“No, nothing can make me go back now. It's no use talking about it.”
“But you're crazy, man. You're crazy. One man alone can't buck the
system like that, can he, Henslowe?”
Walters was talking earnestly, leaning across the table beside the
lamp. Henslowe, who sat very stiff on the edge of a chair, nodded with
compressed lips. Andrews lay at full length on the bed, out of the
circle of light.
“Honestly, Andy,” said Henslowe with tears in his voice, “I think you'd
better do what Walters says. It's no use being heroic about it.”
“I'm not being heroic, Henny,” cried Andrews, sitting up on the bed.
He drew his feet under him, tailor fashion, and went on talking very
quietly. “Look.. It's a purely personal matter. I've got to a point
where I don't give a damn what happens to me. I don't care if I'm shot,
or if I live to be eighty...I'm sick of being ordered round. One more
order shouted at my head is not worth living to be eighty... to me.
That's all. For God's sake let's talk about something else.”
“But how many orders have you had shouted at your head since you got
in this School Detachment? Not one. You can put through your discharge
application probably....” Walters got to his feet, letting the chair
crash to the floor behind him. He stopped to pick it up. “Look here;
here's my proposition,” he went on. “I don't think you are marked
A.W.O.L. in the School office. Things are so damn badly run there.
You can turn up and say you've been sick and draw your back pay. And
nobody'll say a thing. Or else I'll put it right up to the guy who's top
sergeant. He's a good friend of mine. We can fix it up on the records
some way. But for God's sake don't ruin your whole life on account of
a little stubbornness, and some damn fool anarchistic ideas or other a
feller like you ought to have had more sense than to pick up....”
“He's right, Andy,” said Henslowe in a low voice.
“Please don't talk any more about it. You've told me all that before,”
said Andrews sharply. He threw himself back on the bed and rolled over
towards the wall.
They were silent a long time. A sound of voices and footsteps drifted up
from the courtyard.
“But, look here, Andy,” said Henslowe nervously stroking his moustache.
“You care much more about your work than any abstract idea of asserting
your right of individual liberty. Even if you don't get caught.... I
think the chances of getting caught are mighty slim if you use your
head.... But even if you don't, you haven't enough money to live for
long over here, you haven't....”
“Don't you think I've thought of all that? I'm not crazy, you know. I've
figured up the balance perfectly sanely. The only thing is, you fellows
can't understand. Have you ever been in a labor battalion? Have you
ever had a man you'd been chatting with five minutes before deliberately
knock you down? Good God, you don't know what you are talking about,
you two.... I've got to be free, now. I don't care at what cost. Being
free's the only thing that matters.”
Andrews lay on his back talking towards the ceiling.
Henslowe was on his feet, striding nervously about the room.
“As if anyone was ever free,” he muttered.
“All right, quibble, quibble. You can argue anything away if you want
to. Of course, cowardice is the best policy, necessary for survival. The
man who's got most will to live is the most cowardly... go on.” Andrews's
voice was shrill and excited, breaking occasionally like a half-grown
boy's voice.
“Andy, what on earth's got hold of you?... God, I hate to go away this
way,” added Henslowe after a pause.
“I'll pull through all right, Henny. I'll probably come to see you in
Syria, disguised as an Arab sheik.” Andrews laughed excitedly.
“If I thought I'd do any good, I'd stay.... But there's nothing I can
do. Everybody's got to settle their own affairs, in their own damn fool
way. So long, Walters.”
Walters and Henslowe shook hands absently.
Henslowe came over to the bed and held out his hand to Andrews.
“Look, old man, you will be as careful as you can, won't you? And
write me care American Red Cross, Jerusalem. I'll be damned anxious,
honestly.”
“Don't you worry, we'll go travelling together yet,” said Andrews,
sitting up and taking Henslowe's hand.
They heard Henslowe's steps fade down the stairs and then ring for a
moment on the pavings of the courtyard.
Walters moved his chair over beside Andrews's bed.
“Now, look, let's have a man-to-man talk, Andrews. Even if you want to
ruin your life, you haven't a right to. There's your family, and haven't
you any patriotism?... Remember, there is such a thing as duty in the
world.”
Andrews sat up and said in a low, furious voice, pausing between each
word:
“I can't explain it.... But I shall never put a uniform on again.... So
for Christ's sake shut up.”
“All right, do what you goddam please; I'm through with you.”
Walters suddenly flashed into a rage. He began undressing silently.
Andrews lay a long while flat on his back in the bed, staring at the
ceiling, then he too undressed, put the light out, and got into bed.
The rue des Petits-Jardins was a short street in a district of
warehouses. A grey, windowless wall shut out the light along all of one
side. Opposite was a cluster of three old houses leaning together as if
the outer ones were trying to support the beetling mansard roof of the
center house. Behind them rose a huge building with rows and rows of
black windows. When Andrews stopped to look about him, he found the
street completely deserted. The ominous stillness that had brooded over
the city during all the walk from his room near the Pantheon seemed here
to culminate in sheer desolation. In the silence he could hear the light
padding noise made by the feet of a dog that trotted across the end of
the street. The house with the mansard roof was number eight. The front
of the lower storey had once been painted in chocolate-color, across the
top of which was still decipherable the sign: “Charbon, Bois. Lhomond.”
On the grimed window beside the door, was painted in white: “Debit de
Boissons.”
Andrews pushed on the door, which opened easily. Somewhere in the
interior a bell jangled, startlingly loud after the silence of the
street. On the wall opposite the door was a speckled mirror with a crack
in it, the shape of a star, and under it a bench with three marble-top
tables. The zinc bar filled up the third wall. In the fourth was a glass
door pasted up with newspapers. Andrews walked over to the bar. The
jangling of the bell faded to silence. He waited, a curious uneasiness
gradually taking possession of him. Anyways, he thought, he was wasting
his time; he ought to be doing something to arrange his future. He
walked over to the street door. The bell jangled again when he opened
it. At the same moment a man came out through the door the newspapers
were pasted over. He was a stout man in a dirty white shirt stained to a
brownish color round the armpits and caught in very tightly at the waist
by the broad elastic belt that held up his yellow corduroy trousers.
His face was flabby, of a greenish color; black eyes looked at Andrews
fixedly through barely open lids, so that they seemed long slits above
the cheekbones.
“That's the Chink,” thought Andrews.
“Well,” said the man, taking his place behind the bar with his legs far
apart.
“A beer, please,” said Andrews.
“There isn't any.”
“A glass of wine then.”
The man nodded his head, and keeping his eyes fastened on Andrews all
the while, strode out of the door again.
A moment later, Chrisfield came out, with rumpled hair, yawning, rubbing
an eye with the knuckles of one fist.
“Lawsie, Ah juss woke up, Andy. Come along in back.”
Andrews followed him through a small room with tables and benches,
down a corridor where the reek of ammonia bit into his eyes, and up
a staircase littered with dirt and garbage. Chrisfield opened a door
directly on the stairs, and they stumbled into a large room with a
window that gave on the court. Chrisfield closed the door carefully, and
turned to Andrews with a smile.
“Ah was right smart 'askeered ye wouldn't find it, Andy.”
“So this is where you live?”
“Um hum, a bunch of us lives here.”
A wide bed without coverings, where a man in olive-drab slept rolled in
a blanket, was the only furniture of the room.
“Three of us sleeps in that bed,” said Chrisfield.
“Who's that?” cried the man in the bed, sitting up suddenly.
“All right, Al, he's a buddy o' mine,” said Chrisfield. “He's taken off
his uniform.”
“Jesus, you got guts,” said the man in the bed.
Andrews looked at him sharply. A piece of towelling, splotched here and
there with dried blood, was wrapped round his head, and a hand, swathed
in bandages, was drawn up to his body. The man's mouth took on a twisted
expression of pain as he let his head gradually down to the bed again.
“Gosh, what did you do to yourself?” cried Andrews.
“I tried to hop a freight at Marseilles.”
“Needs practice to do that sort o' thing,” said Chrisfield, who sat on
the bed, pulling his shoes off. “Ah'm go-in' to git back to bed, Andy.
Ah'm juss dead tired. Ah chucked cabbages all night at the market. They
give ye a job there without askin' no questions.”
“Have a cigarette.” Andrews sat down on the foot of the bed and threw a
cigarette towards Chrisfield. “Have one?” he asked Al.
“No. I couldn't smoke. I'm almost crazy with this hand. One of the
wheels went over it.... I cut what was left of the little finger off
with a razor.” Andrews could see the sweat rolling down his cheek as he
spoke.
“Christ, that poor beggar's been havin' a time, Andy. We was 'askeert to
get a doctor, and we all didn't know what to do.”
“I got some pure alcohol an' washed it in that. It's not infected. I
guess it'll be all right.”
“Where are you from, Al?” asked Andrews.
“'Frisco. Oh, I'm goin' to try to sleep. I haven't slept a wink for four
nights.”
“Why don't you get some dope?”
“Oh, we all ain't had a cent to spare for anythin', Andy.”
“Oh, if we had kale we could live like kings--not,” said Al in the
middle of a nervous little giggle.
“Look, Chris,” said Andrews, “I'll halve with you. I've got five hundred
francs.”
“Jesus Gawd, man, don't kid about anything like that.”
“Here's two hundred and fifty.... It's not so much as it sounds.”
Andrews handed him five fifty-franc notes.
“Say, how did you come to bust loose?” said Al, turning his head towards
Andrews.
“I got away from a labor battalion one night. That's all.”
“Tell me about it, buddy. I don't feel my hand so much when I'm talking
to somebody.... I'd be home now if it wasn't for a gin mill in Alsace.
Say, don't ye think that big headgear they sport up there is awful good
looking? Got my goat every time I saw one.... I was comin' back from
leave at Grenoble, an' I went through Strasburg. Some town. My outfit
was in Coblenz. That's where I met up with Chris here. Anyway, we was
raisin' hell round Strasburg, an' I went into a gin mill down a flight
of steps. Gee, everything in that town's plumb picturesque, just like a
kid I used to know at home whose folks were Eytalian used to talk about
when he said how he wanted to come overseas. Well, I met up with a girl
down there, who said she'd just come down to a place like that to look
for her brother who was in the foreign legion.”
Andrews and Chrisfield laughed.
“What you laughin' at?” went on Al in an eager taut voice. “Honest to
Gawd. I'm goin' to marry her if I ever get out of this. She's the best
little girl I ever met up with. She was waitress in a restaurant, an'
when she was off duty she used to wear that there Alsatian costume....
Hell, I just stayed on. Every day, I thought I'd go away the next
day.... Anyway, the war was over. I warn't a damn bit of use.... Hasn't
a fellow got any rights at all? Then the M.P.'s started cleanin' up
Strasburg after A.W.O.L.'s, an' I beat it out of there, an' Christ, it
don't look as if I'd ever be able to get back.”
“Say, Andy,” said Chrisfield, suddenly, “let's go down after some
booze.”
“All right.”
“Say, Al, do you want me to get you anything at the drug store?”
“No. I won't do anythin' but lay low and bathe it with alcohol now and
then, against infection. Anyways, it's the first of May. You'll be crazy
to go out. You might get pulled. They say there's riots going on.”
“Gosh, I forgot it was the first of May,” cried Andrews. “They're
running a general strike to protest against the war with Russia and....”
“A guy told me,” interrupted Al, in a shrill voice, “there might be a
revolution.”
“Come along, Andy,” said Chris from the door.
On the stairs Andrews felt Chrisfield's hand squeezing his arm hard.
“Say, Andy,” Chris put his lips close to Andrews's ear and spoke in a
rasping whisper. “You're the only one that knows... you know what. You
an' that sergeant. Doan you say anythin' so that the guys here kin ketch
on, d'ye hear?”
“All right, Chris, I won't, but man alive, you oughtn't to lose your
nerve about it. You aren't the only one who ever shot an...”
“Shut yer face, d'ye hear?” muttered Chrisfield savagely.
They went down the stairs in silence. In the room next, to the bar they
found the Chink reading a newspaper.
“Is he French?” whispered Andrews.
“Ah doan know what he is. He ain't a white man, Ah'll wager that,” said
Chris, “but he's square.”
“D'you know anything about what's going on?” asked Andrews in French,
going up to the Chink.
“Where?” The Chink got up, flashing a glance at Andrews out of the
corners of his slit-like eyes.
“Outside, in the streets, in Paris, anywhere where people are out in the
open and can do things. What do you think about the revolution?”
The Chink shrugged his shoulders.
“Anything's possible,” he said.
“D'you think they really can overthrow the army and the government in
one day, like that?”
“Who?” broke in Chrisfield.
“Why, the people, Chris, the ordinary people like you and me, who are
tired of being ordered round, who are tired of being trampled down by
other people just like them, who've had the luck to get in right with
the system.”
“D'you know what I'll do when the revolution comes?” broke in the Chink
with sudden intensity, slapping himself on the chest with one hand.
“I'll go straight to one of those jewelry stores, rue Royale, and fill
my pockets and come home with my hands full of diamonds.”
“What good'll that do you?”
“What good? I'll bury them back there in the court and wait. I'll need
them in the end. D'you know what it'll mean, your revolution? Another
system! When there's a system there are always men to be bought with
diamonds. That's what the world's like.”
“But they won't be worth anything. It'll only be work that is worth
anything.”
“We'll see,” said the Chink.
“D'you think it could happen, Andy, that there'd be a revolution, an'
there wouldn't be any more armies, an' we'd be able to go round like we
are civilians? Ah doan think so. Fellers like us ain't got it in 'em to
buck the system, Andy.”
“Many a system's gone down before; it will happen again.”
“They're fighting the Garde Republicaine now before the Gare de l'Est,”
said the Chink in an expressionless voice. “What do you want down here?
You'd better stay in the back. You never know what the police may put
over on us.”
“Give us two bottles of vin blank, Chink,” said Chrisfield.
“When'll you pay?”
“Right now. This guy's given me fifty francs.”
“Rich, are you?” said the Chink with hatred in his voice, turning to
Andrews. “Won't last long at that rate. Wait here.”
He strode into the bar, closing the door carefully after him. A sudden
jangling of the bell was followed by a sound of loud voices and stamping
feet. Andrews and Chrisfield tiptoed into the dark corridor, where they
stood a long time, waiting, breathing the foul air that stung their
nostrils with the stench of plaster-damp and rotting wine. At last the
Chink came back with three bottles of wine.
“Well, you're right,” he said to Andrews. “They are putting up
barricades on the Avenue Magenta.”
On the stairs they met a girl sweeping. She had untidy hair that
straggled out from under a blue handkerchief tied under her chin, and a
pretty-colored fleshy face. Chrisfield caught her up to him and kissed
her, as he passed.
“We all calls her the dawg-faced girl,” he said to Andrews in
explanation. “She does our work. Ah like to had a fight with Slippery
over her yisterday.... Didn't Ah, Slippery?”
When he followed Chrisfield into the room, Andrews saw a man sitting
on the window ledge smoking. He was dressed as a second lieutenant, his
puttees were brilliantly polished, and he smoked through a long, amber
cigarette-holder. His pink nails were carefully manicured.
“This is Slippery, Andy,” said Chrisfield. “This guy's an ole buddy o'
mine. We was bunkies together a hell of a time, wasn't we, Andy?”
“You bet we were.”
“So you've taken your uniform off, have you? Mighty foolish,” said
Slippery. “Suppose they nab you?”
“It's all up now anyway. I don't intend to get nabbed,” said Andrews.
“We got booze,” said Chrisfield.
Slippery had taken dice from his pocket and was throwing them
meditatively on the floor between his feet, snapping his fingers with
each throw.
“I'll shoot you one of them bottles, Chris,” he said.
Andrews walked over to the bed. Al was stirring uneasily, his face
flushed and his mouth twitching.
“Hello,” he said. “What's the news?”
“They say they're putting up barricades near the Gare de l'Est. It may
be something.”
“God, I hope so. God, I wish they'd do everything here like they did
in Russia; then we'd be free. We couldn't go back to the States for
a while, but there wouldn't be no M.P.'s to hunt us like we were
criminals.... I'm going to sit up a while and talk.” Al giggled
hysterically for a moment.
“Have a swig of wine?” asked Andrews.
“Sure, it may set me up a bit; thanks.” He drank greedily from the
bottle, spilling a little over his chin.
“Say, is your face badly cut up, Al?”
“No, it's just scotched, skin's off; looks like beefsteak, I reckon....
Ever been to Strasburg?”
“No.”
“Man, that's the town. And the girls in that costume.... Whee!”
“Say, you're from San Francisco, aren't you?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I wonder if you knew a fellow I knew at training camp, a kid
named Fuselli from 'Frisco?”
“Knew him! Jesus, man, he's the best friend I've got.... Ye don't know
where he is now, do you?”
“I saw him here in Paris two months ago.”
“Well, I'll be damned.... God, that's great!” Al's voice was staccato
from excitement. “So you knew Dan at training camp? The last letter from
him was 'bout a year ago. Dan'd just got to be corporal. He's a damn
clever kid, Dan is, an' ambitious too, one of the guys always makes
good.... Gawd, I'd hate to see him this way. D'you know, we used to see
a hell of a lot of each other in 'Frisco, an' he always used to tell me
how he'd make good before I did. He was goddam right, too. Said I was
too soft about girls.... Did ye know him real well?”
“Yes. I even remember that he used to tell me about a fellow he knew who
was called Al.... He used to tell me about how you two used to go down
to the harbor and watch the big liners come in at night, all aflare with
lights through the Golden Gate. And he used to tell you he'd go over to
Europe in one, when he'd made his pile.”
“That's why Strasburg made me think of him,” broke in Al, tremendously
excited. “'Cause it was so picturesque like.... But honest, I've tried
hard to make good in this army. I've done everything a feller could. An'
all I did was to get into a cushy job in the regimental office.... But
Dan, Gawd, he may even be an officer by this time.”
“No, he's not that,” said Andrews. “Look here, you ought to keep quiet
with that hand of yours.”
“Damn my hand. Oh, it'll heal all right if I forget about it. You
see, my foot slipped when they shunted a car I was just climbing into,
an'...I guess I ought to be glad I wasn't killed. But, gee, when I think
that if I hadn't been a fool about that girl I might have been home by
now....”
“The Chink says they're putting up barricades on the Avenue Magenta.”
“That means business, kid!”
“Business nothin',” shouted Slippery from where he and Chrisfield leaned
over the dice on the tile floor in front of the window. “One tank an'
a few husky Senegalese'll make your goddam socialists run so fast
they won't stop till they get to Dijon.... You guys ought to have more
sense.” Slippery got to his feet and came over to the bed, jingling the
dice in his hand. “It'll take more'n a handful o' socialists paid by the
Boches to break the army. If it could be broke, don't ye think people
would have done it long ago?”
“Shut up a minute. Ah thought Ah heard somethin',” said Chrisfield
suddenly, going to the window.
They held their breath. The bed creaked as Al stirred uneasily in it.
“No, warn't anythin'; Ah'd thought Ah'd heard people singin'.”
“The Internationale,” cried Al.
“Shut up,” said Chrisfield in a low gruff voice.
Through the silence of the room they heard steps on the stairs.
“All right, it's only Smiddy,” said Slippery, and he threw the dice down
on the tiles again.
The door opened slowly to let in a tall, stoop-shouldered man with a
long face and long teeth.
“Who's the frawg?” he asked in a startled way, with one hand on the door
knob.
“All right, Smiddy; it ain't a frawg; it's a guy Chris knows. He's taken
his uniform off.”
“'Lo, buddy,” said Smiddy, shaking Andrews's hand. “Gawd, you look like
a frawg.”
“That's good,” said Andrews.
“There's hell to pay,” broke out Smiddy breathlessly. “You know Gus
Evans and the little black-haired guy goes 'round with him? They been
picked up. I seen 'em myself with some M. P.'s at Place de la Bastille.
An' a guy I talked to under the bridge where I slep' last night said a
guy'd tole him they were goin' to clean the A. W. O. L.'s out o' Paris
if they had to search through every house in the place.”
“If they come here they'll git somethin' they ain't lookin' for,”
muttered Chrisfield.
“I'm goin' down to Nice; getting too hot around here,” said Slippery.
“I've got travel orders in my pocket now.”
“How did you get 'em?”
“Easy as pie,” said Slippery, lighting a cigarette and puffing
affectedly towards the ceiling. “I met up with a guy, a second loot, in
the Knickerbocker Bar. We gets drunk together, an' goes on a party with
two girls I know. In the morning I get up bright an' early, and now I've
got five thousand francs, a leave slip and a silver cigarette case, an'
Lootenant J. B. Franklin's runnin' around sayin' how he was robbed by
a Paris whore, or more likely keepin' damn quiet about it. That's my
system.”
“But, gosh darn it, I don't see how you can go around with a guy an'
drink with him, an' then rob him,” cried Al from the bed.
“No different from cleaning a guy up at craps.”
“Well?”
“An' suppose that feller knew that I was only a bloody private. Don't
you think he'd have turned me over to the M. P.'s like winkin'?”
“No, I don't think so,” said Al. “They're juss like you an me, skeered
to death they'll get in wrong, but they won't light on a feller unless
they have to.”
“That's a goddam lie,” cried Chrisfield. “They like ridin' yer. A
doughboy's less'n a dawg to 'em. Ah'd shoot anyone of 'em lake Ah'd
shoot a nigger.”
Andrews was watching Chrisfield's face; it suddenly flushed red. He was
silent abruptly. His eyes met Andrews's eyes with a flash of fear.
“They're all sorts of officers, like they're all sorts of us,” Al was
insisting.
“But you damn fools, quit arguing,” cried Smiddy. “What the hell are we
goin' to do? It ain't safe here no more, that's how I look at it.”
They were silent.
At last Chrisfield said:
“What you goin' to do, Andy?”
“I hardly know. I think I'll go out to St. Germain to see a boy I know
there who works on a farm to see if it's safe to take a job there. I
won't stay in Paris. Then there's a girl here I want to look up. I must
see her.” Andrews broke off suddenly, and started walking back and forth
across the end of the room.
“You'd better be damn careful; they'll probably shoot you if they catch
you,” said Slippery.
Andrews shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I'd rather be shot than go to Leavenworth for twenty years, Gawd!
I would,” cried Al.
“How do you fellers eat here?” asked Slippery.
“We buy stuff an' the dawg-faced girl cooks it for us.”
“Got anything for this noon?”
“I'll go see if I can buy some stuff,” said Andrews. “It's safer for me
to go out than for you.”
“All right, here's twenty francs,” said Slippery, handing Andrews a bill
with an offhand gesture.
Chrisfield followed Andrews down the stairs. When they reached the
passage at the foot of the stairs, he put his hand on Andrews's shoulder
and whispered:
“Say, Andy, d'you think there's anything in that revolution business? Ah
hadn't never thought they could buck the system thataway.”
“They did in Russia.”
“Then we'd be free, civilians, like we all was before the draft. But
that ain't possible, Andy; that ain't possible, Andy.”
“We'll see,” said Andrews, as, he opened the door to the bar.
He went up excitedly to the Chink, who sat behind the row of bottles
along the bar.
“Well, what's happening?”
“Where?”
“By the Gare de l'Est, where they were putting up barricades?”
“Barricades!” shouted a young man in a red sash who was drinking at a
table. “Why, they tore down some of the iron guards round the trees, if
you call that barricades. But they're cowards. Whenever the cops charge
they run. They're dirty cowards.”
“D'you think anything's going to happen?”
“What can happen when you've got nothing but a bunch of dirty cowards?”
“What d'you think about it?” said Andrews, turning to the Chink.
The Chink shook his head without answering. Andrews went out.
When he cams back he found Al and Chrisfield alone in their room.
Chrisfield was walking up and down, biting his finger nails. On the wall
opposite the window was a square of sunshine reflected from the opposite
wall of the Court.
“For God's sake beat it, Chris. I'm all right,” Al was saying in a weak,
whining voice, his face twisted up by pain.
“What's the matter?” cried Andrews, putting down a large bundle.
“Slippery's seen a M. P. nosin' around in front of the gin mill.”
“Good God!”
“They've beat it.... The trouble is Al's too sick.... Honest to gawd,
Ah'll stay with you, Al.”
“No. If you know somewhere to go, beat it, Chris. I'll stay here with
Al and talk French to the M. P.'s if they come. We'll fool 'em somehow.”
Andrews felt suddenly amused and joyous.
“Honest to gawd, Andy, Ah'd stay if it warn't that that sergeant knows,”
said Chrisfield in a jerky voice.
“Beat it, Chris. There may be no time to waste.”
“So long, Andy.” Chrisfield slipped out of the door.
“It's funny, Al,” said Andrews, sitting on the edge of the bed and
unwrapping the package of food, “I'm not a damn bit scared any more. I
think I'm free of the army, Al.... How's your hand?”
“I dunno. Oh, how I wish I was in my old bunk at Coblenz. I warn't made
for buckin' against the world this way.... If we had old Dan with us....
Funny that you know Dan.... He'd have a million ideas for gettin' out
of this fix. But I'm glad he's not here. He'd bawl me out so, for not
havin' made good. He's a powerful ambitious kid, is Dan.”
“But it's not the sort of thing a man can make good in, Al,” said
Andrews slowly. They were silent. There was no sound in the courtyard,
only very far away the clatter of a patrol of cavalry over cobblestones.
The sky had become overcast and the room was very dark. The mouldy
plaster peeling off the walls had streaks of green in it. The light from
the courtyard had a greenish tinge that made their faces look pale and
dead, like the faces of men that have long been shut up between damp
prison walls.
“And Fuselli had a girl named Mabe,” said Andrews.
“Oh, she married a guy in the Naval Reserve. They had a grand wedding,”
said Al.