They were here, then: they might be close by in the blackness, behind the next tree-hole, in the next clump of bushes--the destroyers of France, old M. Gantier"s murderers, the enemy to whom Paul Gantier had given his life! These thoughts slipped confusedly through Troy"s mind, scarcely brushing it with a chill wing. His main feeling was one of a base physical fear, and of a newly-awakened moral energy which had the fear by the throat and held it down with shaking hands. Which of the two would conquer, how many yards farther would the resolute Troy drag on the limp coward through this murderous wood? That was the one thing that mattered....
At length they dropped down into a kind of rocky hollow overhung with bushes, and lay there, finger on trigger, hardly breathing. "Sleep a bit if you can--you look beat," whispered the friendly soldier.
_Sleep!_
Troy"s mind was whirling like a machine in a factory blazing with lights. His thoughts rushed back over the miles he had travelled since he had caught up the rifle by the roadside.
"My G.o.d!" he suddenly thought, "what am I doing here, anyhow? I"m a deserter."
Yes: that was the name he would go by if ever his story became known.
And how should it not become known? He had deserted--deserted not only his job, and his ambulance, and Jacks, who might come back at any moment--it was a dead certainty to him now that Jacks would come back--but also (incredible perfidy!) the poor worn-out old couple and the wounded territorial who had crawled into the ambulance. He, Troy Belknap, United States Army Ambulance driver, and sworn servant of France, had deserted three sick and helpless people who, if things continued to go badly, would almost certainly fall into the hands of the Germans.... It was too horrible to think of, and so, after a minute or two, he ceased to think of it--at least with the surface of his mind.
"If it"s a court-martial it"s a court-martial," he reflected; and began to stretch his ears again for the sound of men slipping up in the darkness through the bushes....
But he was really horribly tired, and in the midst of the tension the blaze of lights in his head went out, and he fell into a half-conscious doze. When he started into full consciousness again the men were stirring, and he became aware that the sergeant was calling for volunteers.
Volunteers for what? He didn"t know and was afraid to ask. But it became clear to him that the one chance to wash his guilt away (was that funny old-fashioned phrase a quotation, and where did it come from?) was to offer himself for the job, whatever it might be.
The decision once taken, he became instantly calm, happy and alert. He observed the gesture made by the other volunteers and imitated it. It was too dark for the sergeant to distinguish one man from another, and without comment he let Troy fall into the line of men who were creeping up out of the hollow.
The awful cannonade had ceased, and as they crawled along single file between the trees the before-dawn twitter of birds rained down on them like dew, and the woods smelt like the woods at home.
They came to the end of the trees, and guessed that the dark wavering wall ahead was the edge of a wheat-field. Some one whispered that the Marne was just beyond the wheat-field, and that the red flares they saw must be over Chateau-Thierry.
The momentary stillness laid a rea.s.suring touch on Troy"s nerves, and he slipped along adroitly at the tail of the line, alert but cool. Far off the red flares still flecked the darkness, but they did not frighten him. He said to himself: "People are always afraid in their first battle. I"m not the least afraid, so I suppose this is not a battle" ...
and at the same moment there was a small shrieking explosion followed by a horrible rattle of projectiles that seemed to spring up out of the wheat at their feet.
The men dropped on their bellies and crawled away from it, and Troy crawled after, sweating with fear. He had not looked back, but he knew that some of the men must be lying where they had dropped, and suddenly it occurred to him that it was his business to go and see....
Was it, though? Or would that be disobeying orders again?
The Ambulance driver"s instinct awoke in him, and he did not stop to consider, but turned and crawled back, straight back to the place that the horrible explosion had come from. The firing had stopped, but in the thin darkness he saw a body lying in front of him in the flattened wheat. He looked in the direction from which he had come, and saw that the sergeant and the rest of the men were disappearing to the right; then he ramped forward again, forward and forward, till he touched the arm of the motionless man and whispered: "Hi, kid, it"s me...."
He tried to rouse the wounded man, to pull him forward, to tow him like a barge along the beaten path in the wheat. But the man groaned and resisted. He was evidently in great pain, and Troy, whom a year"s experience in ambulance work had enlightened, understood that he must either be carried away or left where he was.
To carry him it was necessary to stand up, and the night was growing transparent, and the wheat was not more than waist high.
Troy raised his head an inch or two and looked about him. In the east, beyond the wheat, a pallor was creeping upward, drowning the last stars. Any one standing up would be distinctly visible against that pallor. With a sense of horror and reluctance and dismay he lifted the wounded man and stood up. As he did so he felt a small tap on his back, between the shoulders, as if some one had touched him from behind. He half turned to see who it was, and doubled up, slipping down with the wounded soldier in his arms.
XII
Troy, burning with fever, lay on a hospital bed.
He was not very clear where the hospital was, nor how he had got there; and he did not greatly care. All that was left of clearness in his brain was filled with the bitter sense of his failure. He had abandoned his job to plunge into battle, and before he had seen a German or fired a shot he found himself ignominiously laid by the heels in a strange place full of benevolent-looking hypocrites whose least touch hurt him a million times more than the German bullet.
It was all a stupid agitating muddle, in the midst of which he tried in vain to discover what had become of Jacks, what had happened to the ambulance, and whether the old people and the wounded territorial had been heard of. He insisted particularly on the latter point to the cruel shaved faces that were always stooping over him, but they seemed unable to give him a clear answer--or else their cruelty prompted them to withhold what they knew. He groaned and tossed and got no comfort, till, suddenly opening his eyes, he found Jacks sitting by his bed.
He poured out his story to Jacks in floods and torrents: there was no time to listen to what his friend had to say. He went in and out of the whole business with him, explaining, arguing, and answering his own arguments. Jacks, pa.s.sive and bewildered, sat by the bed and murmured: "All right--all right" at intervals. Then he too disappeared, giving way to other unknown faces.
The third night (some one said it was the third night) the fever dropped a little. Troy felt more quiet, and Jacks, who had turned up again, sat beside him, and told him all the things he had not been able to listen to the first day--all the great things in which he had played an unconscious part.
"Battle of the Marne? Sure you were in it--in it up to the hilt, you lucky kid!"
And what a battle it had been! The Americans had taken Vaux and driven the Germans back across the bridge at Chateau-Thierry, the French were pressing hard on their left flank, the advance on Paris had been checked--and the poor old couple and the territorial in the ambulance had not fallen into enemy hands, but had been discovered by Jacks where Troy had left them, and hurried off to places of safety the same night.
As Troy lay and listened, tears of weakness and joy ran down his face.
The Germans were back across the Marne, and he had really been in the action that had sent them there! The road to Paris was barred--and Sophy Wicks was somewhere in France.... He felt as light as a feather, and if it had not been for his deathly weakness he would have jumped out of bed and insisted on rejoining the ambulance. But as it was he could only lie flat and feebly return Jacks"s grin....
There was just one thing he had not told Jacks: a little thing that Jacks would not have understood. Out in the wheat, when he had felt that tap on the shoulder, he had turned round quickly, thinking that a friend had touched him. At the same instant he had stumbled and fallen, and his eyes had grown dark; but through the darkness he still felt confusedly that a friend was near, if only he could lift his lids and look.
He did lift them at last; and there in the dawn he saw a French soldier, haggard and battle-worn, looking down at him. The soldier wore the uniform of the _cha.s.seurs a pied_, and his face was the face of Paul Gantier, bending low and whispering: "_Mon pet.i.t--mon pauvre pet.i.t gars...._" Troy heard the words distinctly, he knew the voice as well as he knew his mother"s. His eyes shut again, but he felt Gantier"s arms under his body, felt himself lifted, lifted, till he seemed to float in the arms of his friend.
He said nothing of that to Jacks or any one, and now that the fever had dropped he was glad he had held his tongue. Some one told him that a sergeant of the _cha.s.seurs a pied_ had found him and brought him in to the nearest _poste de secours_, where Jacks, providentially, had run across him and carried him back to the base. They told him that his rescue had been wonderful, but that n.o.body knew what the sergeant"s name was, or where he had gone to.... ("If _ever_ a man ought to have had the Croix de Guerre--!" one of the nurses interjected emotionally.)
Troy listened and shut his lips. It was really none of his business to tell these people where the sergeant had gone to; but he smiled a little when the doctor said: "Chances are a man like that hasn"t got much use for decorations ..." and when the emotional nurse added: "Well, you must just devote the rest of your life to trying to find him."
Ah, yes, he would do that, Troy swore--he would do it on the battlefields of France.
THE END