[Illustration]
TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS’ LEAVE
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
[Illustration: IN THE ELEVATOR SHE SAID OUT OF A CLEAR SKY: “YOU’LL HAVE
TO TAKE THAT RAINCOAT OFF, OF COURSE.”]
TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS’ LEAVE
BY
MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
AUTHOR OF “K,” “BAB,” “THE AMAZING INTERLUDE,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
MAY WILSON PRESTON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
_Copyright, 1918,
By George H. Doran Company_
_Copyright, 1918,
By The Curtis Publishing Company_
_Printed in the United States of America_
ILLUSTRATIONS
IN THE ELEVATOR SHE SAID OUT OF A CLEAR SKY: “YOU’LL
HAVE TO TAKE THAT RAINCOAT OFF, OF COURSE” _Frontispiece_
PAGE
“IF A MAN FROM THE HEADQUARTERS TROOP OVERSTAYS HIS
LEAVE WHAT HAPPENS TO HIM, UNCLE JIMMY?” 48
TWENTY-THREE AND A HALF HOURS’ LEAVE
I
The Headquarters Troop were preparing to leave camp and move towards the
East, where at an Atlantic port they would take ship and the third step
toward saving democracy. Now the Headquarters Troop are a cavalry
organisation, their particular function being, so far as the lay mind
can grasp it, to form a circle round the general and keep shells from
falling on him. Not that this close affiliation gives them any right to
friendly relations with that aloof and powerful personage.
“It just gives him a few more to yell at that can’t yell back,” grumbled
the stable sergeant. He had been made stable sergeant because he had
been a motorcycle racer. By the same process of careful selection the
chief mechanic had once kept a livery stable.
The barracks hummed day and night. By day boxes were packed, containing
the military equipment of horses and men in wartime. By night tired
noncoms pored over pay rolls and lists, and wrote, between naps on the
table, such thrilling literature as this:
“Sergeant Gray: fr. D. to Awol. 10 A. M., 6–1–’18.
“Sergeant Gray: fr. Awol. to arrest, pp. 2. Memo. Hdq. Camp 6–1–’18 to
6–2–’18.”
Which means, interpreted, that Sergeant Gray was absent without leave
from duty at ten A. M. on the first of June, 1918, and that on his
return he was placed under arrest, said arrest lasting from the first to
the second of June.
On the last night in camp, at a pine table in a tiny office cut off from
the lower squad room, Sergeant Gray made the above record against his
own fair name, and sitting back surveyed it grimly. It was two A. M.
Across from him the second mess sergeant was dealing in cans and pounds
and swearing about a missing cleaver.
“Did you ever think,” reflected Sergeant Gray, leaning back in his chair
and tastefully drawing a girl’s face on his left thumb-nail, “that the
time would come when you’d be planning bran muffins for the Old Man’s
breakfast? What’s a bran muffin, anyhow?”
“Horse feed.”
“Ever eat one?”
“No. Stop talking, won’t you?”
Sergeant Gray leaned back and stretched his long arms high above his
head.
“I’ve got to talk,” he observed. “If I don’t I’ll go to sleep. Lay you
two dollars to one I’m asleep before you are.”
“Go to the devil!” said the second mess sergeant peevishly.
“Never had breakfast with the Old Man, did you?” inquired Sergeant Gray,
beginning on his forefinger with another girl’s face.
There was no reply to his question. The second mess sergeant was
completely immersed in beans.
“Think the Old Man likes me,” went on Sergeant Gray meditatively. “It’s
about a week now since he told me I was a disgrace to the uniform. How’d
I know I was going to sneeze in his horse’s ear just as he was climbing
on?”
“Suffering snakes!” cried the second mess sergeant. “Go to bed! You’re
delirious.”
Sergeant Gray put a dimple in the girl’s cheek and surveyed it
critically.
“Yep. The old boy’s crazy about me,” he ruminated aloud. “Asked me the
other day if I thought I’d fight the Germans as hard as I fought work.”
“Probably be asking you to breakfast,” observed the second mess
sergeant, beginning on a new sheet. “He’s in the habit of having noncoms
to eat with him.”
The subtlety of this passed over Sergeant Gray’s head. He was carefully
adding a small ear to his drawing, an ear which resembled an
interrogation point. But a seed had been dropped on the fertile soil of
his mind. He finished, yawned again and grinned.
“All right,” he said. “_C’est la guerre_, as the old boy says. I’ll lay
you two dollars to one I eat breakfast with him within a month.” His
imagination grew with the thought. “Wait! I’ll eat bran muffins with him
at breakfast within a month. How’s that?”
“It’s simple damn foolishness,” observed the second mess sergeant. “I’ll
take you if you’ll go to bed and lemme alone.”
“‘Lemme,’” observed Sergeant Gray, “is probably Princeton. In Harvard
we——”
But the second mess sergeant had picked up the inkwell and was fingering
it purposefully.
“All right, dear old thing,” said Sergeant Gray.
And he rose, stretching his more than six feet to the uttermost. Then he
made his way through the rows of beds to the sergeant’s corner, and
removing his blouse, his breeches, his shoes and his puttees was ready
for sleep. His last waking thought was of his wager.
“A bran muffin with the Old Man!” he chuckled. “A bran muffin! A——”
Something heavy landed on his chest with a great thump, and after
turning round once or twice settled itself there for the remainder of
the night. Lying on his back, so as to give his dog the only possible
berth on the tiny bed, Sergeant Gray, all-American athlete and prime
young devil of the Headquarters Troop, went fast asleep.
Reveille the next morning, however, found him grouchy. He kicked the dog
off his legs, to which the animal had retired, and reaching under his
pillow brought out his whistle. He blew a shrill blast on it. The lower
squad room groaned, turned over, closed its eyes. He blew again.
“Roll out!” he yelled in stentorian tones. “R-r-roll out, you dirty
horsemen!”
Then he closed his eyes again and went peacefully to sleep. He dreamed
that the general was carrying a plate of bran muffins to his bedside,
and behind him was a pretty girl with coffee and an ear like an
interrogation point. He wakened to find breakfast over and the cook in a
bad temper.
“Be a sport, Watt,” he pleaded. “Just a cup of coffee, anyhow.”
“I fed your dog for you. That’s all you get.”
“I can’t eat the dog.”
“Go on out,” said the cook. “This ain’t the Waldorf-Astoria. Nor Childs’
neither.”
“Some day, on the field of honor,” said Sergeant Gray, “you will lie
wounded, Watt. You will beg for a cup of water, and I shall refuse it,
saying——”
“Give him something to get rid of him,” the cook instructed his helper.
And Sergeant Gray was fed. As he drank his coffee he reflected as to his
wager of the night before. It appealed to his sporting instinct but not
to his reason. He had exactly as much chance to eat a bran muffin with
the general as he had to sign peace terms with the Kaiser.
He drank his tepid coffee and surveyed his finger nails disconsolately.
The faces had only partially disappeared during his morning’s ablution.
“This is the life, Watt!” he said to the cook. “Wine, women and song,
eh?”
But the cook was cutting his finger nails, preparatory to morning
inspection.
Now the ink pictures on Sergeant Gray’s finger nails had a certain
significance. They bore, to be exact, a certain faint resemblance to a
young lady whose photograph was now concealed against inspection in the
sergeant’s condiment can. The young lady in question had three days
before wired the sergeant to this effect:
“Married Bud Palmer yesterday. Please wish me happiness.”
To which, concealing a deep hurt, the sergeant had replied: “Praying
earnestly for you both.”
He was, then, womanless. No one loved him. He was going to war, and no
one would mourn him—except the family, of course. The effect of the
tepid coffee on his empty stomach was merely to confirm his morning
unhappiness. No one loved him and he had made a fool bet that by now was
all over the troop.
At mess he knew what he stood committed to. “Please pass the bran
muffins,” came loudly to his ears. And scraps of conversation like this:
“But you see, dear old thing, I didn’t know your horse was going to
stick his head under my nose when I sneezed.”
Or:
“But, my dear general, the weakness of the division lies in your staff.
Now, if I were doing it——”
By one o’clock in the afternoon the troop were ready to move. And
Sergeant Gray went into the town. There he tried on a new uniform—and
the story of Sergeant Gray’s new uniform is the story of the bran
muffins.
It was really a beautiful uniform. Almost it took away the sting of that
telegram; almost it obliterated the memory of the wager. It spread over
his broad shoulders and hugged his slim waist. The breeches were full
above and close below. For the first time he felt every inch a soldier.
He carried the old uniform back to camp and gave it to the cook.
“Here, Watt!” he said. “You’ve been grumbling about clothes. Cut the
chevrons off it, and it’s yours.”
“Well, look who’s here!” said Watt admiringly. “Thought you fellows had
to wear issue stuff.”
“Laws are for slaves, Watt.”
“Keep it nice,” observed the cook gracelessly. “You’ll need it for that
breakfast with the general.”
“Wait and see,” said Sergeant Gray jauntily, but with no hope in his
heart.
The new uniform was the cause of much invidious comment. Most of it
resembled the cook’s. But Sergeant Gray was busy. To pass inspection he
was obliged to borrow from the neighbouring beds, left unguarded,
certain articles in which he was deficient, namely: Undershirt, cotton,
one; socks, light wool, pairs, two; underbreeches, cotton, pairs, one.
Thus miscellaneously assembled he passed inspection. He drew a deep
breath, however, when no notice was taken of the new and forbidden
uniform and when the photograph of Mrs. Bud Palmer still lay rolled up
and undiscovered in his condiment can.
During the afternoon he wandered over to the depot brigade and left his
dog there with a lieutenant who had promised to look after him. The
sense of depression and impending doom had overtaken him again. He
stopped at the post exchange and bought a dozen doughnuts, which he
carried with him in a paper bag.
“Might feed him one of these now and then,” he suggested. “He’s going to
miss me like the devil. He’s a nice mutt.” His voice was a trifle husky.
“Not fond of bran muffins, I suppose?”
The lieutenant’s voice was impersonal. Sergeant Gray eyed him
suspiciously, but his eyes were on the dog.
“Don’t know. Never tried them,” he said, and walked off with great
dignity.
So that was it, eh? It was all over the division already. Well, he’d
show them! He’d——
The general, on horseback and followed by his aids, went by. Sergeant
Gray stopped and rigidly saluted, but the general’s eyes and his mind
were far away. Sergeant Gray looked after him with bitterness in his
heart. Just at that moment he hated the Army. He hated the general. Most
of all he hated to the depths of his soul those smug young officers who
were the general’s aids-de-camp, and who ate with him, and swanked in
and out of Headquarters, and ordered horses from the troop stables
whenever they wanted them, and brought in their muddy automobiles to be
cleaned, and sat with their feet on the general’s desk in his absence
and smoked his cigarettes.
However, he cheered somewhat during the evening. They were ready to
move. No more drill on hot and dusty parade grounds. No more long hikes.
No more digging and shoveling and pushing of wagon trains out of the
mud. No more infantry range, where a chap in the pit waved a red flag
every time dust in a fellow’s eyes caused a miss, and the men round
hissed “Raspberry!” No more bayonet school, where one jabbed a bunch of
green branches representing the enemy, and asked breathlessly how it
liked it. “War’s hell, you know, old top,” he had been wont to say, and
had given the bunch another poke for luck.
Before, ahead, loomed the port of embarkation. The one imminent question
of the barracks was—leave. Were they to have leave or were they not? To
Sergeant Gray the matter was of grave importance. Leave meant a call on
Mrs. Bud Palmer the faithless, in the new uniform, and the ceremonious
returning to her of the photograph in the condiment can. Then it meant
finding a nice girl—he was rather vague here—and going to the theatre
and supper afterward, and perhaps to a roof garden still later.
“I’ll show her,” he muttered between his teeth. But the her was Mrs.
Palmer.
In their preparations for departure the wager slipped from the minds of
the troop. At two-thirty in the morning they went ostensibly on a hike,
in full marching order, which meant extremely full—for a cavalry troop
dismounted must carry their own equipment and a part that normally
belongs on the horse. Went on a hike, not to return.
“Everything on me but the kitchen stove,” grumbled Sergeant Gray, and
edged gingerly through the doorway to join the line outside. With
extreme caution, because only the entire balance of the division and the
people in three near-by towns knew that they were moving, they made
their way to a railway siding and there entrained.
It was dawn when the cars moved out. Sergeant Gray had secured a window
seat, and kept it in spite of heroic efforts to oust him. All round was
his equipment, packed tight, his saddlebags, his blanket roll, his rifle
and bandoleer, a dozen oranges in a paper sack, as many doughnuts. Over
and round him, leaning out of his window at the imminent danger of their
lives, were the supply sergeant, the second mess sergeant, the stable
sergeant and two corporals.
“Not crowded, are you, general?” asked the stable sergeant politely.
The title stuck. He was general to the entire troop after that: behind
his back, to the enlisted men; to his face and very, very politely, to
the other noncoms.
“Oh, go to hell!” they finally tortured out of him; and they retired,
grinning, until some wit or other would walk down the aisle, salute
gravely and say: “Wish to report that bran muffins are on the way, sir.”
And as the train moved out the car took up that message of the artillery
when a gun is fired. “On the way!” they yelled. “On the way! Bran muffin
Number One on the way.”
“Been pretty busy, haven’t you?” he asked when at last the train had
settled down to comparative quiet and the second mess sergeant was
beside him.
“Not half as busy as you’ll have to be if you’re going to make good.”
However, the troop’s attention, fickle as the love of the mob, turned at
last away from him and focused on the coloured porter. They insisted
that he was of draft age, and that it was the custom anyhow to take the
train crew to France with the troops it carried. They suggested craps,
and on his protesting that he had no money they forced him to turn his
pockets out, at the point of a revolver. And boylike, having bullied him
until he was pale, they loaded him with cigarettes, candy, fruit and
abuse.
The Headquarters Troop had a train of their own. Up behind the engine
was the baggage car, turned into a kitchen with field ranges set up and
the cooks already at work. Behind was the long line of tourist sleepers,
each with its grinning but slightly apprehensive porter. And at the
rear, where general officers of importance are always kept in war, was a
Pullman containing the divisional staff.
When breakfast, served from the baggage car, was being carried down the
aisles the train pulled into a tunnel and stopped. It was a very hot
day, and in through the open windows rolled black and choking clouds of
smoke. The troop coughed and cursed; but a moment later they burst into
wild whoops of joy. The engine had pulled on a hundred yards or so,
leaving the staff car in the tunnel.
The windows were full of jeering boys, eyes bent eagerly toward the
rear. The end of the tunnel belched smoke like an iron furnace, and into
it the joyous whoops of the troop penetrated like the maniacal yells of
demons.
The general, who had just buttered a bran muffin, looked up and scowled.
He took a bite of the muffin, but he was eating smoke.
“What the——” he sputtered. “Get this car moved on, somebody!” he
shouted.
The staff sat still and pretended it was not present.
“Woof, woof!” said the general in a furious cough. “Listen to
those—woof, woof!—young devils! Move this train on, somebody! What have
I got a staff for anyhow?”
The train stood still and conversation languished. There are only two
things to be done when a general is angry: One is to get behind the
furniture and pretend one is not there; the other is to distract his
mind. The general’s ire growing and the car remaining in the tunnel, an
aide whom the general called Tommy when no one was near ventured to
speak.
“Rather an amusing story going round, sir,” he said. “Woof! One of the
sergeants in the Headquarters Troop has made a wager—woof!—woof,
sir!—sir—that he——”
“I don’t want to hear anything about the Headquarters Troop,” snarled
the general. “Woof! Bunch of second-story workers!”
The aide subsided. But somewhat later, when the car had moved on and the
general was smoking an excellent cigar, the general said: “What was the
wager, Tommy?”
“I believe, sir, it is to the effect that within a month this fellow
will breakfast with you, sir. To be exact, will eat a bran muffin with
you.”
The general exhaled a large mouthful of smoke.
“_C’est la guerre!_” he said. He had been studying French for two weeks.
“_C’est la guerre_, Tommy. Queer things happen these days. But I think
it unlikely. Very, very unlikely.”
II
Sergeant Gray was extremely contented. He sat back in his seat and
alternately nibbled doughnuts and puffed at a cigarette. Before him,
stretched as far as the limitations permitted, were two long and
well-breeched legs, ending in tan shoes listed by the supply sergeant as
“Shoes, field, pair, size 11 EE.”
He had surreptitiously taken out Mrs. Bud Palmer’s photograph and
decided that her face was shallow. And after a moment’s hesitation he
had decided not to waste any part of his precious leave in returning it.
So he had torn it into bits and thrown it out of the window. Then he had
taken a piece of paper and, writing on it “This space to let,” had
placed it in the condiment can and put the can back in his saddlebags.
The reason of his content was that leave was now assured. At eleven
o’clock that morning the general’s field secretary had typed on a shaky
field machine that stood on an equally unsteady tripod the order that at
the port of embarkation twenty per cent of the men would be allowed each
day some twenty-three and a half hours’ leave.
Wild cheers in each car had followed the reading of the order. Wild
cheers and wild plans. Sergeant Gray dreamed, doughnut in one hand and
cigarette in the other. Twenty-three and a half hours! A lot could
happen in twenty-three and a half hours. His dreams were general rather
than concrete. Girls, theatres and food comprised them. No particular
girl, no particular theatre, no particular food. He would call up some
of the fellows from college, and they would have sisters. And when he
had gone to the other side they would write to him.
He had no sentimental affiliations now. He had put all his eggs in one
basket and the basket had been stolen.
“Lucky I’m not dependent on eggs for food!” he mused and, mistaking the
hand in which he held the doughnut, bit vigorously into his cigarette.
Nevertheless his spirits grew lower as the day went on. It had occurred
to him that all the fellows he had counted on for sisters would be in
the Army, like himself. He cut off girls from his list, on that
discovery; but food and theatres remained. He reflected rather defiantly
that he could have a good time without girls; and then considered that a
chap who lied to himself was in the class with a fellow who cheated at
solitaire.
The day was hot. Kindly women at stations passed in sandwiches and
coffee, and the troop, with the eternal appetite of twenty-odd, gorged
themselves and cheered in overhanging pyramids from the windows. The
corporals on guard between the cars slept on seats improvised of
saddlebags, and between naps rolled cigarettes. And the noncoms in their
corner inveigled the porter to a game of craps, and took from him his
week’s accumulation of tips.
At the end of the game Sergeant Gray took out his money and counted it.
“Looks like you’d be able to give the Old Man a right good breakfast,”
observed the stable sergeant.
“Oh, it’s to be his breakfast,” said Sergeant Gray recklessly.
“It is, is it?” The stable sergeant regarded him with admiration. “Want
to bet on it?”
“Just as you like,” was the cool answer.
“Look here,” said the stable sergeant, aware of an audience. “I’ll lay
you five to one you don’t breakfast with him at all; ten to one you
don’t do it on his invitation, and”—he hesitated for effect—“twenty to
one you don’t do it within a week.”
“Good!” said Sergeant Gray, and laid some bills on his knee. “I’d wager
I could pull the Crown Prince’s nose at those odds. Then if I do
breakfast with him within a week on his invitation you’ll owe me a
hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
“I wish my money was as safe in the bank.” But the stable sergeant was
vaguely uncomfortable. Those college chaps had a way of putting things
over. He went out on the platform and stared uneasily at the flying
scenery.
Sergeant Gray folded his new uniform under the mattress of his berth
that night. It was bad for the collar, but he did it lest worse befall
it. He suspected the troop of jealous designs on it. But he could not
fold himself away so easily, and lay diagonally, with two Number Eleven
Double E feet in the aisle. At four in the morning he wakened, the cause
being a dream that he had for some hours been walking in a puddle and
needed to change his shoes.
Still only half awake, he looked at his feet, to perceive that some wag
had neatly blackened them with shoe polish from the porter’s closet. He
immediately reached under his pillow for his whistle and blew a shrill
blast on it, followed by a stentorian roar.
“Roll out, you dirty horsemen! R-r-roll out!” he yelled.
Still half asleep, they roused at the familiar sounds. Grunting and
protesting they sat up. From the berth over him a corporal swung down
two long bare legs and sat on the edge, yawning. Then somebody looked at
a watch. There would have been a small riot, but the men were too sleepy
and too relieved. They tumbled back, and Sergeant Gray lay on his pillow
and grinned vindictively.
He did not go to sleep at once. He lay there and thought of his wager,
and cursed himself for a fool. Then he dismissed that and thought of his
twenty-three and a half hours’ leave. If only there were a girl—a nice
girl. He did not want the sort of girl a fellow picked up in the
streets. He wanted a real girl, the sort a fellow could write to later
on.
Little quickenings of romance stirred in his heart. A pretty girl,
preferably small. He liked them little, with pointed chins. They had a
way, the little girls with pointed chins, of looking up at a fellow——
He wakened at seven. The troop were still sleeping, but from the baggage
car ahead there floated back an odor of frying bacon, and on the
platform of a station outside—for the train had stopped—the general was
taking an airing.
Sergeant Gray blew his whistle. “R-r-roll out!” he yelled. “R-r-roll
out, you blooming sons of guns!”
And, to emphasize his authority, he lifted a strong and muscular pair of
legs and raised the upper berth, in which the corporal still slept.
Smothered sounds from above convincing him that his efforts had been
successful he dropped the upper berth with a jerk.
“R-r-roll out, up there!” he yelled; and whistle in hand he lay back to
the succulent enjoyment of an orange.
Across from him the stable sergeant had turned on his back for another
nap. Through the curtains, opened against the heat, Gray could see that
young gentleman’s broad chest rising and falling slowly. The temptation
and destiny were too strong for him. He bounced an orange on it, only to
see it rebound through the window and to hear a deafening roar. The
stable sergeant sat up, a hand on his chest and fire in his eyes. He
blinked into the distorted face of the general, outside the window. The
general was holding a hand to his left ear.
“Who threw that orange?” demanded the general.
“Wh-what orange, sir?”
“Don’t lie to me. It came out of this window.”
“I was asleep, sir. Something struck me on the chest. I didn’t see it,
sir!”
Behind his curtains Sergeant Gray had been struggling into his trousers.
He emerged now, slightly pale but determined.
“I threw it, sir,” he explained. “I had no idea—it bounced, sir.”
The general surveyed him grimly.
“It’s a curious thing, sergeant,” he said, “that when there is any
deviltry going on in the Headquarters Troop I find you at the bottom of
it. Report to me in my car at eight o’clock.”
Then he stalked away.
Down the car a sonorous bass spoke from behind a curtain: “The
commanding general presents his compliments to Sergeant Gray, and will
Sergeant Gray breakfast with him in his private car at eight o’clock?”
Sergeant Gray dressed hastily. There was the bitterness of despair in
his heart, for he knew what was coming. He would have no twenty-three
and a half hours’ leave, no theatres, no decent food, no girl. And over
his head still that idiotic bet.
“Oh, hell!” he muttered, and started back.
The general was still in a very bad temper, and his left ear was swollen
and purple. He lost no time in the attack—he believed in striking
swiftly and hard—and he read off, from an excellent memory, the tale of
Sergeant Gray’s various sins of commission. But he did not go so far as
he meant to go, at that. In the first place, Gray was an excellent
noncom, and in the second place there was something in the boy’s
upstanding figure and clear if worried eyes that, coupled with another
of the excellent cigars, inclined him to leniency.
“But remember this, Gray,” he finished severely, “I don’t usually meddle
with these things. But I’ve got my eye on you. One more infraction of
discipline, and you’ll lose your stripes.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Gray.
He was intolerably virtuous all that day.
Late that afternoon they detrained two miles from the new camp, and
marched along, singing lustily songs that sound better than they look in
print, and joyously stretching legs too long confined. It mattered
nothing to them that the temporary camp was untidy and badly drained;
that the general passing in a limousine was reading an order that meant
an emergency abroad, into which they were to be thrown at once; that a
certain percentage of them would never come back; and that a certain
other percentage would return, never again to tramp the open road or to
see the blue sky overhead.
But a girl in a little car trailing in the dust behind the staff cars
thought of those things, and almost ran over the company goat, Eloise,
because of tears.
“Darned little idiot!” murmured Sergeant Gray, and gave his last
doughnut to Eloise.
There was no thrill, no increase over the regular seventy-six beats a
minute of his heart to tell him that love had just passed by in a pink
hat.
Until eighty-thirty that night Sergeant Gray was obnoxiously virtuous.
He had met an English noncom in the camp, and was studiously
endeavouring to copy that gentleman’s carriage and dignity. And the
attraction of the new surroundings had turned the attention of the troop
from him and his wager to other things. A discovery, too, of certain
conditions in the barracks distracted them.
“A week here,” growled the second mess sergeant, “and we’ll all have to
be dipped.”
“Might as well get used to it, old son,” said Sergeant Gray, and hummed
a little ditty to the effect that “They are wild, simply wild, over me.”
But with the falling of darkness the high spirits of the crowd broke
loose. That night there was a battle royal in the barracks. The lower
squad room, which housed among others the N. C. O.’s, decided to raid
the two upper squad rooms. Word of this having been passed up, the upper
squad rooms were prepared. At the top of the stairs were stationed the
fire buckets, filled to the top, and a pile of coal stolen from the
kitchen and secretly conveyed to the upper floor by means of baskets, a
window and a rope.
Twice the lower squad reached the top of the staircase, amid wild yells
and much splashing of water. The hall and stairs were running small
rivers. Coals, recklessly flung down, were salvaged like hand grenades
by the attacking force and thrown back again.
The noise penetrated to august quarters, and the sentry at the door,
placed there for just such an emergency, having been infected with the
mad desire to fight, and being at that moment in the act of climbing the
coal rope to attack the enemy from the rear, an officer with a flash was
at the door before he was seen.
Followed instantaneous quiet with the only sound the dripping of water
down the stairs. Followed the silent retreat of the warriors to beds,
into which they crept fully dressed. The officer moved through the lower
squad room. It was extremely quiet save for an occasional deep-throated
snore. The officer smiled grimly and went away.
And in the darkness Sergeant Gray sat up and felt of his right eye.
In the early dawn, hearing the cook stirring, he went across to the mess
hall, a strange figure in his undergarments, with one eye closed and a
bruise on his forehead as big as an egg. The cook eyed him angrily, and
addressed him without regard to his dignity as a sergeant.
“Some o’ you fellows get busy and bring back that coal you took last
night,” he said. “I got something else to do.”
“Look here, Watt,” said Sergeant Gray appealingly, “I’ll get the coal
for you all right. But give me a piece of raw beefsteak, won’t you? Look
at this eye.”
“Pleased to see it,” said the cook with a vindictive glare.
“Forget it, Watt. I’ll get your coal. See here, I’ve got leave
to-morrow, and I want to go to the city.”
“Well, you can go, for all of me.”
“I want,” said Sergeant Gray plaintively, “to get my picture taken. I
want to send it to my mother.”
Suddenly the cook laughed. He leaned over the big serving counter and
laughed until he was weak.
“Picture!” he said. “My word! She’ll think the Germans have had you!
Say, give me one, will you?”
He went to the refrigerator, however, and brought out a piece of raw
beef.
It should have warned Sergeant Gray, lying sulkily on his cot through
that bright spring day, the beef over his eye and attracting a multitude
of flies, that no one else had suffered visible injury. The boys came
and went blithely, each intent on his own affairs. United action had
cleaned up the hallway and the stairs. But Sergeant Gray, picked out as
Fate’s victim, lay and dozed and struck at flies and—waited.
By night the swelling had gone, but a deep bluish shadow encircled the
right eye. Frequent consultation of his shaving mirror told him that he
would have the mark for days, but at least he could see. That was
something. He got up after dusk and dressed in the new uniform. Then he
wandered about the camp.
He felt very lonely. Most of his intimates were on leave. Round the camp
the men lounged negligently. Some one with a mandolin was strumming it,
and from the theatre, where a movie show was going on, came the rattle
of clapping hands. Sergeant Gray hesitated at the door, then he moved
on.
What he wanted was some one to talk to, a girl preferably. He wandered
past division headquarters, where the chief of staff stood inside a
window rolling a cigarette; past the bull pen, surrounded by its fifteen
feet of barbed wire and its military police.
At the edge of the camp he halted. From there one could see a brilliance
reflected in the sky—the lights of the port of embarkation, ten miles
away.
Sergeant Gray sighed and sat down on the road near an automobile. And
somebody spoke to him.
“Can I take you anywhere?” asked the voice.
It was young and feminine. Something that had been aching in Sergeant
Gray’s deep chest suddenly stopped aching and leaped.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere in particular.”
“I just thought”—explained the voice—“I’m waiting for the—for a relative
and I might as well be taking people to the street-car line. The taxis
have stopped.”
A car leaving the camp threw its lights on her. She was small and young
and had a pointed chin. Sergeant Gray got up.
“It’s awfully good of you,” he said. “If it isn’t too much trouble I’ll
go to the end of the line.”
“Get in,” she said briefly.
Sergeant Gray sat back in the little car and drew a long breath.
“It’s rather small for you, isn’t it?” asked the girl, throwing in the
clutch. “My brother has to fold up too. He’s in France,” she added.
“That’s why I like to do things for the soldiers here. It’s like doing
something for him.”
Sergeant Gray pondered this. He considered it rather an unusual thing
for a girl to have thought of. He considered that she was as nice as she
was pretty. He also considered that she drove well. Sergeant Gray, who
in his leisure hours practiced running a motorcycle with the side car in
the air, paid her tribute of approval.
“We’ll be over soon,” he said with a touch of pride.
“You’d better not tell anybody that.”
“Why? I rather think our being here tells the story.”
“Well, a lot of people would like to know just when you’re going. They
hang round the men and offer them rides in cars, and the men get to
talking, and pretty soon they’ve told all they know.”
“They’d better not try it on me.”
“You almost told me a moment ago.”
Sergeant Gray sat quiet and a trifle hurt.
“I am only warning you,” said the girl. “There are spies simply
everywhere. I can’t do much, and that’s my way of doing something. That
and being a sort of taxi,” she added.
They were in a town now, and by the lamps he saw just how pretty she
was.
“Thanks awfully for warning me,” he said rather humbly. “A fellow gets
to think that all this spy talk is—just talk.”
“Well, it isn’t,” said the girl briefly but with the air of one who
knew.
The sergeant eyed her askance.
“That sounds as though you knew something.”
“Perhaps I do. Though of course one doesn’t really know these things.
One suspects.”
“Naturally one does.”
She glanced at him, but his face was grave.
“What I would like to know,” he proceeded, “is what one does when one
suspects.”
“I am afraid you are trying to be funny,” she observed coldly, and
brought the car to a standstill. “Here’s your car line.”
He hesitated. Then he made a wild resolve.
“I see it,” he said agreeably. “Thanks awfully for bringing me. We can
go back now.”
She stared at him.
“You are not going anywhere?”
“Why, no,” he said, trying not to look conscious. “I said that I’d like
to go to the end of the car line.”
“You’re there.”
“I only wanted to look at it.”
“Very well. Get out and look at it. I don’t think you’ll find it unusual
in any way.”
“Look here,” he said humbly. “I’m awfully sorry. I was just hungry to
talk to some one, and when you offered——”
“I have done exactly as I offered. You will please get out!”
He got out slowly. He was overcome with wretchedness and guilt, but her
pointed chin was held high and her face was obstinate.
“Thank you very much,” said Sergeant Gray, and turning drearily
commenced his lonely walk back to camp.
He could hear her behind him backing and turning in the narrow street.
He plodded on, cursing himself. If he had had any sense and had got out
and let her think he was going somewhere——
The lights of the car were close behind him now. When they were abreast
he heard the grinding of the brakes as it stopped.
“I don’t want to be disagreeable,” said the girl, beside him. “I suppose
you did want some one to talk to. I’ll take you back if you like.”
“I’d better not bother you any more.”
Suddenly she laughed. In the light from a street lamp she had caught her
first real glimpse of his face.
“Wherever did you get that eye?” she demanded.
“Fighting,” he said shortly. “We had a roughhouse at the barracks last
night.”
“I should think you were going to have enough trouble soon without
getting beaten up like that,” she said with a touch of severity. “Well,
are you going to get in?”
He got in. She had been rather reserved coming down, but now she was
more talkative. His little remark about being hungry for some one to
talk to had struck home. Her brother had said something like that once.
They must get hungry for girls, nice girls.
So now she chattered and she drew from the tall boy beside her something
about himself. It was not particularly hard to do. Sergeant Gray opened
up like a flower in the sun. He explained, for instance, that he was to
have a commission when he was twenty-one.
“Unless,” he admitted, “I’m in too bad with the Old Man.”
“The Old Man?”
“The general,” explained Sergeant Gray, unaware that the young lady was
sitting very straight. “He’s hell—he’s strong for discipline, and all
that. And—well, every now and then I slip up on something, and he gets
me. It’s always me he gets,” he finished plaintively and
ungrammatically.
“But you shouldn’t do things that are wrong.”
Sergeant Gray pondered this amazing statement.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he acknowledged. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You might try being terribly well behaved for—well, for twenty-four
hours.”
“Do you want me to?”
“It’s entirely a matter of your own good,” she said rather coldly.
“I’ll do it!” said Sergeant Gray rashly. “Not a misstep for twenty-four
hours. How’s that?”
“It sounds well.”
“The truth is,” confided Sergeant Gray, “I’ve got to be good. He’s
watching. He told me so.”
“And if you’re not——”
“Shot against a brick wall probably.” He grinned cheerfully. “Think of
that hanging over a fellow, and twenty-three and a half hours’ leave
to-morrow.”
“I hope,” she said in the motherly tone she assumed now and then, “that
you are going to be awfully careful to-morrow.”
“Did you ever see a cat crossing a wet gutter? Well, that’s me
to-morrow. This is no time to take any chances.”
At which probably those particular gods that had Sergeant Gray in their
keeping laughed behind their hands.
The girl stopped the car at the camp, and the plaything of destiny
descended.
“Thank you, awfully,” observed the said plaything with a considerable
amount of warmth in his voice. “I—perhaps I shall not see you again.”
“I was just thinking—what time does your leave commence to-morrow?”
“At ten-thirty”—hopefully.
“I might pick you up then and take you to the trolley.”
“Honestly, would you?” he asked delightedly. “You know, I—really, I
can’t tell you how grateful I would be.”
“I love to make the taxi men wriggle,” was her rather unsatisfactory
reply. “I’ll be here, then. Good night.”
Sergeant Gray saluted and went away. To all appearances he was a rather
overgrown young man trudging through the mud of a not too-tidy camp to a
barracks that needed carbolising. Actually he was a sublimated being
favoured of heaven and floating in a rosy cloud of dreams.
“Halt!” said a guard, and threw his rifle to port arms. “Who’s there?”
“Sergeant of the Headquarters Troop,” said the superman.
“Where’s your pass?”
The superman presented it, and the guard inspected it closely—the
attitude of the M. P. being that all men are Germans unless proved
otherwise.
“Thoroughly satisfactory?” inquired the superman.
The M. P. grunted.
The sergeant approached him and lowered his voice confidentially.
“Tell you something,” he volunteered: “I’m not the same chap who went
out on that pass.”
“What d’you mean you’re not?”
“It’s like this, old son. But first of all let me ask you something.” He
glanced about cautiously. “Man to man, old son—do you believe in love at
first sight?”
“Last fellow who tried being funny round here,” said the guard grimly,
“had a chance to laugh himself to death in the bull pen.”
“No heart!” sighed the sergeant, moving on, still on air. “No soul! No
imagination! Good night, my sad and lonely friend. Good night!”
He moved on, singing in a very deep bass:
“_Oh, promise me that some day you and I
May take our love te tum, te tum, te tum._”
The chief of staff, who had also discovered that his quarters needed
fumigation, raised from an uneasy pillow and groaned disgustedly.
“Stop that noise out there!” he bawled through the window beside him.
The superman recognised neither the voice nor the new quarters of the
staff.
“Minion,” he said, halting and addressing the window, “hast never
loved?”
Then he moved on, still in a roseate cloud the exact shade of a certain
pink hat.
“_That we may take our love and faith renew,
And find the hollows where those violets grew-w-w——_”
His voice died away, swallowed up in distance and the night.
When he went into the lower squad room a sort of chant greeted him from
the beds: “Where, oh where’s the sergeant been?”
And the reply shouted lustily: “Out getting measured for a shave.”
He undressed quietly, and salvaging the piece of beefsteak from under
his pillow got into bed and placed it carefully over his eye.
III
But tragedy had marked Sergeant Gray for its own. At reveille he rolled
over, yawned and without lifting himself reached up to the pocket of his
blouse and retrieved his whistle.
He blew it and shouted as usual: “R-r-roll out, you dirty horsemen!
R-r-roll out!”
Then, arms under his head, he lay and dreamed. Round the day to come he
wove little fantasies of the new uniform, and money in his pocket, and
twenty-three and a half hours’ leave, and—the girl in the little car.
His pass he had already secured through the top sergeant. It had been,
with others on the pass list, O.K’d by the captain and re-O.K’d by the
military police. At ten-thirty that morning Sergeant Gray would be a
free man.
He made a huge breakfast, and careful inspection showed the eye greatly
improved. And he whistled blithely while laying out his things for the
official inspection, comparing his belongings carefully with a list in
his hand. Nothing was to go wrong that day, nothing mar the perfection
of it or curtail his leave.
But he failed to count the camp quartermaster; and that Destiny, which
had taken him in hand forty-eight hours ago, was making of him her toy.
Now camp quartermasters are but human. They have their good days and
their bad, and sometimes it rather gets on their nerves, the eternal
examining and determining, for instance, that every man of perhaps
thirty thousand possesses in perfect condition:
2 breeches, O. D. wool, prs.
2 coats, O. D. wool.
1 overcoat, O. D. wool.
1 slicker.
1 hat.
1 cord (cavalry, infantry, artillery).
3 undershirts, cotton.
3 underbreeches, cotton, prs.
5 socks, light wool, prs.
5 shirts, flannel, O. D.
2 shoes, field, prs.
Sergeant Gray’s Destiny, working by devious ways, had given the camp
inspector a headache, a bad breakfast, a shirt lost by the laundry and a
wigging by somebody or other. Into the bargain it was a fine day for
golf and here he was looking over breeches, O. D. wool, pairs, two; and
so on.
Into the barracks then came fate in the shape of the camp inspector,
military of figure and militant of disposition, to count the pins for
shelter halves, for instance, and generally to do anything but swing a
golf club, as his heart desired. The men lined up by their equipment and
the inspector went down the line. And he opened, by evil chance,
Sergeant Gray’s condiment can and found the space-to-let notice inside.
He looked at it, and then he looked at the tall sergeant. Now to save
all he could of his twenty-three and a half hours’ leave Sergeant Gray
had put on his new uniform, which was against the rules. He had obeyed
the regulations exactly as to his hat cord, whistle, collar insignia,
buttons and shoes. Otherwise from his healthy skin to his putties he
wore not a single issue article.
The second mess sergeant eying him before inspection had warned him.
“You’ll get into trouble with that outfit, Gray,” he had said. And Gray
had replied that if he did it would be his trouble.
“Possibly,” had been the second mess sergeant’s comment. “But if you put
him in a bad humour and get him started—there’ll be hell to pay.”
And now there was to be hell to pay. And the inspector, who might have
been expected to walk in one door and out another but did not, stood off
and surveyed him coldly.
“Issue uniform?” he demanded.
“N-no, sir.”
“Take it off!”
Sergeant Gray obeyed. Once off, the full extent of his iniquity, as to
his undershirt, underbreeches and socks, was revealed.
“Scrap the clothing this man is wearing,” ordered the inspector. And to
Sergeant Gray: “Show me your issue uniforms.”
Now the sergeant was hard on clothing, and particularly on breeches.
Also he had given one uniform to Watt, the cook. The single one he was
able to produce was badly worn; so badly, indeed, that the camp
inspector with his two hands tore the breeches apart, at a vital spot,
and flung them on the floor. Something in Sergeant Gray’s breast seemed
to tear also and sink to the floor.
“Scrap this one also,” ordered the camp inspector.
“Sir——” ventured Sergeant Gray desperately.
But the camp inspector had discovered something, namely: That the issue
uniforms of the Headquarters Troop of the ——th Division were of poor
material. Slowly and carefully he went through the lot. Sharply and
decisively, at the end, he gave his orders.
[Illustration: “IF A MAN FROM THE HEADQUARTERS TROOP OVERSTAYS HIS
LEAVE, WHAT HAPPENS TO HIM, UNCLE JIMMY?” _See page 76_]
“Scrap every uniform in the troop,” he said, “and send this order to the
camp quartermaster.”
In ten minutes one hundred and ninety-five men stood to attention in
their undergarments, and in the center of each squad room lay a great
heap of discarded khaki.
“Leaving us rather stripped, sir,” ventured the captain.
“They’ve got their slickers,” curtly observed fate; “and the
quartermaster will fix you up all right.”
He went out. Jove, what a day for golf!
“Sergeant!” called the captain.
He avoided the baleful eyes of his men and looked out of a window. He
was rather young and terribly afraid he would laugh.
The supply sergeant, thus called, came forward and saluted. He was a
queer figure in his woolens, and the captain coughed to recover his
voice.
“Put—put on your slicker,” he said, “and carry this order to the camp
quartermaster. And hurry!”
Now all the balance of this story rests on that order to hurry, for it
came about that the supply sergeant, running, put his toe under the edge
of a board and fell heavily, and a military policeman, discovering thus
that the sergeant wore no breeches, placed him immediately under arrest.
“Oh, very well,” said the supply sergeant politely; and put the order in
his slicker pocket. If they chose to arrest a man for a thing he
couldn’t help let them do it. He didn’t absolutely know what was in the
order and if he could sit in the bull pen the troop could sit in its
underwear. It was nothing whatever to him.
He grinned malevolently, however, when he saw the captain and the two
lieutenants of the troop leaving camp in a machine in the direction of
the city.
“All right,” he said to himself. “We’ll see something later, that’s all.
The old boy will be crazy about this.”
The old boy being the general.
In the barracks black despair was in Sergeant Gray’s heart. He made a
wild effort to retrieve his new uniform from the heap which was to be
carried out and burned, but the troop were a unit against him.
“Aw, keep still!” they said in effect. “You got us into this, and you’ll
stick it out with us.”
“I’ve got leave, fellows,” he appealed to the other noncoms. “I’ve got
an engagement too.”
“We know. To breakfast with the general,” sneered the stable sergeant.
“Well, you’d better send your regrets.”
At ten-fifteen the troop, having waited an hour, were growing uneasy,
and Sergeant Gray was stationed at a window, watching three men in
slickers tending a fire of mammoth proportions. At ten-thirty, going to
a window in one of the two upper squad rooms, he made out a small car
down the road, and a girl with a pink hat in it. There was no supply
sergeant in sight.
At ten forty-five a scout patrol in slickers having been sent out
reported the supply sergeant not in the camp quartermaster’s office, as
observed through a window, and the troop officers as having gone for the
day.
Black despair, then, in a hundred and ninety-five hearts, but in no one
of them such agony as in Sergeant Gray’s. Clad in an army slicker he
made a dozen abortive attempts to borrow a uniform from tall men in
other companies, but inspection was on, and had commenced with the
Headquarters Troop. Not a man dared to be found with less than
“breeches, O. D. wool, prs., two.” And blouses the same.