arms felt strong

and supple; he could feel the muscles of his legs stretch and contract

as he walked, while his feet beat jauntily on the irregular cobblestones

of the street. The waiting room at the station was cold and stuffy, full

of a smell of breathed air and unclean uniforms. French soldiers wrapped

in their long blue coats, slept on the benches or stood about in groups,

eating bread and drinking from their canteens. A gas lamp in the center

gave dingy light. Andrews settled himself in a corner with despairing

resignation. He had five hours to wait for a train, and already his

legs ached and he had a side feeling of exhaustion. The exhilaration of

leaving the hospital and walking free through wine-tinted streets in

the sparkling evening air gave way gradually to despair. His life would

continue to be this slavery of unclean bodies packed together in

places where the air had been breathed over and over, cogs in the great

slow-moving Juggernaut of armies. What did it matter if the fighting had

stopped? The armies would go on grinding out lives with lives, crushing

flesh with flesh. Would he ever again stand free and solitary to

live out joyous hours which would make up for all the boredom of the

treadmill? He had no hope. His life would continue like this dingy,

ill-smelling waiting room where men in uniform slept in the fetid air

until they should be ordered-out to march or to stand in motionless

rows, endlessly, futilely, like toy soldiers a child has forgotten in an

attic.

Andrews got up suddenly and went out on the empty platform. A cold wind

blew. Somewhere out in the freight yards an engine puffed loudly, and

clouds of white steam drifted through the faintly lighted station. He

was walking up and down with his chin sunk into his coat and his hands

in his pockets, when somebody ran into him.

“Damn,” said a voice, and the figure darted through a grimy glass door

that bore the sign: “Buvette.” Andrews followed absent-mindedly.

“I'm sorry I ran into you.... I thought you were an M.P., that's why I

beat it.” When he spoke, the man, an American private, turned and looked

searchingly in Andrews's face. He had very red cheeks and an impudent

little brown mustache. He spoke slowly with a faint Bostonian drawl.

“That's nothing,” said Andrews.

“Let's have a drink,” said the other man. “I'm A.W.O.L. Where are you

going?”

“To some place near Bar-le-Duc, back to my Division. Been in hospital.”

“Long?”

“Since October.”

“Gee.... Have some Curacoa. It'll do you good. You look pale.... My

name's Henslowe. Ambulance with the French Army.”

They sat down at an unwashed marble table where the soot from the trains

made a pattern sticking to the rings left by wine and liqueur glasses.

“I'm going to Paris,” said Henslowe. “My leave expired three days

ago. I'm going to Paris and get taken ill with peritonitis or double

pneumonia, or maybe I'll have a cardiac lesion.... The army's a bore.”

“Hospital isn't any better,” said Andrews with a sigh. “Though I shall

never forget the night with which I realized I was wounded and out of

it. I thought I was bad enough to be sent home.”

“Why, I wouldn't have missed a minute of the war.... But now that it's

over...Hell! Travel is the password now. I've just had two weeks in

the Pyrenees. Nimes, Arles, Les Baux, Carcassonne, Perpignan, Lourdes,

Gavarnie, Toulouse! What do you think of that for a trip?... What were

you in?”

“Infantry.”

“Must have been hell.”

“Been! It is.”

“Why don't you come to Paris with me?”

“I don't want to be picked up,” stammered Andrews.

“Not a chance.... I know the ropes.... All you have to do is keep away

from the Olympia and the railway stations, walk fast and keep your shoes

shined... and you've got wits, haven't you?”

“Not many.... Let's drink a bottle of wine. Isn't there anything to eat

to be got here?”

“Not a damn thing, and I daren't go out of the station on account of the

M.P. at the gate.... There'll be a diner on the Marseilles express.”

“But I can't go to Paris.”

“Sure.... Look, how do you call yourself?”

“John Andrews.”

“Well, John Andrews, all I can say is that you've let 'em get your goat.

Don't give in. Have a good time, in spite of 'em. To hell with 'em.”

He brought the bottle down so hard on the table that it broke and the

purple wine flowed over the dirty marble and dripped gleaming on the

floor.

Some French soldiers who stood in a group round the bar turned round.

“V'la un gars qui gaspille le bon vin,” said a tall red-faced man, with

long sloping whiskers.

“Pour vingt sous j'mangerai la bouteille,” cried a little man lurching

forward and leaning drunkenly over the table.

“Done,” said Henslowe. “Say, Andrews, he says he'll eat the bottle for a

franc.”

He placed a shining silver franc on the table beside the remnants of

the broken bottle. The man seized the neck of the bottle in a black,

claw-like hand and gave it a preparatory flourish. He was a cadaverous

little man, incredibly dirty, with mustaches and beard of a moth-eaten

tow-color, and a purple flush on his cheeks. His uniform was clotted

with mud. When the others crowded round him and tried to dissuade him,

he said: “M'en fous, c'est mon metier,” and rolled his eyes so that the

whites flashed in the dim light like the eyes of dead codfish.

“Why, he's really going to do it,” cried Henslowe.

The man's teeth flashed and crunched down on the jagged edge of

the glass. There was a terrific crackling noise. He flourished the

bottle-end again.

“My God, he's eating it,” cried Henslowe, roaring with laughter, “and

you're afraid to go to Paris.”

An engine rumbled into the station, with a great hiss of escaping steam.

“Gee, that's the Paris train! Tiens!” He pressed the franc into the

man's dirt-crusted hand.

“Come along, Andrews.”

As they left the buvette they heard again the crunching crackling noise

as the man bit another piece off the bottle.

Andrews followed Henslowe across the steam-filled platform to the door

of a first-class carriage. They climbed in. Henslowe immediately pulled

down the black cloth over the half globe of the light. The compartment

was empty. He threw himself down with a sigh of comfort on the soft

buff-colored cushions of the seat.

“But what on earth?” stammered Andrews.

“M'en fous, c'est mon metier,” interrupted Henslowe.

The train pulled out of the station.