"One went to work before light, my colonel, in that accursed prison-camp. One was out of sight from the guard for a moment, turning a corner, so that on a morning I slipped into some bushes and hid in a dugout--for it was an old camp--all day. That night I walked. I walked for seven nights and lay hid for seven days, eating, my colonel, very little. Then, _v"la_, I was in front of the French lines."
"You ran across to our lines?"
"But not exactly. One sees that I was yet in dirty German prison clothes, and looked like an infantryman of the Boches, so that a poilu rushed at me with a bayonet. I believed, then, that I had come upon a German patrol. Each thought the other a Hun. I managed to wrest from the poilu his rifle with the bayonet, but as we fought another shot me--in the side."
"You were wounded?"
"Yes, my colonel."
"In hospital?"
"Yes, my colonel."
"How long?"
"Three months, my colonel."
"Why are you not again in the army?"
The face of the erect soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I--was discharged, my colonel, as--unfit." His head in its old felt hat dropped into his hands suddenly, and he broke beyond control into sobs that shook not only him but every man there.
The colonel stepped forward and put an arm around the bent shoulders.
"_Mon heros!_" said the colonel.
With that Rafael found words, never a hard task for him. Yet they came with gasps between. "To be cast out as an old horse--at the moment of glory! I had dreamed all my life--of fighting. And I had it--oh, my colonel--I had it! The glory came when I was old and knew how to be happy in it. Not as a boy who laughs and takes all as his right. I was old, yes, but I was good to kill the vermin. I avenged the children and the women whom those savages--My people, the savages of the wood, knew no better, yet they have not done things as bad as these vile ones who were educated, who knew. Therefore I killed them. I was old, but I was strong, my colonel knows. Not for nothing have I lived a hard life. _On a vu de la misere_. I have hunted moose and bear and kept my muscles of steel and my eyes of a hawk. It is in my blood to be a fighting man. I fought with pleasure, and I was troubled with no fear. I was old, but I could have killed many devils more. And so I was shot down by my own friend after seven days of hard life. And the young soldier doctor discharged me as unfit to fight. And so I am come home very fast to hide myself, for I am ashamed. I am finished. The fighting and the glory are for me no more."
The colonel stepped back a bit and his face flamed. "Glory!" he whispered. "Glory no more for the Hirondelle? What of the Croix de Guerre?"
Rafael shook his head. "I haf heard my colonel who said they would have given me--me, the Hirondelle--the war cross. That now is lost too."
"Lost!" The colonel"s deep tone was full of the vibration which only a French voice carries. With a quick movement he unfastened the catch that held the green ribbon, red-striped, of his own cross of war. He turned and pinned the thing which men die for on the shabby coat of the guide.
Then he kissed him on either cheek. "My comrade," he said, "your glory will never be old."
There was deep silence in the camp kitchen. The crackling of wood that fell apart, the splashing of the waves of the lake on the pebbles by the sh.o.r.e were the only sounds on earth. For a long minute the men stood as if rooted; the colonel, poised and dramatic, and, I stirred to the depths of my soul by this great ceremony which had come out of the skies to its humble setting in the forest--the men and the colonel and I, we all watched Rafael.
And Rafael slowly, yet with the iron tenacity of his race, got back his control. "My colonel," he began, and then failed. The Swallow did not dare trust his broken wings. It could not be done--to speak his thanks.
He looked up with black eyes shining through tears which spoke everything.
"Tomorrow," he stated brokenly, "if we haf a luck, my colonel and I go kill a moose."
They had a luck.
ONLY ONE OF THEM
It was noon on a Sat.u.r.day. Out of the many buildings of the great electrical manufacturing plant at Schenectady poured employees by hundreds. Thirty trolley-cars were run on special tracks to the place and stood ready to receive the sea streaming towards them. Ma.s.sed motor-cars waited beyond the trolleys for their owners, officials of the works. The girl in blue serge, standing at a special door of a special building counted, keeping watch meantime of the crowd, the cars. A hundred and twenty-five she made it; it came to her mind that State Street in Albany on a day of some giant parade was not unlike this, not less a throng. The girl, who was secretary to an a.s.sistant manager, was used to the sight, but it was an impressive sight and she was impressionable and found each Sat.u.r.day"s pageant a wonder. The pageant was more interesting it may be because it focussed always on one figure--and here he was.
"Did you wait, long?" he asked as he came up, broad-shouldered and athletic of build, boyish and honest of face, as good looking a young American as one may see in any crowd.
"I was early." She smiled up at him as they swung off towards the trolleys; her eyes flashed a glance which said frankly that she found him satisfactory to look upon.
They sped past others, many others, and made a trolley car and a seat together, which was the goal. They always made it, every Sat.u.r.day, yet it was always a game. Exhilarated by the winning of the game they settled into the scat for the three-quarters of an hour run; it was quite a worth-while world, the smiling glances said one to the other.
The girl gazed, not seeing them particularly, at the slower people filling the seats and the pa.s.sage of the car. Then: "Oh," she spoke, "what was it you were going to tell me?"
The man"s face grew sober, a bit troubled. "Well," he said, "I"ve decided. I"m going to enlist."
She was still for a second. Then: "I think that"s splendid," she brought out. "Splendid. Of course, I knew you"d do it. It"s the only thing that could be. I"m glad."
"Yes," the man spoke slowly. "It"s the only thing that could be. There"s nothing to keep me. My mother"s dead. My father"s husky and not old and my sisters are with him. There"s n.o.body to suffer by my going."
"N-no," the girl agreed. "But--it"s the fine thing to do just the same.
You"re thirty-two you see, and couldn"t be drafted. That makes it rather great of you to go."
"Well," the man answered, "not so very great, I suppose, as it"s what all young Americans are doing. I rather think it"s one of those things, like spelling, which are no particular credit if you do them, but a disgrace if you don"t."
"What a gray way of looking at it!" the girl objected. "As if all the country wasn"t glorying in the boys who go! As if we didn"t all stand back of you and crowd the side lines to watch you, bursting with pride.
You know we all love you."
"Do you love me, Mary? Enough to marry me before I go?" His voice was low, but the girl missed no syllable. She had heard those words or some like them in his voice before.
"Oh, Jim," she begged, "don"t ask me now. I"m not certain--yet. I--I couldn"t get along very well without you. I care a lot. But--I"m not just sure it"s--the way I ought to care to marry you."
As alone in the packed car as in a wood, the little drama went on and no one noticed. "I"m sorry, Mary." The tone was dispirited. "I could go with a lot lighter heart if we belonged to each other."
"Don"t say that, Jim," she pleaded. "You make me out--a slacker. You don"t want me to marry you as a duty?"
"Good Lord, no!"
"I know that. And I--do care. There"s n.o.body like you. I admire you so for going--but you"re not afraid of anything. It"s easy for you, that part. I suppose a good many are really--afraid. Of the guns and the horror--all that. You"re lucky, Jim. You don"t give that a thought."
The man flashed an odd look, and then regarded his hands joined on his knee.
"I do appreciate your courage. I admire that a lot. But somehow Jim there"s a doubt that holds me back. I can"t be sure I--love you enough; that it"s the right way--for that."
The man sighed. "Yes," he said. "I see. Maybe some time. Heavens knows I wouldn"t want you unless it was whole-hearted. I wouldn"t risk your regretting it, not if I wanted you ten times more. Which is impossible."
He put out his big hand with a swift touch on hers. "Maybe some time.
Don"t worry," he said. "I"m yours." And went on in a commonplace tone, "I think I"ll show up at the recruiting office this afternoon, and I"ll come to your house in the evening as usual. Is that all right?"
The car sped into Albany and the man went to her door with the girl and left her with few words more and those about commonplace subjects. As he swung down the street he went over the episode in his mind, and dissected it and dwelt on words and phrases and glances, and drew conclusions as lovers have done before, each detail, each conclusion mightily important, outweighing weeks of conversation of the rest of the world together. At last he shook his head and set his lips.
"It"s not honest." He formed the words with his lips now, a summing up of many thoughts in his brain. The brain went on elaborating the text.
"She thinks I"m brave; she thinks it"s easy for me to face enlisting, and the rest. She thinks I"m the makeup which can meet horror and suffering light-heartedly. And I"m not. She admires me for that--she said so. I"m not it. I"m fooling her; it"s not honest. Yet"--he groaned aloud. "Yet I may lose her if I tell her the truth. I"m afraid. I am. I hate it. I can"t bear--I can"t bear to leave my job and my future, just when it"s opening out. But I could do that. Only I"m--Oh, d.a.m.nation--I"m afraid. Horror and danger, agony of men and horses, myself wounded maybe, out on No Man"s Land--left there--hours. To die like a dog. Oh, my G.o.d--must I? If I tell it will break the little hold I have on her.
Must I go to this devil"s dance that I hate--and give up her love besides? But yet--it isn"t honest to fool her. Oh, G.o.d, what will I do?"
People walking up State Street, meeting a sober-faced young man, glanced at him with no particular interest. A woman waiting on a doorstep regarded him idly.