"How would you like to wear one of those?" he Demanded. "Stinking with lice and sweat and blood; the blood of other men, the men you"ve helped off the field, and your own blood."
As though committing hara-kiri, he slashed his hand across his stomach, and then drew it up from his waist to his chin. "I"m sc.r.a.ped with shrapnel from there to there," said Mr. Hamlin. "And another time I got a ball in the shoulder. That would have been a "blighty" for a fighting man--they"re always giving them leave--but all I got was six weeks at Havre in hospital. Then it was the Dardanelles, and sunstroke and sand; sleeping in sand, eating sand, sand in your boots, sand in your teeth; hiding in holes in the sand like a dirty prairie dog. And then, "Off to Servia!" And the next act opens in the snow and the mud!
Cold? G.o.d, how cold it was! And most of us in sun helmets."
As though the cold still gnawed at his bones, he shivered.
"It isn"t the danger," he protested. "It isn"t that I"m getting away from. To h.e.l.l with the danger! It"s just the plain discomfort of it!
It"s the never being your own master, never being clean, never being warm." Again he shivered and rubbed one hand against the other.
"There were no bridges over the streams," he went on, "and we had to break the ice and wade in, and then sleep in the open with the khaki frozen to us. There was no firewood; not enough to warm a pot of tea.
There were no wounded; all our casualties were frost bite and Pneumonia. When we take them out of the blankets their toes fall off.
We"ve been in camp for a month now near Doiran, and it"s worse there than on the march. It"s a frozen swamp. You can"t sleep for the cold; can"t eat; the only ration we get is bully beef, and our insides are frozen so d.a.m.n tight we can"t digest it. The cold gets into your blood, gets into your brains. It won"t let you think; or else, you think crazy things. It makes you afraid." He shook himself like a man coming out of a bad dream.
"So, I"m through," he said. In turn he scowled at each of us, as though defying us to contradict him. "That"s why I"m quitting," he added. "Because I"ve done my bit. Because I"m d.a.m.n well fed up on it." He kicked viciously at the water-logged uniform on the floor.
"Any one who wants my job can have it!" He walked to the window, turned his back on us, and fixed his eyes hungrily on the Adriaticus.
There was a long pause. For guidance we looked at John, but he was staring down at the desk blotter, scratching on it marks that he did not see.
Finally, where angels feared to tread, the Kid rushed in. "That"s certainly a hard luck story," he said; "but," he added cheerfully, "it"s nothing to the hard luck you"ll strike when you can"t tell why you left the army." Hamlin turned with an exclamation, but Billy held up his hand. "Now wait," he begged, "we haven"t time to get mussy. At six o"clock your leave is up, and the troop train starts back to camp, and--"
Mr. Hamlin interrupted sharply. "And the Adriaticus starts at five."
Billy did not heed him. "You"ve got two hours to change your mind," he said. "That"s better than being sorry you didn"t the rest of your life."
Mr. Hamlin threw back his head and laughed. It was a most unpleasant laugh. "You"re a fine body of men," he jeered. "America must be proud of you!"
"If we weren"t Americans," explained Billy patiently, "we wouldn"t give a d.a.m.n whether you deserted or not. You"re drowning and you don"t know it, and we"re throwing you a rope. Try to see it that way. We"ll cut out the fact that you took an oath, and that you"re breaking it.
That"s up to you. We"ll get down to results. When you reach home, if you can"t tell why you left the army, the folks will darned soon guess.
And that will queer everything you"ve done. When you come to sell your stuff, it will queer you with the editors, queer you with the publishers. If they know you broke your word to the British army, how can they know you"re keeping faith with them? How can they believe anything you tell them? Every "story" you write, every statement of yours will make a noise like a fake. You won"t come into court with clean hands. You"ll be licked before you start.
"Of course, you"re for the Allies. Well, all the Germans at home will fear that; and when you want to lecture on your "Fifteen Months at the British Front," they"ll look up your record; and what will they do to you? This is what they"ll do to you. When you"ve shown "em your moving pictures and say, "Does any gentleman in the audience want to ask a question?" a German agent will get up and say, "Yes, I want to ask a question. Is it true that you deserted from the British army, and that if you return to it, they will shoot you?""
I was scared. I expected the lean and muscular Mr. Hamlin to fall on Billy, and fling him where he had flung the soggy uniform. But instead he remained motionless, his arms pressed across his chest. His eyes, filled with anger and distress, returned to the Adriaticus.
"I"m sorry," muttered the Kid.
John rose and motioned to the door, and guiltily and only too gladly we escaped. John followed us into the hall. "Let me talk to him," he whispered. "The boat sails in an hour. Please don"t come back until she"s gone."
We went to the moving picture palace next door, but I doubt if the thoughts of any of us were on the pictures. For after an hour, when from across the quay there came the long-drawn warning of a steamer"s whistle, we nudged each other and rose and went out.
Not a hundred yards from us the propeller blades of the Adriaticus were slowly churning, and the rowboats were falling away from her sides.
"Good-bye, Mr. Hamlin," called Billy. "You had everything and you chucked it away. I can spell your finish. It"s "check" for yours."
But when we entered our room, in the centre of it, under the bunch of electric lights, stood the deserter. He wore the water-logged uniform.
The sun helmet was on his head.
"Good man!" shouted Billy.
He advanced, eagerly holding out his hand.
Mr. Hamlin brushed past him. At the door he turned and glared at us, even at John. He was not a good loser. "I hope you"re satisfied," he snarled. He pointed at the four beds in a row. I felt guiltily conscious of them. At the moment they appeared so unnecessarily clean and warm and soft. The silk coverlets at the foot of each struck me as being disgracefully effeminate. They made me ashamed.
"I hope," said Mr. Hamlin, speaking slowly and picking his words, "when you turn into those beds to-night you"ll think of me in the mud. I hope when you"re having your five-course dinner and your champagne you"ll remember my bully beef. I hope when a sh.e.l.l or Mr. Pneumonia gets me, you"ll write a nice little sob story about the "brave lads in the trenches.""
He looked at us, standing like schoolboys, sheepish, embarra.s.sed, and silent, and then threw open the door. "I hope," he added, "you all choke!"
With an unconvincing imitation of the college chum manner, John cleared his throat and said: "Don"t forget, Fred, if there"s anything I can do--"
Hamlin stood in the doorway smiling at us.
"There"s something you can all do," he said.
"Yes?" asked John heartily.
"You can all go to h.e.l.l!" said Mr. Hamlin.
We heard the door slam, and his hobnailed boots pounding down the stairs. No one spoke. Instead, in unhappy silence, we stood staring at the floor. Where the uniform had lain was a pool of mud and melted snow and the darker stains of stale blood.