Chapter 6

"I am happy to be in this so charming camp, in this forest magnificent, on these ancient mountains," orated the colonel floridly. "I am most pleased of all to have Huron Indians as my guides, because between Hurons and me there are memories." The men were listening spell-bound. "But yes. I had Huron soldiers serving in my regiment, just now at the western front, of whom I thought highly. They were all that there is, those Hurons of mine, of most fearless, most skilful. One among them was pre-eminent. Some of you may have known him. I regret to say that I never knew his real name, but among his comrades he went by the name of l'Hirondelle. From that name one guesses his qualities--swift as a swallow, untamable, gay, brave to foolishness, moving in dashes not to be followed--such was my Hirondelle. And yet this swift bird was in the end shot down."

At this point in the colonel's speech. I happened to look at Rafael, back in the shadows of the half-lighted big room. His eyes glittered out of the dimness like disks of fire, his face was strained, and his figure bent forward. "He must have known this chap, the Swallow," I thought to myself. "Just possibly a son or brother or nephew of his." The colonel was going on, telling in fluent, beautiful French the story of how Hirondelle, wrapped in a sheet, had rescued him. The men drank it in. "When those guides are old, old fellows, they'll talk about this night and the colonel's speech to their great-grandchildren," I considered, and again the colonel went on.

"Have I m'sieur's permission to _raconter_ a short story of the most amusing which was the last escapade of my Hirondelle before he was killed?"

M'sieur gave permission eagerly, and the low murmur of the voices of the hypnotized guides, standing in a group before the colonel, added to its force and set him smiling.

"It was like this," he stated. "My Hirondelle was out in No Man's Land of a night, strictly charged to behave in a manner _comme il faut_, for he was of a rashness, and we did not wish to lose him. He was valuable to us, and beyond that the regiment had an affection for him. For such reasons his captain tried--but, yes--to keep him within bounds. As I say, on this night he had received particular orders to be _sage_. So that the first thing the fellow does is to lose his comrades, for which he had a _penchant_, one knows. After that he crawls over that accursed country, in and out of shellholes, rifle in his teeth likely--the good God knows where else, for one need be all hands and feet for such crawling. He crawled in that fashion till at last he lost himself. And then he was concerned to find out where might be our lines till in time he heard a sound of snoring and was well content. Home at last. He tumbled into a dark trench, remarking only that it was filled with men since he left, and so tired he was with his adventure that he pushed away the man next, who was at the end, to gain space, and he rolled over to sleep. But that troublesome man next took too much room. Our Hirondelle planted him a kick in the middle of the back. At which the man half waked and swore at him--in German. And dropped off to sleep again with his leg of a pig slung across Hirondelle's chest. At that second a star-shell lighted up the affair, and Hirondelle, staring with much interest, believe me, saw a trench filled with sleeping Boches. To get out of that as quietly as might be was the game--_n'est-ce-pas, mes amis_? But not for Hirondelle.

"'My colonel has a liking for prisoners,' he reported later. 'My captain's orders were to conduct oneself _très comme il faut_. It is always _comme il faut_ to please the colonel. Therefore it seemed _en regle_ to take a prisoner. I took him. _Le v'la_.'

"What the fellow did was to wait till the Boche next door was well asleep, then slowly remove his rifle, then fasten on his throat with a grip which Hirondelle understood, and finally to overpower the Boche till he was ready enough to crawl out at the muzzle of Hirondelle's rifle."

There was a stir in the little group of guides, and from the shadows Rafael's voice spoke.

"Mon colonel--pardon!"

The colonel turned sharply. "Who is that?"

"There were two Germans," spoke the voice out of the shadows.

The colonel, too astonished to answer, stared. The voice, trembling, old, went on. "The second man waked and one was obliged to strangle him also. One brought the brace to the captain at the end of the carabine--rifle."

"In heaven's name who are you?" demanded the colonel.

From where old Rafael had been, bowed and limp in his humble, worn clothes, stepped at a stride a soldier, head up, shoulders squared, glittering eyes forward, and stood at attention. It was like magic. One hand snapped up in a smart salute.

"Who are you?" whispered the colonel.

"If the colonel pleases--l'Hirondelle."

I heard the colonel's breath come and go as he peered, leaning forward to the soldierly figure. "_Nom de Ciel_," he murmured, "I believe it is." Then in sharp sentences: "You were reported killed. Are you a deserter?"

The steady image of a soldier dropped back a step.

"My colonel--no."

"Explain this."

Rafael--l'Hirondelle--explained. He had not been killed, but captured and sent to a German prison-camp.

"You escaped?" the colonel threw in.

"But yes, my colonel."

The colonel laughed. "One would know it. The clumsy Boches could not hold the Swallow."

"But no, my colonel."

"Go on."

"One went to work before light, my colonel, in that accursed prison-camp. One was out of sight from the guard for a moment, turning a corner, so that on a morning I slipped into some bushes and hid in a dugout--for it was an old camp--all day. That night I walked. I walked for seven nights and lay hid for seven days, eating, my colonel, very little. Then, _v'la_, I was in front of the French lines."

"You ran across to our lines?"

"But not exactly. One sees that I was yet in dirty German prison clothes, and looked like an infantryman of the Boches, so that a poilu rushed at me with a bayonet. I believed, then, that I had come upon a German patrol. Each thought the other a Hun. I managed to wrest from the poilu his rifle with the bayonet, but as we fought another shot me--in the side."

"You were wounded?"

"Yes, my colonel."

"In hospital?"

"Yes, my colonel."

"How long?"

"Three months, my colonel."

"Why are you not again in the army?"

The face of the erect soldier, Hirondelle, the dare-devil, was suddenly the face of a man grown old, ill, and broken-hearted. He stared at the stalwart French officer, gathering himself with an effort. "I--was discharged, my colonel, as--unfit." His head in its old felt hat dropped into his hands suddenly, and he broke beyond control into sobs that shook not only him but every man there.

The colonel stepped forward and put an arm around the bent shoulders. "_Mon héros!_" said the colonel.

With that Rafael found words, never a hard task for him. Yet they came with gasps between. "To be cast out as an old horse--at the moment of glory! I had dreamed all my life--of fighting. And I had it--oh, my colonel--I had it! The glory came when I was old and knew how to be happy in it. Not as a boy who laughs and takes all as his right. I was old, yes, but I was good to kill the vermin. I avenged the children and the women whom those savages--My people, the savages of the wood, knew no better, yet they have not done things as bad as these vile ones who were educated, who knew. Therefore I killed them. I was old, but I was strong, my colonel knows. Not for nothing have I lived a hard life. _On a vu de la misère_. I have hunted moose and bear and kept my muscles of steel and my eyes of a hawk. It is in my blood to be a fighting man. I fought with pleasure, and I was troubled with no fear. I was old, but I could have killed many devils more. And so I was shot down by my own friend after seven days of hard life. And the young soldier doctor discharged me as unfit to fight. And so I am come home very fast to hide myself, for I am ashamed. I am finished. The fighting and the glory are for me no more."

The colonel stepped back a bit and his face flamed. "Glory!" he whispered. "Glory no more for the Hirondelle? What of the Croix de Guerre?"

Rafael shook his head. "I haf heard my colonel who said they would have given me--me, the Hirondelle--the war cross. That now is lost too."

"Lost!" The colonel's deep tone was full of the vibration which only a French voice carries. With a quick movement he unfastened the catch that held the green ribbon, red-striped, of his own cross of war. He turned and pinned the thing which men die for on the shabby coat of the guide. Then he kissed him on either cheek. "My comrade," he said, "your glory will never be old."

There was deep silence in the camp kitchen. The crackling of wood that fell apart, the splashing of the waves of the lake on the pebbles by the shore were the only sounds on earth. For a long minute the men stood as if rooted; the colonel, poised and dramatic, and, I stirred to the depths of my soul by this great ceremony which had come out of the skies to its humble setting in the forest--the men and the colonel and I, we all watched Rafael.

And Rafael slowly, yet with the iron tenacity of his race, got back his control. "My colonel," he began, and then failed. The Swallow did not dare trust his broken wings. It could not be done--to speak his thanks. He looked up with black eyes shining through tears which spoke everything.

"Tomorrow," he stated brokenly, "if we haf a luck, my colonel and I go kill a moose."

They had a luck.

ONLY ONE OF THEM

It was noon on a Saturday. Out of the many buildings of the great electrical manufacturing plant at Schenectady poured employees by hundreds. Thirty trolley-cars were run on special tracks to the place and stood ready to receive the sea streaming towards them. Massed motor-cars waited beyond the trolleys for their owners, officials of the works. The girl in blue serge, standing at a special door of a special building counted, keeping watch meantime of the crowd, the cars. A hundred and twenty-five she made it; it came to her mind that State Street in Albany on a day of some giant parade was not unlike this, not less a throng. The girl, who was secretary to an assistant manager, was used to the sight, but it was an impressive sight and she was impressionable and found each Saturday's pageant a wonder. The pageant was more interesting it may be because it focussed always on one figure--and here he was.

"Did you wait, long?" he asked as he came up, broad-shouldered and athletic of build, boyish and honest of face, as good looking a young American as one may see in any crowd.

"I was early." She smiled up at him as they swung off towards the trolleys; her eyes flashed a glance which said frankly that she found him satisfactory to look upon.

They sped past others, many others, and made a trolley car and a seat together, which was the goal. They always made it, every Saturday, yet it was always a game. Exhilarated by the winning of the game they settled into the scat for the three-quarters of an hour run; it was quite a worth-while world, the smiling glances said one to the other.

The girl gazed, not seeing them particularly, at the slower people filling the seats and the passage of the car. Then: "Oh," she spoke, "what was it you were going to tell me?"

The man's face grew sober, a bit troubled. "Well," he said, "I've decided. I'm going to enlist."

She was still for a second. Then: "I think that's splendid," she brought out. "Splendid. Of course, I knew you'd do it. It's the only thing that could be. I'm glad."

"Yes," the man spoke slowly. "It's the only thing that could be. There's nothing to keep me. My mother's dead. My father's husky and not old and my sisters are with him. There's nobody to suffer by my going."

"N-no," the girl agreed. "But--it's the fine thing to do just the same. You're thirty-two you see, and couldn't be drafted. That makes it rather great of you to go."

"Well," the man answered, "not so very great, I suppose, as it's what all young Americans are doing. I rather think it's one of those things, like spelling, which are no particular credit if you do them, but a disgrace if you don't."

"What a gray way of looking at it!" the girl objected. "As if all the country wasn't glorying in the boys who go! As if we didn't all stand back of you and crowd the side lines to watch you, bursting with pride. You know we all love you."

"Do you love me, Mary? Enough to marry me before I go?" His voice was low, but the girl missed no syllable. She had heard those words or some like them in his voice before.

"Oh, Jim," she begged, "don't ask me now. I'm not certain--yet. I--I couldn't get along very well without you. I care a lot. But--I'm not just sure it's--the way I ought to care to marry you."

As alone in the packed car as in a wood, the little drama went on and no one noticed. "I'm sorry, Mary." The tone was dispirited. "I could go with a lot lighter heart if we belonged to each other."

"Don't say that, Jim," she pleaded. "You make me out--a slacker. You don't want me to marry you as a duty?"

"Good Lord, no!"

"I know that. And I--do care. There's nobody like you. I admire you so for going--but you're not afraid of anything. It's easy for you, that part. I suppose a good many are really--afraid. Of the guns and the horror--all that. You're lucky, Jim. You don't give that a thought."

The man flashed an odd look, and then regarded his hands joined on his knee.

"I do appreciate your courage. I admire that a lot. But somehow Jim there's a doubt that holds me back. I can't be sure I--love you enough; that it's the right way--for that."

The man sighed. "Yes," he said. "I see. Maybe some time. Heavens knows I wouldn't want you unless it was whole-hearted. I wouldn't risk your regretting it, not if I wanted you ten times more. Which is impossible." He put out his big hand with a swift touch on hers. "Maybe some time. Don't worry," he said. "I'm yours." And went on in a commonplace tone, "I think I'll show up at the recruiting office this afternoon, and I'll come to your house in the evening as usual. Is that all right?"

The car sped into Albany and the man went to her door with the girl and left her with few words more and those about commonplace subjects. As he swung down the street he went over the episode in his mind, and dissected it and dwelt on words and phrases and glances, and drew conclusions as lovers have done before, each detail, each conclusion mightily important, outweighing weeks of conversation of the rest of the world together. At last he shook his head and set his lips.

"It's not honest." He formed the words with his lips now, a summing up of many thoughts in his brain. The brain went on elaborating the text. "She thinks I'm brave; she thinks it's easy for me to face enlisting, and the rest. She thinks I'm the makeup which can meet horror and suffering light-heartedly. And I'm not. She admires me for that--she said so. I'm not it. I'm fooling her; it's not honest. Yet"--he groaned aloud. "Yet I may lose her if I tell her the truth. I'm afraid. I am. I hate it. I can't bear--I can't bear to leave my job and my future, just when it's opening out. But I could do that. Only I'm--Oh, damnation--I'm afraid. Horror and danger, agony of men and horses, myself wounded maybe, out on No Man's Land--left there--hours. To die like a dog. Oh, my God--must I? If I tell it will break the little hold I have on her. Must I go to this devil's dance that I hate--and give up her love besides? But yet--it isn't honest to fool her. Oh, God, what will I do?" People walking up State Street, meeting a sober-faced young man, glanced at him with no particular interest. A woman waiting on a doorstep regarded him idly.

"Why isn't he in uniform?" she wondered as one does wonder in these days at a strong chap in mufti. Then she rebuked her thought. "Undoubtedly there's a good reason; American boys are not slackers."

His slow steps carried him beyond her vision and casual thought. The people in the street and the woman on the doorstep did not think or care that what they saw was a man fighting his way through the crisis of his life, fighting alone "per aspera ad astra--" through thorns to the stars.

He lunched with a man at a club and after that took his way to the building on Broadway where were the recruiting headquarters. He had told her that he was going to enlist. As he walked he stared at the people in the streets as a man might stare going to his execution. These people went about their affairs, he considered, as if he--who was about to die--did not, in passing their friendly commonplace, salute them. He did salute them. Out of his troubled soul he sent a silent greeting to each ordinary American hurrying along, each standing to him for pleasant and peaceful America, America of all his days up to now. Was he to toss away this comfortable comradeship, his life to be, everything he cared for on earth, to go into hell, and likely never come back? Why? Why must he? There seemed to be plenty who wanted to fight--why not let them? It was the old slacker's argument; the man was ashamed as he caught himself using it; he had the grace to see its selfishness and cowardice. Yet his soul was in revolt as he drove his body to the recruiting office, and the thoughts that filled him were not of the joy of giving but of the pain of giving up. With that he stood on the steps of the building and here was Charlie Thurston hurrying by on the sidewalk.

"Hello, Jim! Going in to enlist? So long till you come back with one leg and an eye out."

It was Thurston's idea of a joke. He would have been startled if he had known into what a trembling balance his sledge-hummer wit cast its unlucky weight. The balance quivered at the blow, shook back and forth an instant and fell heavily. Jim Barlow wheeled, sprang down the stone steps and bolted up the street, panting as one who has escaped a wild beast. Thurston had said it. That was what was due to happen. It was now three o'clock; Barlow fled up State Street to the big hotel and took a room and locked his door and threw himself on the bed. What was he to do? After weeks of hesitation he had come to the decision that he would offer himself to his country. He saw--none plainer--the reasons why it was fit and right so to do. Other men were giving up homes and careers and the whole bright and easy side of life--why not he? It was the greatest cause to fight for in the world's history--should he not fight for it? How, after the war, might he meet friends, his own people, his children to come, if he alone of his sort had no honorable record to show? Such arguments, known to all, he repeated, even aloud he repeated them, tossing miserably about the bed in his hotel room. And his mind at once accepted them, but that was all. His spirit failed to spring to his mind's support with the throb of emotion which is the spark that makes the engine go. The wheels went around over and over but the connection was not made. The human mind is useful machinery, but it is only the machine's master, the soul, which can use it. Over and over he got to his feet and spoke aloud: "Now I will go." Over and over a repulsion seized him so strongly that his knees gave way and he fell back on the bed. If he had a mother, he thought, she might have helped, but there was no one. Mary--but he could not risk Mary's belief in his courage. Only a mother would have understood entirely.

With that, sick at heart, the hideous sea of counter arguments, arguments of a slacker, surged upon him. What would it all matter a hundred years from now? Wasn't he more useful in his place keeping up the industries of the nation? Wasn't he a bigger asset to America as an alive engineer, an expert in his work, than as mere cannon fodder, one of thousands to be shot into junk in a morning's "activity"--just one of them? Because the Germans were devils why should he let them reach over here, away over here, and drag him out of a decent and happy life and throw him like dirt into the horrible mess they had made, and leave him dead or worse--mangled and useless. Then, again--there were plenty of men mad to fight; why not let them? Through a long afternoon he fought with the beasts, and dinner-time came and he did not notice, and at last he rose and, telephoning first to Mary a terse message that he would not be able to come this evening, he went out, hardly knowing what he did, and wandered up town.

There was a humble church in a quiet street where a service flag hung, thick with dark stars, and the congregation were passing out from a special service for its boys who were going off to camp. The boys were there on the steps, surrounded by people eager to touch their hands, a little group of eight or ten with serious bright faces, and a look in their eyes which stabbed into Barlow. One may see that look any day in any town, meeting the erect stalwart lads in khaki who are about our streets. It is the look of those who have made a vital sacrifice and know the price, and whose minds are at peace. Barlow, lingering on the corner across the way, stared hungrily. How had they got that look, that peace? If only he might talk to one of them! Yet he knew how dumb an animal is a boy, and how helpless these would be to give him the master word.

The master-word, he needed that; he needed it desperately. He must go; he must. Life would be unendurable without self-respect; no amount of explaining could cover the stain on his soul if he failed in the answer to the call of honor. That was it, it was in a nut-shell, the call. Yet he could not hear it as his call. He wandered unhappily away and left the church and its dissolving congregation, and the boys, the pride of the church, the boys who were now, they also, separating and going back each to his home for the last evening perhaps, to be loved and made much of. Barlow vaguely pictured the scenes in those little homes--eyes bright with unshed tears, love and laughter and courage, patriotism as fine as in any great house in America, determination that in giving to America what was dearest it should be given with high spirit--that the boys should have smiling faces to remember, over there. And then again--love and tender words. He was missing all that. He, too, might go back to his father's house an enlisted man, and meet his father's eyes of pride and see his sisters gaze at him with a new respect, feel their new honor of him in the touch of arms about his neck. All these things were for him too, if he would but take them. With that there was the sound of singing, shrill, fresh voices singing down the street. He wheeled about. A company of little girls were marching towards him and he smiled, looking at them, thinking the sight as pretty as a garden of flowers. They were from eight to ten or eleven years old and in the bravery of fresh white dresses; each had a big butterfly of pink or blue or yellow or white ribbon perched on each little fair or dark head, and each carried over her shoulder a flag. Quite evidently they were coming from the celebration at the church, where in some capacity they had figured. Not millionaires children these; the little sisters likely of the boys who were going to be soldiers; just dear things that bloom all over America, the flowering of the land, common to rich and poor. As they sprang along two by two, in unmartial ranks, they sang with all their might "The Long, Long Trail."

"There's a long, long trail that's leading To No Man's Land in France Where the shrapnel shells are bursting And we must advance."

* * * * *

And then:

We're going to show old Kaiser Bill What our Yankee boys can do.