________________________________________________
_ Claude set off to find the Grand Hotel, where he had promised to
dine with Victor Morse. The porter there spoke English. He called
a red-headed boy in a dirty uniform and told him to take the
American to vingt-quatre. The boy also spoke English. "Plenty
money in New York, I guess! In France, no money." He made their
way, through musty corridors and up slippery staircases, as long
as possible, shrewdly eyeing the visitor and rubbing his thumb
nervously against his fingers all the while.
"Vingt-quatre, twen'y-four," he announced, rapping at a door with
one hand and suggestively opening the other. Claude put something
into it--anything to be rid of him.
Victor was standing before the fireplace. "Hello, Wheeler, come
in. Our dinner will be served up here. It's big enough, isn't it?
I could get nothing between a coop, and this at fifteen dollars a
day."
The room was spacious enough for a banquet; with two huge beds,
and great windows that swung in on hinges, like doors, and that
had certainly not been washed since before the war. The heavy red
cotton-brocade hangings and lace curtains were stiff with dust,
the thick carpet was strewn with cigarette-ends and matches.
Razor blades and "Khaki Comfort" boxes lay about on the dresser,
and former occupants had left their autographs in the dust on the
table. Officers slept there, and went away, and other officers
arrived,--and the room remained the same, like a wood in which
travellers camp for the night. The valet de chambre carried away
only what he could use; discarded shirts and socks and old shoes.
It seemed a rather dismal place to have a party.
When the waiter came, he dusted off the table with his apron and
put on a clean cloth, napkins, and glasses. Victor and his guest
sat down under an electric light bulb with a broken shade, around
which a silent halo of flies moved unceasingly. They did not
buzz, or dart aloft, or descend to try the soup, but hung there
in the center of the room as if they were a part of the lighting
system. The constant attendance of the waiter embarrassed Claude;
he felt as if he were being watched.
"By the way," said Victor while the soup plates were being
removed, "what do you think of this wine? It cost me thirty
francs the bottle."
"It tastes very good to me," Claude replied. "But then, it's the
first champagne I've ever drunk."
"Really?" Victor drank off another glass and sighed. "I envy you.
I wish I had it all to do over. Life's too short, you know."
"I should say you had made a good beginning. We're a long way
from Crystal Lake."
"Not far enough." His host reached across the table and filled
Claude's empty glass. "I sometimes waken up with the feeling I'm
back there. Or I have bad dreams, and find myself sitting on that
damned stool in the glass cage and can't make my books balance; I
hear the old man coughing in his private room, the way he coughs
when he's going to refuse a loan to some poor devil who needs it.
I've had a narrow escape, Wheeler; 'as a brand from the burning'.
That's all the Scripture I remember."
The bright red spots on Victor's cheeks, his pale forehead and
brilliant eyes and saucy little moustaches seemed to give his
quotation a peculiar vividness. Claude envied him. It must be
great fun to take up a part and play it to a finish; to believe
you were making yourself over, and to admire the kind of fellow
you made. He, too, in a way, admired Victor,--though he couldn't
altogether believe in him.
"You'll never go back," he said, "I wouldn't worry about that."
"Take it from me, there are thousands who will never go back! I'm
not speaking of the casualties. Some of you Americans are likely
to discover the world this trip . . . and it'll make the hell of
a lot of difference! You boys never had a fair chance. There's a
conspiracy of Church and State to keep you down. I'm going off to
play with some girls tonight, will you come along?"
Claude laughed. "I guess not."
"Why not? You won't be caught, I guarantee."
"I guess not." Claude spoke apologetically. "I'm going out to see
Fanning after dinner."
Victor shrugged. "That ass!" He beckoned the waiter to open
another bottle and bring the coffee. "Well, it's your last chance
to go nutting with me." He looked intently at Claude and lifted
his glass. "To the future, and our next meeting!" When he put
down his empty goblet he remarked, "I got a wire through today;
I'm leaving tomorrow."
"For London?"
"For Verdun."
Claude took a quick breath. Verdun . . . the very sound of the
name was grim, like the hollow roll of drums. Victor was going
there tomorrow. Here one could take a train for Verdun, or
thereabouts, as at home one took a train for Omaha. He felt more
"over" than he had done before, and a little crackle of
excitement went all through him. He tried to be careless:
"Then you won't get to London soon?"
"God knows," Victor answered gloomily. He looked up at the
ceiling and began to whistle softly an engaging air. "Do you know
that? It's something Maisie often plays; 'Roses of Picardy.' You
won't know what a woman can be till you meet her, Wheeler."
"I hope I'll have that pleasure. I was wondering if you'd
forgotten her for the moment. She doesn't object to these
diversions?"
Victor lifted his eyebrows in the old haughty way. "Women don't
require that sort of fidelity of the air service. Our engagements
are too uncertain."
Half an hour later Victor had gone in quest of amorous adventure,
and Claude was wandering alone in a brightly lighted street full
of soldiers and sailors of all nations. There were black
Senegalese, and Highlanders in kilts, and little lorry-drivers
from Siam,--all moving slowly along between rows of cabarets and
cinema theatres. The wide-spreading branches of the plane trees
met overhead, shutting out the sky and roofing in the orange
glare. The sidewalks were crowded with chairs and little tables,
at which marines and soldiers sat drinking shops and cognac and
coffee. From every doorway music-machines poured out jazz tunes
and strident Sousa marches. The noise was stupefying. Out in the
middle of the street a band of bareheaded girls, hardy and tough
looking; were following a string of awkward Americans, running
into them, elbowing them, asking for treats, crying, "You dance
me Fausse-trot, Sammie?"
Claude stationed himself before a movie theatre, where the sign
in electric lights read, "Amour, quand tu nous tiens!" and stood
watching the people. In the stream that passed him, his eye lit
upon two walking arm-in-arm, their hands clasped, talking eagerly
and unconscious of the crowd,--different, he saw at once, from
all the other strolling, affectionate couples.
The man wore the American uniform; his left arm had been
amputated at the elbow, and he carried his head awry, as if he
had a stiff neck. His dark, lean face wore an expression of
intense anxiety, his eyebrows twitched as if he were in constant
pain. The girl, too, looked troubled. As they passed him, under
the red light of the Amour sign, Claude could see that her eyes
were full of tears. They were wide, blue eyes, innocent looking,
and she had the prettiest face he had seen since he landed. From
her silk shawl, and little bonnet with blue strings and a white
frill, he thought she must be a country girl. As she listened to
the soldier, with her mouth half-open, he saw a space between her
two front teeth, as with children whose second teeth have just
come. While they pushed along in the crowd she looked up intently
at the man beside her, or off into the blur of light, where she
evidently saw nothing. Her face, young and soft, seemed new to
emotion, and her bewildered look made one feel that she did not
know where to turn.
Without realizing what he did, Claude followed them out of the
crowd into a quiet street, and on into another, even more
deserted, where the louses looked as if they had been asleep a
long while. Here there were no street lamps, not even a light in
the windows, but natural darkness; with the moon high overhead
throwing sharp shadows across the white cobble paving. The narrow
street made a bend, and he came out upon the church he and his
comrades had entered that afternoon. It looked larger by night,
and but for the sunken step, he might not have been sure it was
the same. The dark neighbouring houses seemed to lean toward it,
the moonlight shone silver-grey upon its battered front.
The two walking before him ascended the steps and withdrew into
the deep doorway, where they clung together in an embrace so long
and still that it was like death. At last they drew shuddering
apart. The girl sat down on the stone bench beside the door. The
soldier threw himself upon the pavement at her feet, and rested
his head on her knee, his one arm lying across her lap.
In the shadow of the houses opposite, Claude kept watch like a
sentinel, ready to take their part if any alarm should startle
them. The girl bent over her soldier, stroking his head so softly
that she might have been putting him to sleep; took his one hand
and held it against her bosom as if to stop the pain there. Just
behind her, on the sculptured portal, some old bishop, with a
pointed cap and a broken crozier, stood, holding up two fingers. _
Read next: Book Five: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On": Chapter 3
Read previous: Book Five: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On": Chapter 1
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