"Thanks a lot," she said.
The war went on.
In her next letter Winona Penniman wrote: "We moved up to a station nearer the front last Tuesday. I spent a night with Patricia Whipple.
The child has come through it all wonderfully so far. A month ago she was down and out; now she can"t get enough work to do. Says the war bores her stiff. She means to stick it through, but all her talk is of going home. By the way, she told me she had a little visit with Wilbur Cowan the other day. She says she never saw him looking better."
CHAPTER XIX
Two lines of helmeted men went over the crest of the hill. Private Cowan was no longer conscious of aching feet and leaden legs or of the burden that bowed his shoulders. There was a pounding in his ears, and in his mind a verse of Scripture that had lingered inexplicably there since their last billet at Comprey. His corporal, late a theological student, had read and expounded bits of the Bible to such as would listen.
Forsaking beaten paths, he had one day explored Revelations. He had explained the giving unto seven angels of seven golden vials of the wrath of G.o.d, but later came upon a verse that gave him pause:
"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars."
It seemed that everything in Revelations had a hidden meaning, and the expert found this obscure. There had been artless speculation among the listeners. A private with dice had professed to solve the riddle of the Number Seven, and had even alleged that twelve might be easier to throw if one kept repeating the verse, but this by his fellows was held to be rank superst.i.tion. No really acceptable exposition had been offered of the woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
Wilbur Cowan, marching up the hill, now sounded the words to himself; they went with that pounding in his ears. At last he knew what they meant--a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon. Over and over he chanted the words.
So much was plain to him. But how had it come about? They had looked, then enveloped each other, not thinking, blindly groping. They had been out of themselves, not on guard, not held by a thousand bands of old habit that back in Newbern would have restrained them. Lacking these, they had rushed to that wild contact like two charged clouds, and everything was changed by that moment"s surrender to some force beyond their relaxed wills. Something between them had not been, now it was; something compelling; something that had, for its victory, needed only that they confront each other, not considering, not resisting, biddable.
In his arms she had cried: "But how did we know--how did we know?"
He had found no answer. Holding her fiercely as he did, it seemed enough that they did know. He had surrendered, but could not reason--was even incurious.
At the last she had said: "But if it shouldn"t be true; if it"s only because we"re both worn down and saw someone from home. Suppose it"s mere--"
She had broken off to thump his shoulder in rea.s.surance, to cling more abjectly. It was then she had wept, shakingly, in a vast impatience with herself for trying to reason.
"It is true! It is true--it"s true, it"s true!" she had told him with piteous vehemence, then wilted again to his support, one hand stroking his dusty cheek.
When the command had come down the line she seemed about to fall, but braced herself with new strength from some hidden source. When he released her she stood erect, regarding him with something of the twisted, humorous quirk about her lips that for an instant brought her back to him as the little girl of long ago. Not until then had he been able to picture her as Patricia Whipple. Then he saw. Her smile became surer.
"You"ve gone and spoiled the whole war for me!" she called to him.
The war, too, had been spoiled for Private Cowan. He was unable to keep his mind on it. Of the Second Battle of the Marne he was to remember little worth telling.
Two nights later they came to rest in the woods back of St. Eugene, in the little valley of the Surmelin, that gateway to Paris from the farthest point of the second German drive. It was a valley shining with the gold of little wheat fields, crimson-specked with poppies. It recalled to Private Cowan merely the farmland rolling away from that old house of red brick where he had gone one day with Sharon Whipple--yesterday it might have been. Even the winding creek--though the French called theirs a river--was like the other creek, its course marked by a tangle of shrubs and small growths; and the sides of the valley were flanked familiarly with stony ridges spa.r.s.ely covered with second-growth timber. Newbern, he kept thinking, would lie four miles beyond that longest ridge, and down that yellow road Sharon Whipple might soon be driving his creaking, weathered buggy and the gaunt roan.
The buggy would sag to one side and Sharon would be sitting "slaunchwise," as he called it. Over the ridge, at Newbern"s edge, would be the bony little girl who was so funny and willful.
They moved forward to the south bank of the Marne. Beyond that fifty-yard stream lay the enemy, reported now to be stacking up drive impedimenta. The reports bored Private Cowan. He wished they would hurry the thing through. He had other matters in hand. A woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon, and upon her head a crown of--he could not make the crown of stars seem right. She was crowned with a nurse"s cap, rusty hair showing beneath, and below this her wan, wistful, eager face, the eyes half shutting in vain attempts to reason.
The face would be drawn by some inner torment; then its tortured lines melt to a smile of sure conviction. But she was clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet. So much he could make seem true.
The dark of a certain night fell on the waiting regiment. Crickets sounded their note, a few silent birds winged furtively overhead.
Rolling kitchens brought up the one hot meal of the day, to be taken to the front by carrying parties. Company commanders made a last reconnaissance of their positions. For Private Cowan it was a moment of double waiting. Waiting for battle was now secondary. In a tiny slit trench on the forward edge of a railway embankment Private Brennon remarked upon the locomotion of the foreign frog.
"Will you look at "em walk!" said Spike. "Just like an animal! Don"t they ever learn to hop like regular gorfs?"
Said Private Cowan: "I suppose you saw that girl back there the other day?"
"Me and the regiment," said Spike, and chewed gum discreetly.
"She"s a girl from back home. Funny! I"d never taken much notice of her before."
"You took a-plenty back there. You"ve raised your average awful high.
I"ll say it!"
"I hardly knew what I was doing."
"Didn"t you? We did!"
"Since then sometimes I forget what we"re here for."
"Don"t worry, kid! You"ll be told."
"It"s funny how things happen that you never expected, but afterward you see it was natural as anything."
At midnight the quiet sky split redly asunder. German guns began to feel a way to Paris. The earth rocked in a gentle rhythm under a rain of sh.e.l.ls. Shrapnel and gas lent vivacity to the a.s.sault. Guns to their utmost reach swept the little valley like a t.i.tan"s sickle. Private Cowan nestled his cheek against the earthen side of his little slit trench and tried to remember what she had worn that last night in Newbern. Something glistening, warm in colour, like ripe fruit; and a rusty braid bound her head. She had watched, doubtfully, to see if people were not impatient at her talk. A rattlepate, old Sharon called her. She was something else now; some curious sort of woman, older, not afraid. She wouldn"t care any more if people were impatient.
At four o"clock of that morning the bombardment of the front line gave way to a rolling barrage. Close behind this, hugging it, as the men said, came gray waves of the enemy. It was quieter after the barrage had pa.s.sed: only the tack-tack of machine guns and the clash of meeting bayonets.
"Going to have some rough stuff," said Private Brennon.
For a long time then Private Cowan was so engrossed with the routine of his present loose trade that the name of Whipple seemed to have no room in his mind. For four hours he had held a cold rifle and thought. Now the gun was hot, its bayonet wet, and he thought not at all. When it was over he was one of fifty-two men left of his company that had numbered two hundred and fifty-one. But his own uniform would still be clean of wound chevrons.
Two divisions of German shock troops had broken against a regiment of American fighting men.
"I don"t like fighting any more," said Private Cowan.
"Pushed "em across the crick," said Private Brennon. "Now we chase "em!"
So they joined the chase and fought again at Jaulgonne, where it rained for three days and nights, and Private Cowan considered his life in danger because he caught cold; it might develop into pneumonia. He didn"t want to get sick and die--not now. It had not, of late, occurred to him that he would be in any danger save from sickness. But he threw off the menacing cold and was fit for the big battle at Fismes, stubbornly p.r.o.nounced "Fissims" by Private Brennon, after repeated corrections.
Private Cowan thought now, when not actually engaged at his loose trade, of his brother. He wished the boy could have been with him. He would have learned something. He would have learned that you feel differently about a country if once you fight for it. His country had been only a name; he had merely ached to fight. Now he hated fighting; words could never tell how he loathed it; but his country had become more than a name. He would fight again for that. He wished Merle could have had this new feeling about his country.
It was before Fismes, being out where he had no call to be, and after winning a finish fight with a strangely staring spectacled foe, that he stumbled across the inert form of Private Brennon, who must also have gone where he had no call to go. He leaned over him. Spike"s mask was broken, but half adjusted. He shouldered the burden, grunting as he did so, angered by the weight of it. He was irritated, too, by men who were firing at him, but his greater resentment was for Spike"s unreasonable ma.s.s.
"You son of a gun--hog fat! Overweight, that"s what you are! You"ll never make a hundred and thirty-three again, not you! Gee, gosh, a light heavyweight, that"s what you are!"
He complained to the unhearing Spike all the way back to a dressing station, though twice refusing help to carry his load.