Complete weird tales of.., p.939
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 939
As I finished adjusting my respirator and goggles a muffled voice at my elbow began: “Be a sport, Doc! Gimme a chanst! Make it fifty-fifty — —”
“Allez!” shouted an officer through his respirator.
Against the sky all along the parapet’s edge hundreds of bayonets wavered for a second; then dark figures leaped up, scrambled, crawled forward, rose, ran out into the sunless, pallid light.
Like surf bursting along a coast a curtain of exploding shells stretched straight across the débris of what had been a meadow — a long line of livid obscurity split with flame and storms of driving sand and gravel. Shrapnel leisurely unfolded its cottony coils overhead and the iron helmets rang under the hail.
Men fell forward, backward, sideways, remaining motionless, or rolling about, or rising to limp on again. There was smoke, now, and mire, and the unbroken rattle of machine guns.
Ahead, men were fishing in their sacks and throwing bombs like a pack of boys stoning a snake; I caught glimpses of them furiously at work from where I knelt beside one fallen man after another, desperately busy with my own business.
Bearers ran out where I was at work, not my own company but some French ambulance sections who served me as well as their own surgeons where, in a shell crater partly full of water, we found some shelter for the wounded.
Over us black smoke from the Jack Johnsons rolled as it rolls out of the stacks of soft-coal burning locomotives; the outrageous din never slackened, but our deafened ears had become insensible under the repeated blows of sound, yet not paralyzed. For I remember, squatting there in that shell crater, hearing a cricket tranquilly tuning up between the thunderclaps which shook earth and sods down on us and wrinkled the pool of water at our feet.
The Legion had taken the trench; but the place was a rabbit warren where hundreds of holes and burrows and ditches and communicating runways made a bewildering maze.
And everywhere in the dull, flame-shot obscurity, the Legionaries ran about like ghouls in their hoods and round, hollow eye-holes; masked faces, indistinct in the smoke, loomed grotesque and horrible as Ku-Klux where the bayonets were at work digging out the enemy from blind burrows, turning them up from their bloody forms.
Rifles blazed down into bomb-proofs, cracked steadily over the heads of comrades who piled up sandbags to block communication trenches; grenade-bombs rained down through the smoke into trenches, blowing bloody gaps in huddling masses of struggling Teutons until they flattened back against the parados and lifted arms and gun-butts stammering out, “Comrades! Comrades!” — in the ghastly irony of surrender.
A man whose entire helmet, gas-mask, and face had been blown off, and who was still alive and trying to speak, stiffened, relaxed, and died in my arms. As I rolled him aside and turned to the next man whom the bearers were lowering into the crater, his respirator and goggles fell apart, and I found myself looking into the ashy face of Duck Werner.
As we laid him out and stripped away iron helmet and tunic, he said in a natural and distinct voice.
“Through the belly, Doc. Gimme a drink.”
There was no more water or stimulant at the moment and the puddle in the crater was bloody. He said, patiently, “All right; I can wait.... It’s in the belly.... It ain’t nothin’, is it?”
I said something reassuring, something about the percentage of recovery I believe, for I was exceedingly busy with Duck’s anatomy.
“Pull me through, Doc?” he inquired calmly.
“Sure....”
“Aw, listen, Doc. Don’t hand me no cones of hokey-pokey. Gimme a deck of the stuff. Dope out the coke. Do I get mine this trip?”
I looked at him, hesitating.
“Listen, Doc, am I hurted bad? Gimme a hones’ deal. Do I croak?”
“Don’t talk, Duck — —”
“Dope it straight. Do I?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d say that,” he returned serenely. “Now I’m goin’ to fool you, same as I fooled them guys at Bellevue the night that Mike the Kike shot me up in the subway.”
A pallid sneer stretched his thin and burning lips; in his ratty eyes triumph gleamed.
“I’ve went through worse than this. I ain’t hurted bad. I ain’t got mine just yet, old scout! Would I leave meself croak — an’ that bum, Mike the Kike, handin’ me fren’s the ha-ha! Gawd,” he muttered hazily, as though his mind was beginning to cloud, “just f’r that I’ll get up an’ — an’ go — home—” His voice flattened out and he lay silent.
Working over the next man beyond him and glancing around now and then to discover a brancardier who might take Duck to the rear, I presently caught his eyes fixed on me.
“Say, Doc, will you talk — business?” he asked in a dull voice.
“Be quiet, Duck, the bearers will be here in a minute or two — —”
“T’hell wit them guys! I’m askin’ you will you make it fifty-fifty— ‘r’ somethin’—” Again his voice trailed away, but his bright ratty eyes were indomitable.
I was bloodily occupied with another patient when something struck me on the shoulder — a human hand, clutching it. Duck was sitting upright, eyes a-glitter, the other hand pressed heavily over his abdomen.
“Fifty-fifty!” he cried in a shrill voice. “F’r Christ’s sake, Doc, talk business—” And life went out inside him — like the flame of a suddenly snuffed candle — while he still sat there....
I heard the air escaping from his lungs before he toppled over.... I swear to you it sounded like a whispered word— “business.”
* * *
“Then came their gas — a great, thick, yellow billow of it pouring into our shell hole.... I couldn’t get my mask on fast enough ... and here I am, Gray, wondering, but really knowing.... Are you stopping at the Club tonight?”
“Yes.”
Vail got to his feet unsteadily: “I’m feeling rather done in.... Won’t sit up any longer, I guess.... See you in the morning?”
“Yes,” said Gray.
“Good-night, then. Look in on me if you leave before I’m up.”
* * *
And that is how Gray saw him before he sailed — stopped at his door, knocked, and, receiving no response, opened and looked in. After a few moments’ silence he understood that the “Seed of Death” had sprouted.
CHAPTER XIII
MULETEERS
LYING FAR TO the southwest of the battle line, only when a strong northwest wind blew could Sainte Lesse hear the thudding of cannon beyond the horizon. And once, when the northeast wind had blown steadily for a week, on the wings of the driving drizzle had come a faint but dreadful odour which hung among the streets and lanes until the wind changed.
Except for the carillon, nothing louder than the call of a cuckoo, the lowing of cattle or a goatherd’s piping ever broke the summer silence in the little town. Birds sang; a shallow river rippled; breezes ruffled green grain into long, silvery waves across the valley; sunshine fell on quiet streets, on scented gardens unsoiled by war, on groves and meadows, and on the stone-edged brink of brimming pools where washerwomen knelt among the wild flowers, splashing amid floating pyramids of snowy suds.
And into the exquisite peace of this little paradise rode John Burley with a thousand American mules.
The town had been warned of this impending visitation; had watched preparations for it during April and May when a corral was erected down in a meadow and some huts and stables were put up among the groves of poplar and sycamore, and a small barracks was built to accommodate the negro guardians of the mules and a peloton of gendarmes under a fat brigadier.
Sainte Lesse as yet knew nothing personally of the American mule or of Burley. Sainte Lesse heard both before it beheld either — Burley’s loud, careless, swaggering voice above the hee-haw of his trampling herds:
“All I ask for is human food, Smith — not luxuries — just food! — and that of the commonest kind.”
And now an immense volume of noise and dust enveloped the main street of Sainte Lesse, stilling the quiet noon gossip of the town, silencing the birds, awing the town dogs so that their impending barking died to amazed gurgles drowned in the din of the mules.
Astride a cream-coloured, wall-eyed mule, erect in his saddle, talkative, gesticulating, good-humoured, famished but gay, rode Burley at the head of the column, his reckless grey eyes glancing amiably right and left at the good people of Sainte Lesse who clustered silently at their doorways under the trees to observe the passing of this noisy, unfamiliar procession.
Mules, dust; mules, dust, and then more mules, all enveloped in dust, clattering, ambling, trotting, bucking, shying, kicking, halting, backing; and here and there an American negro cracking a long snake whip with strange, aboriginal ejaculations; and three white men in khaki riding beside the trampling column, smoking cigarettes.
“Sticky” Smith and “Kid” Glenn rode mules on the column’s flank; Burley continued to lead on his wall-eyed animal, preceded now by the fat brigadier of the gendarmerie, upon whom he had bestowed a cigarette.
Burley, talking all the while from his saddle to whoever cared to listen, or to himself if nobody cared to listen, rode on in the van under the ancient bell-tower of Sainte Lesse, where a slim, dark-eyed girl looked up at him as he passed, a faint smile hovering on her lips.
“Bong jour, Mademoiselle,” continued Burley, saluting her en passant with two fingers at the vizor of his khaki cap, as he had seen British officers salute. “I compliment you on your silent but eloquent welcome to me, my comrades, my coons, and my mules. Your charming though slightly melancholy smile bids us indeed welcome to your fair city. I thank you; I thank all the inhabitants for this unprecedented ovation. Doubtless a municipal banquet awaits us — —”
Sticky Smith spurred up.
“Did you see the inn?” he asked. “There it is, to the right.”
“It looks good to me,” said Burley. “Everything looks good to me except these accursed mules. Thank God, that seems to be the corral — down in the meadow there, Brigadeer!”
The fat brigadier drew bridle; Burley burst into French:
“Esker — esker — —”
“Oui,” nodded the brigadier, “that is where we are going.”
“Bong!” exclaimed Burley with satisfaction; and, turning to Sticky Smith: “Stick, tell the coons to hustle. We’re there!”
Then, above the trampling, whip-cracking, and shouting of the negroes, from somewhere high in the blue sky overhead, out of limpid, cloudless heights floated a single bell-note, then another, another, others exquisitely sweet and clear, melting into a fragment of heavenly melody.
Burley looked up into the sky; the negroes raised their sweating, dark faces in pleased astonishment; Stick and Kid Glenn lifted puzzled visages to the zenith. The fat brigadier smiled and waved his cigarette:
“Il est midi, messieurs. That is the carillon of Sainte Lesse.”
The angelic melody died away. Then, high in the old bell-tower, a great resonant bell struck twelve times.
Said the brigadier:
“When the wind is right, they can hear our big bell, Bayard, out there in the first line trenches — —”
Again he waved his cigarette toward the northeast, then reined in his horse and backed off into the flowering meadow, while the first of the American mules entered the corral, the herd following pellmell.
The American negroes went with the mules to a hut prepared for them inside the corral — it having been previously and carefully explained to France that an American mule without its negro complement was as galvanic and unaccountable as a beheaded chicken.
Burley burst into French again, like a shrapnel shell:
“Esker — esker — —”
“Oui,” said the fat brigadier, “there is an excellent inn up the street, messieurs.” And he saluted their uniform, the same being constructed of cotton khaki, with a horseshoe on the arm and an oxidized metal mule on the collar. The brigadier wondered at and admired the minute nicety of administrative detail characterizing a government which clothed even its muleteers so becomingly, yet with such modesty and dignity.
He could not know that the uniform was unauthorized and the insignia an invention of Sticky Smith, aiming to counteract any social stigma that might blight his sojourn in France.
“For,” said Sticky Smith, before they went aboard the transport at New Orleans, “if you dress a man in khaki, with some gimcrack on his sleeve and collar, you’re level with anybody in Europe. Which,” he added to Burley, “will make it pleasant if any emperors or kings drop in on us for a drink or a quiet game behind the lines.”
“Also,” added Burley, “it goes with the ladies.” And he and Kid Glenn purchased uniforms similar to Smith’s and had the horseshoe and mule fastened to sleeve and collar.
“They’ll hang you fellows for francs-tireurs,” remarked a battered soldier of fortune from the wharf as the transport cast off and glided gradually away from the sun-blistered docks.
“Hang who?” demanded Burley loudly from the rail above.
“What’s a frank-tiroor?” inquired Sticky Smith.
“And who’ll hang us?” shouted Kid Glenn from the deck of the moving steamer.
“The Germans will if they catch you in that uniform,” retorted the battered soldier of fortune derisively. “You chorus-boy mule drivers will wish you wore overalls and one suspender if the Dutch Kaiser nails you!”
CHAPTER XIV
LA PLOO BELLE
THEY HAD BEEN nearly three weeks on the voyage, three days in port, four more on cattle trains, and had been marching since morning from the nearest railway station at Estville-sur-Lesse.
Now, lugging their large leather hold-alls, they started up the main street of Sainte Lesse, three sunburnt, loud-talking Americans, young, sturdy, careless of glance and voice and gesture, perfectly self-satisfied.
Their footsteps echoed loudly on the pavement of this still, old town, lying so quietly in the shadow of its aged trees and its sixteenth century belfry, where the great bell, Bayard, had hung for hundreds of years, and, tier on tier above it, clustered in set ranks the fixed bells of the ancient carillon.
“Some skyscraper,” observed Burley, patronizing the bell-tower with a glance.
As he spoke, they came to the inn, a very ancient hostelry built into a remnant of the old town wall, and now a part of it. On the signboard was painted a white doe; and that was the name of the inn.
So they trooped through the stone-arched tunnel, ushered by a lame innkeeper; and Burley, chancing to turn his head and glance back through the shadowy stone passage, caught a glimpse in the outer sunshine of the girl whose dark eyes had inspired him with jocular eloquence as he rode on his mule under the bell-tower of Sainte Lesse.
“A peach,” he said to Smith. And the sight of her apparently going to his head, he burst into French: “Tray chick! Tray, tray chick! I’m glad I’ve got on this uniform and not overalls and one suspender.”
“What’s biting you?” inquired Smith.
“Nothing, Stick, nothing. But I believe I’ve seen the prettiest girl in the world right here in this two-by-four town.”
Stick glanced over his shoulder, then shrugged:
“She’s ornamental, only she’s got a sad on.”
But Burley trudged on with his leather hold-all, muttering to himself something about the prettiest girl in the world.
The “prettiest girl in the world” continued her way unconscious of the encomiums of John Burley and the critique of Sticky Smith. Her way, however, seemed to be the way of Burley and his two companions, for she crossed the sunny street and entered the White Doe by the arched door and tunnel-like passage.
Unlike them, however, she turned to the right in the stone corridor, opened a low wooden door, crossed the inn parlour, ascended a short stairway, and entered a bedroom.
Here, standing before a mirror, she unpinned her straw hat, smoothed her dark hair, resting her eyes pensively for a few moments on her reflected face. Then she sauntered listlessly about the little room in performance of those trivial, aimless offices, entirely feminine, such as opening all the drawers in her clothes-press, smoothing out various frilly objects and fabrics, investigating a little gilded box and thoughtfully inspecting its contents, which consisted of hair-pins. Fussing here, lingering there, loitering by her bird-cage, where a canary cheeped its greeting and hopped and hopped; bending over a cluster of white phlox in a glass of water to inhale the old-fashioned perfume, she finally tied on a fresh apron and walked slowly out to the ancient, vaulted kitchen.
An old peasant woman was cooking, while a young one washed dishes.
“Are the American gentlemen still at table, Julie?” she inquired.
“Mademoiselle Maryette, they are devouring everything in the house!” exclaimed old Julie, flinging both hands toward heaven. “Tenez, mamzelle, I have heard of eating in ancient days, I have read of Gargantua, I have been told of banquets, of feasting, of appetites! But there is one American in there! Mamzelle Maryette, if I should swear to you that he is on his third chicken and that a row of six pint bottles of ‘93 Margaux stand empty on the cloth at his elbow, I should do no penance for untruthfulness. Tenez, Mamzelle Maryette, regardez un peu par l’oubliette—” And old Julie slid open the wooden shutter on the crack and Maryette bent forward and surveyed the dining room outside.
They were laughing very loud in there, these three Americans — three powerful, sun-scorched young men, very much at their ease around the table, draining the red Bordeaux by goblets, plying knife and fork with joyous and undiminished vigour.
The tall one with the crisp hair and clear, grayish eyes — he of the three chickens — was already achieving the third — a crisply browned bird, fresh from the spit, fragrant and smoking hot. At intervals he buttered great slices of rye bread, or disposed of an entire young potato, washing it down with a goblet of red wine, but always he returned to the rich roasted fowl which he held, still impaled upon its spit, and which he carved as he ate, wings, legs, breast falling in steaming flakes under his skillful knife blade.
“Allez!” shouted an officer through his respirator.
Against the sky all along the parapet’s edge hundreds of bayonets wavered for a second; then dark figures leaped up, scrambled, crawled forward, rose, ran out into the sunless, pallid light.
Like surf bursting along a coast a curtain of exploding shells stretched straight across the débris of what had been a meadow — a long line of livid obscurity split with flame and storms of driving sand and gravel. Shrapnel leisurely unfolded its cottony coils overhead and the iron helmets rang under the hail.
Men fell forward, backward, sideways, remaining motionless, or rolling about, or rising to limp on again. There was smoke, now, and mire, and the unbroken rattle of machine guns.
Ahead, men were fishing in their sacks and throwing bombs like a pack of boys stoning a snake; I caught glimpses of them furiously at work from where I knelt beside one fallen man after another, desperately busy with my own business.
Bearers ran out where I was at work, not my own company but some French ambulance sections who served me as well as their own surgeons where, in a shell crater partly full of water, we found some shelter for the wounded.
Over us black smoke from the Jack Johnsons rolled as it rolls out of the stacks of soft-coal burning locomotives; the outrageous din never slackened, but our deafened ears had become insensible under the repeated blows of sound, yet not paralyzed. For I remember, squatting there in that shell crater, hearing a cricket tranquilly tuning up between the thunderclaps which shook earth and sods down on us and wrinkled the pool of water at our feet.
The Legion had taken the trench; but the place was a rabbit warren where hundreds of holes and burrows and ditches and communicating runways made a bewildering maze.
And everywhere in the dull, flame-shot obscurity, the Legionaries ran about like ghouls in their hoods and round, hollow eye-holes; masked faces, indistinct in the smoke, loomed grotesque and horrible as Ku-Klux where the bayonets were at work digging out the enemy from blind burrows, turning them up from their bloody forms.
Rifles blazed down into bomb-proofs, cracked steadily over the heads of comrades who piled up sandbags to block communication trenches; grenade-bombs rained down through the smoke into trenches, blowing bloody gaps in huddling masses of struggling Teutons until they flattened back against the parados and lifted arms and gun-butts stammering out, “Comrades! Comrades!” — in the ghastly irony of surrender.
A man whose entire helmet, gas-mask, and face had been blown off, and who was still alive and trying to speak, stiffened, relaxed, and died in my arms. As I rolled him aside and turned to the next man whom the bearers were lowering into the crater, his respirator and goggles fell apart, and I found myself looking into the ashy face of Duck Werner.
As we laid him out and stripped away iron helmet and tunic, he said in a natural and distinct voice.
“Through the belly, Doc. Gimme a drink.”
There was no more water or stimulant at the moment and the puddle in the crater was bloody. He said, patiently, “All right; I can wait.... It’s in the belly.... It ain’t nothin’, is it?”
I said something reassuring, something about the percentage of recovery I believe, for I was exceedingly busy with Duck’s anatomy.
“Pull me through, Doc?” he inquired calmly.
“Sure....”
“Aw, listen, Doc. Don’t hand me no cones of hokey-pokey. Gimme a deck of the stuff. Dope out the coke. Do I get mine this trip?”
I looked at him, hesitating.
“Listen, Doc, am I hurted bad? Gimme a hones’ deal. Do I croak?”
“Don’t talk, Duck — —”
“Dope it straight. Do I?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d say that,” he returned serenely. “Now I’m goin’ to fool you, same as I fooled them guys at Bellevue the night that Mike the Kike shot me up in the subway.”
A pallid sneer stretched his thin and burning lips; in his ratty eyes triumph gleamed.
“I’ve went through worse than this. I ain’t hurted bad. I ain’t got mine just yet, old scout! Would I leave meself croak — an’ that bum, Mike the Kike, handin’ me fren’s the ha-ha! Gawd,” he muttered hazily, as though his mind was beginning to cloud, “just f’r that I’ll get up an’ — an’ go — home—” His voice flattened out and he lay silent.
Working over the next man beyond him and glancing around now and then to discover a brancardier who might take Duck to the rear, I presently caught his eyes fixed on me.
“Say, Doc, will you talk — business?” he asked in a dull voice.
“Be quiet, Duck, the bearers will be here in a minute or two — —”
“T’hell wit them guys! I’m askin’ you will you make it fifty-fifty— ‘r’ somethin’—” Again his voice trailed away, but his bright ratty eyes were indomitable.
I was bloodily occupied with another patient when something struck me on the shoulder — a human hand, clutching it. Duck was sitting upright, eyes a-glitter, the other hand pressed heavily over his abdomen.
“Fifty-fifty!” he cried in a shrill voice. “F’r Christ’s sake, Doc, talk business—” And life went out inside him — like the flame of a suddenly snuffed candle — while he still sat there....
I heard the air escaping from his lungs before he toppled over.... I swear to you it sounded like a whispered word— “business.”
* * *
“Then came their gas — a great, thick, yellow billow of it pouring into our shell hole.... I couldn’t get my mask on fast enough ... and here I am, Gray, wondering, but really knowing.... Are you stopping at the Club tonight?”
“Yes.”
Vail got to his feet unsteadily: “I’m feeling rather done in.... Won’t sit up any longer, I guess.... See you in the morning?”
“Yes,” said Gray.
“Good-night, then. Look in on me if you leave before I’m up.”
* * *
And that is how Gray saw him before he sailed — stopped at his door, knocked, and, receiving no response, opened and looked in. After a few moments’ silence he understood that the “Seed of Death” had sprouted.
CHAPTER XIII
MULETEERS
LYING FAR TO the southwest of the battle line, only when a strong northwest wind blew could Sainte Lesse hear the thudding of cannon beyond the horizon. And once, when the northeast wind had blown steadily for a week, on the wings of the driving drizzle had come a faint but dreadful odour which hung among the streets and lanes until the wind changed.
Except for the carillon, nothing louder than the call of a cuckoo, the lowing of cattle or a goatherd’s piping ever broke the summer silence in the little town. Birds sang; a shallow river rippled; breezes ruffled green grain into long, silvery waves across the valley; sunshine fell on quiet streets, on scented gardens unsoiled by war, on groves and meadows, and on the stone-edged brink of brimming pools where washerwomen knelt among the wild flowers, splashing amid floating pyramids of snowy suds.
And into the exquisite peace of this little paradise rode John Burley with a thousand American mules.
The town had been warned of this impending visitation; had watched preparations for it during April and May when a corral was erected down in a meadow and some huts and stables were put up among the groves of poplar and sycamore, and a small barracks was built to accommodate the negro guardians of the mules and a peloton of gendarmes under a fat brigadier.
Sainte Lesse as yet knew nothing personally of the American mule or of Burley. Sainte Lesse heard both before it beheld either — Burley’s loud, careless, swaggering voice above the hee-haw of his trampling herds:
“All I ask for is human food, Smith — not luxuries — just food! — and that of the commonest kind.”
And now an immense volume of noise and dust enveloped the main street of Sainte Lesse, stilling the quiet noon gossip of the town, silencing the birds, awing the town dogs so that their impending barking died to amazed gurgles drowned in the din of the mules.
Astride a cream-coloured, wall-eyed mule, erect in his saddle, talkative, gesticulating, good-humoured, famished but gay, rode Burley at the head of the column, his reckless grey eyes glancing amiably right and left at the good people of Sainte Lesse who clustered silently at their doorways under the trees to observe the passing of this noisy, unfamiliar procession.
Mules, dust; mules, dust, and then more mules, all enveloped in dust, clattering, ambling, trotting, bucking, shying, kicking, halting, backing; and here and there an American negro cracking a long snake whip with strange, aboriginal ejaculations; and three white men in khaki riding beside the trampling column, smoking cigarettes.
“Sticky” Smith and “Kid” Glenn rode mules on the column’s flank; Burley continued to lead on his wall-eyed animal, preceded now by the fat brigadier of the gendarmerie, upon whom he had bestowed a cigarette.
Burley, talking all the while from his saddle to whoever cared to listen, or to himself if nobody cared to listen, rode on in the van under the ancient bell-tower of Sainte Lesse, where a slim, dark-eyed girl looked up at him as he passed, a faint smile hovering on her lips.
“Bong jour, Mademoiselle,” continued Burley, saluting her en passant with two fingers at the vizor of his khaki cap, as he had seen British officers salute. “I compliment you on your silent but eloquent welcome to me, my comrades, my coons, and my mules. Your charming though slightly melancholy smile bids us indeed welcome to your fair city. I thank you; I thank all the inhabitants for this unprecedented ovation. Doubtless a municipal banquet awaits us — —”
Sticky Smith spurred up.
“Did you see the inn?” he asked. “There it is, to the right.”
“It looks good to me,” said Burley. “Everything looks good to me except these accursed mules. Thank God, that seems to be the corral — down in the meadow there, Brigadeer!”
The fat brigadier drew bridle; Burley burst into French:
“Esker — esker — —”
“Oui,” nodded the brigadier, “that is where we are going.”
“Bong!” exclaimed Burley with satisfaction; and, turning to Sticky Smith: “Stick, tell the coons to hustle. We’re there!”
Then, above the trampling, whip-cracking, and shouting of the negroes, from somewhere high in the blue sky overhead, out of limpid, cloudless heights floated a single bell-note, then another, another, others exquisitely sweet and clear, melting into a fragment of heavenly melody.
Burley looked up into the sky; the negroes raised their sweating, dark faces in pleased astonishment; Stick and Kid Glenn lifted puzzled visages to the zenith. The fat brigadier smiled and waved his cigarette:
“Il est midi, messieurs. That is the carillon of Sainte Lesse.”
The angelic melody died away. Then, high in the old bell-tower, a great resonant bell struck twelve times.
Said the brigadier:
“When the wind is right, they can hear our big bell, Bayard, out there in the first line trenches — —”
Again he waved his cigarette toward the northeast, then reined in his horse and backed off into the flowering meadow, while the first of the American mules entered the corral, the herd following pellmell.
The American negroes went with the mules to a hut prepared for them inside the corral — it having been previously and carefully explained to France that an American mule without its negro complement was as galvanic and unaccountable as a beheaded chicken.
Burley burst into French again, like a shrapnel shell:
“Esker — esker — —”
“Oui,” said the fat brigadier, “there is an excellent inn up the street, messieurs.” And he saluted their uniform, the same being constructed of cotton khaki, with a horseshoe on the arm and an oxidized metal mule on the collar. The brigadier wondered at and admired the minute nicety of administrative detail characterizing a government which clothed even its muleteers so becomingly, yet with such modesty and dignity.
He could not know that the uniform was unauthorized and the insignia an invention of Sticky Smith, aiming to counteract any social stigma that might blight his sojourn in France.
“For,” said Sticky Smith, before they went aboard the transport at New Orleans, “if you dress a man in khaki, with some gimcrack on his sleeve and collar, you’re level with anybody in Europe. Which,” he added to Burley, “will make it pleasant if any emperors or kings drop in on us for a drink or a quiet game behind the lines.”
“Also,” added Burley, “it goes with the ladies.” And he and Kid Glenn purchased uniforms similar to Smith’s and had the horseshoe and mule fastened to sleeve and collar.
“They’ll hang you fellows for francs-tireurs,” remarked a battered soldier of fortune from the wharf as the transport cast off and glided gradually away from the sun-blistered docks.
“Hang who?” demanded Burley loudly from the rail above.
“What’s a frank-tiroor?” inquired Sticky Smith.
“And who’ll hang us?” shouted Kid Glenn from the deck of the moving steamer.
“The Germans will if they catch you in that uniform,” retorted the battered soldier of fortune derisively. “You chorus-boy mule drivers will wish you wore overalls and one suspender if the Dutch Kaiser nails you!”
CHAPTER XIV
LA PLOO BELLE
THEY HAD BEEN nearly three weeks on the voyage, three days in port, four more on cattle trains, and had been marching since morning from the nearest railway station at Estville-sur-Lesse.
Now, lugging their large leather hold-alls, they started up the main street of Sainte Lesse, three sunburnt, loud-talking Americans, young, sturdy, careless of glance and voice and gesture, perfectly self-satisfied.
Their footsteps echoed loudly on the pavement of this still, old town, lying so quietly in the shadow of its aged trees and its sixteenth century belfry, where the great bell, Bayard, had hung for hundreds of years, and, tier on tier above it, clustered in set ranks the fixed bells of the ancient carillon.
“Some skyscraper,” observed Burley, patronizing the bell-tower with a glance.
As he spoke, they came to the inn, a very ancient hostelry built into a remnant of the old town wall, and now a part of it. On the signboard was painted a white doe; and that was the name of the inn.
So they trooped through the stone-arched tunnel, ushered by a lame innkeeper; and Burley, chancing to turn his head and glance back through the shadowy stone passage, caught a glimpse in the outer sunshine of the girl whose dark eyes had inspired him with jocular eloquence as he rode on his mule under the bell-tower of Sainte Lesse.
“A peach,” he said to Smith. And the sight of her apparently going to his head, he burst into French: “Tray chick! Tray, tray chick! I’m glad I’ve got on this uniform and not overalls and one suspender.”
“What’s biting you?” inquired Smith.
“Nothing, Stick, nothing. But I believe I’ve seen the prettiest girl in the world right here in this two-by-four town.”
Stick glanced over his shoulder, then shrugged:
“She’s ornamental, only she’s got a sad on.”
But Burley trudged on with his leather hold-all, muttering to himself something about the prettiest girl in the world.
The “prettiest girl in the world” continued her way unconscious of the encomiums of John Burley and the critique of Sticky Smith. Her way, however, seemed to be the way of Burley and his two companions, for she crossed the sunny street and entered the White Doe by the arched door and tunnel-like passage.
Unlike them, however, she turned to the right in the stone corridor, opened a low wooden door, crossed the inn parlour, ascended a short stairway, and entered a bedroom.
Here, standing before a mirror, she unpinned her straw hat, smoothed her dark hair, resting her eyes pensively for a few moments on her reflected face. Then she sauntered listlessly about the little room in performance of those trivial, aimless offices, entirely feminine, such as opening all the drawers in her clothes-press, smoothing out various frilly objects and fabrics, investigating a little gilded box and thoughtfully inspecting its contents, which consisted of hair-pins. Fussing here, lingering there, loitering by her bird-cage, where a canary cheeped its greeting and hopped and hopped; bending over a cluster of white phlox in a glass of water to inhale the old-fashioned perfume, she finally tied on a fresh apron and walked slowly out to the ancient, vaulted kitchen.
An old peasant woman was cooking, while a young one washed dishes.
“Are the American gentlemen still at table, Julie?” she inquired.
“Mademoiselle Maryette, they are devouring everything in the house!” exclaimed old Julie, flinging both hands toward heaven. “Tenez, mamzelle, I have heard of eating in ancient days, I have read of Gargantua, I have been told of banquets, of feasting, of appetites! But there is one American in there! Mamzelle Maryette, if I should swear to you that he is on his third chicken and that a row of six pint bottles of ‘93 Margaux stand empty on the cloth at his elbow, I should do no penance for untruthfulness. Tenez, Mamzelle Maryette, regardez un peu par l’oubliette—” And old Julie slid open the wooden shutter on the crack and Maryette bent forward and surveyed the dining room outside.
They were laughing very loud in there, these three Americans — three powerful, sun-scorched young men, very much at their ease around the table, draining the red Bordeaux by goblets, plying knife and fork with joyous and undiminished vigour.
The tall one with the crisp hair and clear, grayish eyes — he of the three chickens — was already achieving the third — a crisply browned bird, fresh from the spit, fragrant and smoking hot. At intervals he buttered great slices of rye bread, or disposed of an entire young potato, washing it down with a goblet of red wine, but always he returned to the rich roasted fowl which he held, still impaled upon its spit, and which he carved as he ate, wings, legs, breast falling in steaming flakes under his skillful knife blade.
