Part 18

Cold had struck down on Boston in December; and it held and intensified as January came. Sometimes people, listening to Eph’s singing, thought the old man must be shivering where he sat upon the stones; and Ragan drove him away two or three nights and bade him warm himself. But each time Eph looked at him with such pitiful entreaty against this kindness that Ragan gave up. “Have it your own way, you old idiot,” he told Eph. “If you want to freeze, go ahead and freeze. But don’t look at a man like he’s kicked you....”

“Yas suh,” said Eph. “Thank’e kindly, suh.”

Neither Ragan, nor Eph’s friend, the lawyer, realized how serious the matter was. They found Eph stubbornly determined to hold his own course; they decided he would not otherwise be content; and Eph was but one figure in their crowded lives. They let him have his way.

Eph duly met his obligations in the first week of that cold January; he was at his post through the second week. On the appointed day, he went to make the payment....

The lawyer had good news for him. Jim Forrest’s mother wrote that Jim had won a commission in the training camp; he had won, by exceptional merit, a commission as Captain.

“You understand, Eph,” the attorney explained, “this means he’ll have a good salary, about two hundred dollars a month. So his mother can get along all right, now....”

Eph’s feet were shuffling on the floor in something that sounded very like a soft but jubilant hornpipe; he disregarded utterly the attorney’s word. “My man’s a captain, suh,” he chanted. “An’ I put him in where he c’ud be it. Same as if I ’uz a captain in de army, now....”

“By Jove, Eph, you’re right,” the lawyer agreed. “I ... I’d like to....”

There were tears in his eyes when he had shaken Eph’s hand and seen him go; but there were no tears in old Eph. He was riotously happy, madly happy, tenderly happy.... He went out, and down the street, and in the early dusk spread a newspaper on the cold stones of the pavement by the kiosk there, and sat him down, and lifted up his voice in song....

People said afterward that Eph had never sung so tunefully as that last evening. His voice had an unusual purity and sweetness; it was as tender as a woman’s. There was an exaltation about the old man, so that the discerning eye seemed to see a glory hanging over him. He sang and sang....

That was a bitter cold night, and the streets cleared early. Ragan came along about one o’clock and found Eph still singing, with no one near to hear. He bade Eph stop and go home; but Eph protested:

“Please suh, Miste’ Ragan; dis is my night tuh sing, suh.”

Ragan, shivering in his warm garments, said harshly: “This’ll be your night to freeze to death. Get up and go home, before I run you in.”

Eph got up. There was nothing else to do when a policeman commanded. And Ragan watched him cross the street, and called: “Good night.”

Eph looked back and nodded. “Good night, suh,” he echoed. “I’m gwine right along.”

He started up Park street; and Ragan went on his way, trying the shop doors, huddling in the doorways to avoid the wind, blowing on his aching hands.

“By God, I don’t see how the old fool stands it,” he said to himself. “It’s a wonder he’s not stiff....”

VI

Eph went up the Hill. Half way up Park street he looked back and saw Ragan disappearing; so when he came to the top, he felt safe in turning aside a little, to pause before the Memorial and report his triumph to his Colonel there.

He stood on the steps before the Monument, and took off his hat, and explained the matter very respectfully; and for all the howling of the wind that swept up the street and past him, he was sure he heard the low exclamations of his comrades in the stone ranks there; and he was sure the graven officer looked down at him, and spoke with him, and praised him....

The night watchman, at the State House across Beacon street, reported afterward that he had thought, in the night, he heard the sound of martial music in the street out there. It might have been a banjo, and an old man’s voice; he could not be sure.

“But it sounded like a fife and drums to me,” he said, again and again. “I came to a window and looked out; but I couldn’t see a thing.... Thought I must have been dreaming.... Went back to the fire....”

Whether it was old Eph’s banjo, and old Eph’s song he heard, or whether it was indeed the shrilling of invisible pipes, welcoming a hero home, I cannot say. He says it was The Battle Hymn of the Republic that he heard, so Ragan thinks it was only old Eph. But I am not so sure....

At any rate, Ragan found Eph, in the morning. The old darky was huddled at the base of the Memorial, cuddling his banjo in his arms, while above his head the stone ranks marched interminably on.

* * * * *

Ragan and his lawyer between them decided to tell Jim Forrest the truth of the matter; and it was Jim who devised old Eph’s epitaph. That which he caused to be set upon Eph’s small, white stone was a familiar phrase enough; but glorious as simple things may be.

The legend on the stone reads:

“Old Eph.” “January 17, 1918” “Dead on the Field of Honor”

THE UNCONQUERED

I

This was in the first months after the war. The old Frenchman was still in uniform. His round-topped, gold-braided cap lay on the table at his elbow, beside the open box of cigarettes, and the half-empty glass. The breast and the sleeve of his tunic bore testimony to his honorable service. He was a short man, a heavy man, with a large stomach, and solid shoulders; and his head hunched forward in a leonine fashion. His eyes were blue; and his hair was thick, and coarse, and white as snow. He was in New York on some business of reconstruction.... And while the other men had been exchanging reminiscences, he had stared with thoughtful eyes at a large, framed print upon the wall before him.

This print was a reproduction of a painting thoroughly familiar. It portrayed an old man, a man of middle age, a boy, a fife, a drum and a flag.... And one who looked at it could feel the brush of the wind through the banner’s waving folds, and hear the scream of shrill fifes piping in the air....

Hinchcliffe, who knew the Frenchman better than the others, observed this scrutiny, and asked a question, softly. The Frenchman smiled.

“I was thinking, sir,” he told Hinchcliffe, “That I have witnessed a scene like that, in my time.”

His words came in a little pause in the conversation of the others, so that they all heard, and waited for him to continue. And Hinchcliffe ventured to urge quietly: “Tell us.”

The Frenchman lifted his hand in a deprecating fashion; they insisted. He sipped at his glass, and in the end he nodded. Barton lighted a fresh cigar. Hinchcliffe shifted to a more comfortable position in his chair. Hughes beckoned the nearest attendant with a silent forefinger. The Frenchman began to speak. His tone was level and unemotional; his articulation was precise. Only an odd construction of sentences now and then betrayed his unfamiliarity with the tongue. His eyes were on the framed print upon the wall; and they seemed to look through it, and beyond....

II

It was, in the beginning, (said the old Frenchman) one of those valorous and devoted regiments to which fall the hardest and most honorable tasks. The men came, for the most part, from the Argonne; they were rugged stock, men of the farms and of the hills. Simple, and direct.... Good soldiers.... And Frenchmen.

It chanced that when the war came, this regiment fought in its own homeland. The men knew every foot of the hills they defended, the ravines which they turned into death traps, the forests through which they marched, the meadows where they skirmished. They knew this land, and by the same token, they loved it. It was as though they had their roots in the soil. They could not be torn from it. They waited for the Germans at ten kilometres from the frontier--you remember, my friends, how we waited for them there so that they might not say we had provoked the conflict--and when the Germans came, this regiment stopped its immediate foe and held the Germans in their tracks.

At this time, the French invasion toward Muelhausen was prospering; but at the same time, the Germans were crushing Belgium, and pouring through, so that they turned our flank and we were forced to go back. That was unpleasant, and for a little time, at the very first, it was dangerous. But in a few days we were safely disengaged, and the enemy was exhausting himself to come up with us, and our counter stroke was preparing.

But to give us time for this retreat and preparation, certain organizations had to be sacrificed. This regiment was one. It was ordered to stand firm, to hold.... It held. The enemy attacked on the front and was repulsed; but on either side, our lines gave way, and the second day saw the regiment attacked on the right flank, and the left.

It was well posted, upon a hill that dominated two good roads, and it held....

But the Germans poured past them on either side; and in the press of more important matters to the southward, the work of overwhelming this regiment was delayed. A containing force was left to hold them, starve them.... And the main battle swept away and left them stranded there.

The men had fought tirelessly; they were prepared to fight on, and to die. But when it became apparent that the Germans did not propose to push matters, and when it became clear that another day would see hunger among them, the commander determined to strike. He had, at this time, some three hundred fit men of the regiment remaining. They were no longer of use where they stood. And the regiment was not accustomed to be idle.

Therefore, that night, a little after mid-night, when it was very dark and only the occasional flashes from the German positions illumined the blackness, the regiment attacked. They went down in three lines, a hundred men to a line, with their commander and their officers ahead, gentlemen. And they flung themselves upon the Germans.

The Germans were surprised. They had expected another day or two of waiting, and then an easy surrender. Instead, they found themselves beset by swarming enemies, stout men with long bayonets who sweated and swore and struck. The first charge of the French cut through the encircling lines; the remnant of the regiment might have escaped even then. But there had been no orders to escape, so they turned to right and left along the German positions, and flung the huddled enemy back and back and back.

The word was passed that their commander had fallen; and this man--he was my very good friend and comrade, gentlemen--had been beloved by them. Therefore they continued to fight with bitterness in their hearts until the resistance melted before them. There may have been a thousand Germans left to hold this battered remnant of a regiment; but those who lived, out of that thousand, fled before the three hundred.

They fled, and were lost in the night; and the flame from a fired straw stack nearby illumined the field, so that the Frenchmen could look into each other’s eyes and consider what was to be done.

Their commissioned officers were dead, gentlemen; but there was an under officer in that regiment named Jacques Fontaine. He was a big man, a farmer; and he was a very serious and practical and thrifty man. Also, he knew that country, and many of the men of the regiment were his neighbors, and all of them knew him for what he was.

Therefore it seemed natural that he should take the command that night. He called to a man named Lupec, and spoke with him. This Lupec was a little, wry-necked man, as shrewd as a fox. And Lupec advised Jacques Fontaine, and the big farmer shouted aloud to the panting men of the regiment, where they stood about him in the red trousers and the blue coats that had made our army so vulnerable in that first rush of war. He looked about him, and he shouted to them....

He bade them strip cartridges and rifles from the dead; and he told them to take what provisions they could find. And when this was done, they were to scatter, and rendezvous the next night but one in a certain ravine which all that country knew.

This ravine was in the heart of the forest. It was well hidden; it might be defended. There was water in it; and there were farms upon the borders of the forest where food might be had.

When, a little before dawn, a German force came back and descended upon them, the men melted before it like the morning mists before the sun; and the Germans did not know what to do, so they made camp, and cooked, and ate, and slept. And the men of the regiment made their way, singly, and by twos and threes, through the forest toward the ravine that was the rendezvous.

This spot was called in your tongue, gentlemen, the Ravine of the Cold Tooth.

III

Now modern warfare, gentlemen, is a curious and inconsistent thing. It is vast, and yet it is minute.

This battered regiment, added to the French armies at that moment, would have been of small account. A burst of shrapnel, a mine, an unimportant counter thrust might have accounted for them all. Their weight in an attack would have been inconsiderable.

But this regiment which did not know how to surrender, and which was at large behind the German lines, was another matter, my friends. It was worth well nigh a division to France. For an army is as vulnerable as it is vast, gentlemen; and it can do only one thing at a time.

The Emperor discovered this truth, long ago, in Spain. When he scattered his army to overcome the guerillas, he exposed himself to the blows of the Iron Duke; and when he effected a concentration to attack Wellington, the Spanish peasants sliced off every straggler. He was incessantly harassed, and he lost that campaign; and that was his first defeat.

The warfare of today--or, let us say, the warfare of yesterday, which we hope will never be the warfare of tomorrow--the warfare of yesterday was like that. The army’s front is like the front of a dam, vast and impregnable; but behind, that front is bolstered and strengthened and buttressed by many little lines of communication and supply, just as a dam may be buttressed on the lower side. A division may shatter itself in vain against the army’s front; a hundred men may cut one of those little lines behind.

This was the fact which aided Jacques Fontaine and his men, the regiment.

You must understand, also, gentlemen, that in the heat of open battle, a fighting line is an unstable thing. It sways, and bends, and yields, and rebounds; and fragments are broken off from it. They return to their places, or they do not return. At times, the line itself is shattered, when it grows too thin. And when the line is shattered, its component parts are thrown to every side. In open country, these component parts--men, gentlemen--may be run down and sabred by the cavalry, or they may surrender.

In wooded land, however, it is hard to exterminate men who will yield to nothing less than extermination. Cavalry can work through the forest only in small patrols, and along defined paths and roads. And for infantry, the currying of a wood is slow and painful work.

Therefore, when an army makes a considerable advance, it leaves in its rear many small and scattered parties of the enemy. It was so when the Germans thrust down into France, gentlemen. There were many Frenchmen left behind to wander and hide in the forest, to starve, or yield, or die.... Or, perhaps, to survive.

This will explain to you, my friends, the growth of the regiment under Jacques Fontaine’s command. When they scattered, after dispersing the German force which had been set to hold them, there were scarce a hundred of them without wounds. When they gathered at the Ravine of the Cold Tooth, straggling parties had swelled that number so that Jacques Fontaine, counting, with his big forefinger pointing in turn toward each man and his lips mumbling as he counted, found that he had a force of two hundred and seven hardy and energetic men.

And he was pleased.

The first thing this man did, gentlemen, was to reconstitute the regiment. A regiment, you understand, is an immortal thing. It cannot die. When every man of it is dead, the regiment still lives; because a regiment is an idea, and ideas are eternal. Jacques Fontaine was a slow man, my friends; and you would have considered him a dull man. Nevertheless, this conception of the immortality of the regiment was a part of his heart and his soul. If you had told him the regiment was destroyed, he would have been very sorry for you.

They had saved their regimental colors, you understand; the banner with its honorable decorations. They had saved this, and Jacques Fontaine’s first act was to assign six men to guard this banner. He explained to them, carefully, that they were to seclude themselves. They were to engage in no enterprise involving hazard; and they were to keep the standard immaculate and unstained. They were to fight only to defend it; and they were to save it by evasion and flight when they could, and fight only when they must.

Jacques Fontaine understood, gentlemen, that the banner is the regiment.

When he had made this arrangement, he called Lupec, and they found a man skilled in writing, and they prepared a regimental roll. Those stragglers from other regiments who had joined them were mustered in after a formula which Jacques Fontaine devised. In the end, the two hundred and seven men were one body and one soul, and Jacques Fontaine was satisfied with the arrangement.

Having counted his men, he began, thriftily, to consider their equipment.

He found that these two hundred and seven men had two hundred and fifty-four rifles. A hundred or so of these rifles were German; and for these weapons there was a plentiful supply of German ammunition. But there were very few cartridges for the French rifles; there were only the long, needle-like bayonets.

Jacques Fontaine was vexed with this discovery. He was one of those penurious peasants whom De Maupassant knew how to paint, my friends. He could not bear poverty, or waste. He derived a solid satisfaction from the mere possession of wealth; and his conception of wealth was strictly in accord with academic economic principles. Any useful article was wealth to him.

He perceived that while his command was wealthy in rifles and bayonets, it was very badly off indeed for cartridges.

He sat down on a big rock at the head of the ravine, while the men with little fires cooked supper in the deeps below him; and he took off his hat and scratched his head and considered what to do. Another man might have chosen his course more swiftly; it required some hours for Jacques Fontaine to make up his mind.

But when he rose from the rock, this man had laid out before his feet the path they were to follow through the four interminable and glorious years which were to come.

Any other man would have been wise enough to know that the plan he had chosen was impossible. Jacques Fontaine was valorously stupid. He did not know he could not do that which he planned to do, gentlemen.

Therefore, he did the impossible.

IV

The German armies, at this time, were throwing themselves against our barricade of steel and fire along the Marne; and by every possible avenue, they were hurrying forward munitions and guns and all supplies. They gave little thought to the stragglers in the forests behind them. They knew that stragglers are not dangerous to an organized force. It is only when the stragglers organize that they become a peril.

Jacques Fontaine had organized these stragglers. At dawn, on the third day after that first rendezvous, he flung his men upon a wagon train that threaded one of the forest roads.

This train was escorted by a troop of some five score Uhlans; it was upon a road which was guarded by patrols of three and four men stationed at every farm. Yet in a dip between two hills, the single Uhlan in advance found his way blocked by felled trees in the road, and at the same time other trees, cut almost through and held erect by ropes until the appointed time, crashed down upon his comrades behind.

With the crashing of these trees was mingled the crashing discharge of two hundred rifles. And after the first discharge, out of a hundred troopers scarce fifty remained upon their horses; and after the second volley, not thirty men were still unharmed. And after the third, there were only fugitive Uhlans galloping headlong back to give the alarm.

Before these fugitives were out of sight, Jacques Fontaine and his men flung themselves upon the loaded wagons. The two foremost wagons bore cartridges. They laid open the boxes with axe and bayonet; and they plunged in their hands.

It was hopeless to attempt to make away with the wagons themselves. Thick forest lay on every hand. Therefore, by Jacques’ order, each man took all the cartridges he could bear, and raced back into the wood, and hid the precious things between rocks, and beneath logs, and in every cranny he could find; and when he had disposed of his burden he returned and took as many more as he could carry. The men filled their pockets, their belts, their pouches, their hats.... Some of them dropped the cartridges inside the legs of their trousers, so that the things hung heavy about their knees. And when this was done, of the two wagon loads, no cartridges remained.

The men took also the rifles and revolvers of the fallen Germans; and they stripped their own few dead of weapons. And then they slipped into the forest, and scattered, and fled away.

The hunt began within the hour; and for a week, the men were chivvied through the woods like hares. Dogs bayed upon their trails; they hid in caves, in trees, in the thick-growing underbrush; they lay for hours in the pools with only mouth and nose and eyes exposed above the water. And some of them were shot, and some were taken alive.... And some took Germans with them when they died.

Lupec was one of those who was captured. On the fourth day, weary and utterly exhausted, he fell asleep in a crevice beneath two boulders; and a German stumbled on him. His captor took him, at gun point, back through the forest toward a cross-road where the Germans were encamped.

When they came in sight of this place, his captor halted to stare, and Lupec also looked. The Germans were busy; they were engaged in hanging three Frenchmen by the necks to a beech tree beside the farmhouse there.

Lupec had no desire to thrust his wry-neck into a noose. Therefore he turned, and plunged into the man who had captured him, and knocked the man down. Even then he found time to snatch up the German’s rifle and turn and fire; and he saw the German officer who was watching the hangings pitch drunkenly forward on his saddle. So that Lupec was grinning as he plunged into the forest again.

He made good his escape; and thus he was able to bring to Jacques Fontaine, when the pursuit relaxed, the word of the hangings.

The big farmer was displeased with this news; because you understand, my friends, he had reconstituted the regiment, so that he considered that he and his comrades were soldiers of France, and as such entitled to better treatment than a noose. He frowned blackly at Lupec’s report; and he sent out men to discover if there had been other hangings.

They found that eleven Frenchmen had been murdered in this fashion, gentlemen; and Jacques Fontaine nodded at this, and made a calculation upon his fingers. He was slow at figures, you understand; but he knew what he wished to do. He made his calculation; and he sent out his men to the farms and the cross-roads, and he gave them careful orders....

They obeyed him so well, my friends, that on the second day after he was able to hang twenty-two Germans, two for each Frenchman, upon the same tree where the men of his regiment had been hung.