Chapter III: Part 3

"Rafael and his brother-in-law were disappointed. A beaver had been close and eaten the bark off a birch stick which the men had left, but nothing was in the trap. They turned and began a weary walk through the desolate country back to their little tent. Small comfort waited for them there, as their provisions were low, only flour and bacon left. And they dared not expend much of that. They were down-hearted, and to add to it a snow-storm came on and they lost their way. Almost a hopeless situation--an uninhabited country, winter, snow, hunger. And they were lost. '_Egaré. Perdu_,' Rafael said. But the Huron was far from giving up. He peered through the falling snow, not thick yet, and spied a mountain across a valley. He knew that mountain. He had worked near it for two years, logging--the '_chantier_,' they call it. He knew there was a good camp on a river near the mountain, and he knew there would be a stove in the camp and, as Rafael said, 'Mebbe we haf a luck and somebody done gone and lef' somet'ing to eat,' Rafael prefers to talk English to me. He told me all this in broken English.

"It was three miles to the hypothetical camp, but the two tired, hungry men in their rather wretched clothes started hopefully. And after a hard tramp through unbroken forest they came in sight of a log shanty and their spirits rose. 'Pretty tired work,' Rafael said it was. When they got close to the shanty they hoard a noise inside. They halted and looked at each other. Rafael knew there were no loggers in these parts now, and you'll remember it was absolutely wild country. Then something came to the window and looked out."

"_Something_?" repeated the Frenchman in italics. His eyes were wide and he was as intent on Rafael's story as heart could desire.

"They couldn't tell what it was," I went on. "A formless apparition, not exactly white or black, and huge and unknown of likeness. The Indians were frightened by a manner of unearthliness about the thing, and the brother-in-law fell on his knees and began to pray. 'It is the devil,' he murmured to Rafael. 'He will eat us, or carry us to hell.' And he prayed more.

"But old Rafael, scared to death, too, because the thing seemed not to be of this world, yet had his courage with him. 'Mebbe it devil,' he said--such was his report to me--'anyhow I'm cold and hungry, me. I want dat camp. I go shoot dat devil.'

"He crept up to the camp alone, the brother still praying in the bush. Rafael was rather convinced, mind you, that he was going to face the powers of darkness, but he had his rifle loaded and was ready for business. The door was open and he stepped inside. Something--'great beeg somet'ing' he put it--rose up and came at him, and he fired. And down fell the devil."

"In the name of a sacred pig, what was it?" demanded my Frenchman.

"That was what I asked. It was a bear. The men who had been logging in the camp two months back had left a keg of maple-syrup and a half barrel of flour, and the bear broke into both--successively--and alternately. He probably thought he was in bear-heaven for a while, but it must have gotten irksome. For his head was eighteen inches wide when they found him, white, with black touches. They soaked him in the river two days, and sold his skin for twenty dollars. 'Pretty good for devil skin,' Rafael said."

The Frenchman stared at me a moment and then leaned back in his chair and shouted laughter. The greedy bear's finish had hit his funny-bone. And the three others stopped talking and demanded the story told over, which I did, condensing.

"I like zat Hurong for my soldier," Colonel Raffré stated heartily. "Ze man what are not afraid of man _or_ of devil--zat is ze man to fight ze Boches." He was talking English now because Colonel Chichely was listening. He went on. "Zere is human devils--oh, but plentee--what we fight in France. I haf not heard of ozzers. But I believe well ze man who pull me out in sheet would be as your guide Rafael--he also would crip up wiz his rifle on real devil out of hell. But yes. I haf not told you how my Indian soldier bring in prisoners--no?"

We all agreed no, and put in a request.

"He brings zem in not one by one always--not always." The colonel grinned. He went on to tell this tale, which I shift into the vernacular from his laborious English.

It appears that he had discerned the aptitude of his Hurons for reconnaissance work. If he needed information out of the dangerous country lying in front, if he needed a prisoner to question, these men were eager to go and get either, get anything. The more hazardous the job the better, and for a long time they came out of it untouched. In the group one man--nicknamed by the poilus, his comrades--Hirondelle--the Swallow--supposedly because of his lightness and swiftness, was easily chief. He had a fault, however, his dislike to bring in prisoners alive. Four times he had haled a German corpse before the colonel, seeming not rightly to understand that a dead enemy was useless for information.

"The Boches are good killing," he had elucidated to his officer. And finally: "It is well, m'sieur, the colonel. One failed to understand that the colonel prefers a live Boche to a dead one. Me, I am otherwise. It appears a pity to let live such vermin. Has the colonel, by chance, heard the things these savages did in Belgium? Yes? But then--Yet I will bring to m'sieur, the colonel, all there is to be desired of German prisoners alive--_en vie_; fat ones; _en masse_."

That night Hirondelle was sent out with four of his fellow Hurons to get, if possible, a prisoner. Pretty soon he was separated from the others; all but himself returning empty-handed in a couple of hours. No Germans seemed to be abroad. But Hirondelle did not return.

"He risks too far," grumbled his captain. "He has been captured at last. I always knew they would get him, one night."

But that was not the night. At one o'clock there was suddenly a sound of lamentation in the front trench of the French on that sector. The soldiers who were sleeping crawled out of their holes in the sides of the trench walls, and crowded around the zigzag, narrow way and rubbed their eyes and listened to the laughter of officers and soldiers on duty. There was Hirondelle, solemn as a church, yet with a dancing light in his eyes. There, around him, crowded as sheep to a shepherd, twenty figures in German uniform stood with hands up and wet tears running down pasty cheeks. And they were fat, it was noticeable that all of them were bulging of figure beyond even the German average. They wailed "Kamerad! Gut Kamerad!" in a chorus that was sickening to the plucky poilu make-up. Hirondelle, interrogated of many, kept his lips shut till the first excitement quieted. Then: "I report to my colonel," he stated, and finally he and his twenty were led back to the winding trench and the colonel was waked to receive them. This was what had happened: Hirondelle had wandered about, mostly on his stomach, through the darkness and peril of No Man's Land, enjoying himself heartily; when suddenly he missed his companions and realized that he had had no sign of them for some time. That did not trouble him. He explained to the colonel that he felt "more free." Also that if he pulled off a success he would have "more glory." After two hours of this midnight amusement, in deadly danger every second, Hirondelle heard steps. He froze to the earth, as he had learned from wild things in North American forests. The steps came nearer. A star-shell away down the line lighted the scene so that Hirondelle, motionless on the ground, all keen eyes, saw two Germans coming toward him. Instantly he had a scheme. In a subdued growl, yet distinctly, he threw over his shoulder an order that eight men should go to the right and eight to the left. Then, on his feet, he sent into the darkness a stern "Halt!" Instantly there was a sputter, arms thrown up, the inevitable "Kamerad!" and Hirondelle ordered the first German to pass him, then a second. Out of the darkness emerged a third. Hirondelle waved him on, and with that there was a fourth. And a fifth. Behold a sixth. About then Hirondelle judged it wise to give more orders to his imaginary squad of sixteen. But such a panic had seized this German mob; that little acting was necessary. Dark figure followed dark figure out of the darker night--arms up. They whimpered as they came, and on and on they came out of shadows. Hirondelle stated that he began to think the Crown Prince's army was surrendering to him. At last, when the procession stopped, he--and his mythical sixteen--marched the entire covey, without any objection from them, only abject obedience, to the French trenches.

The colonel, with this whining crowd weeping about him, with Hirondelle's erect figure confronting him, his black eyes regarding the cowards with scorn as he made his report--the colonel simply could not understand the situation. All these men! "What are you--soldiers?" he flung at the wretched group. And one answered, "No, my officer. We are not soldiers, we are the cooks." At that there was a wail. "Ach! Who, then, will the breakfast cook for my general? He will _schrecklich_ angry be for his sausage and his sauerkraut."

By degrees the colonel got the story. A number of cooks had combined to protest against new regulations, and the general, to punish this astounding insubordination, had sent them out unarmed, petrified with, terror, into No Man's Land for an hour. They had there encountered Hirondelle. Hirondelle drew the attention of the colonel to the fact that he had promised prisoners, fat ones. "Will my colonel regard the shape of these pigs," suggested Hirondelle. "And also that they are twenty in number. Enough _en masse_ for one man to take, is it not, my colonel?"

The little dinner-party at the Frontenac discussed this episode. "Almost too good to be true, colonel," I objected. "You're sure it _is_ true? Bring out your Hirondelle. He ought to be home wounded, with a war cross on his breast, by now."

The colonel smiled and shook his head. "It is that which I cannot do--show you my Hirondelle. Not here, and not in France, by _malheur_. For he ventured once too often and too far, as the captain prophesied, and he is dead. God rest the brave! Also a Croix de Guerre is indeed his, but no Hirondelle is there to claim it."

The silence of a moment was a salute to the soul of a warrior passed to the happy hunting-grounds. And then I began on another story of my Rafael's adventures which something in the colonel's tale suggested.

The colonel, his winning face all a smile, interrupted. "Does one believe, then, in this Rafael of m'sieur who caps me each time my tales of my Huron Hirondelle? It appears to me that m'sieur has the brain, of a story-teller and hangs good stories on a figure which he has built and named so--Rafael. Me, I cannot believe there exists this Rafael. I believe there is only one such gallant d'Artagnan of the Hurons, and it is--it was--my Hirondelle. Show me your Rafael, then!" demanded the colonel.

At that challenge the scheme which had flashed into my mind an hour ago gathered shape and power. "I will show him to you, colonel," I took up the challenge, "if you will allow me." I turned to include the others. "Isn't it possible for you all to call a truce and come up tomorrow to my club to be my guests for as long or as short a time as you will? I can't say how much pleasure it would give me, and I believe I could give you something also--great fishing, shooting, a moose, likely, or at least a caribou--and Rafael. I promise Rafael. It's not unlikely, colonel, that he may have known the Hirondelle. The Hurons are few. Do come," I threw at them.

They took it after their kind. The Englishman stared and murmured: "Awfully kind, I'm sure, but quite impossible." The Canadian, our next of kin, smiled, shaking his head like a brother. Fitzhugh put his arm of brawn about me again till that glorious star gleamed almost on my own shoulder, and patted me lovingly as he said: "Old son, I'd give my eyes to go, if I wasn't up to my ears in job."

But the Frenchman's face shone, and he lifted a finger that was a sentence. It embodied reflection and eagerness and suspense. The rest of us gazed at that finger as if it were about to address us. And the colonel spoke. "I t'ink," brought out the colonel emphatically, "I t'ink I damn go."

And I snatched the finger and the hand of steel to which it grew, and wrung both. This was a delightful Frenchman. "Good!" I cried out. "Glorious! I want you all, but I'm mightily pleased to get one. Colonel, you're a sport."

"But, yes," agreed the colonel happily, "I am sport. Why not? I haf four days to wait till my sheep sail. Why not kip--how you say?--kip in my hand for shooting--go kill moose? I may talk immensely of zat moose in France--hein? Much more _chic_ as to kill Germans, _n'est çe pas_? Everybody kill Germans."

At one o'clock next day the out-of-breath little train which had gasped up mountains for five hours from Quebec uttered a relieved shriek and stopped at a doll-house club station sitting by itself in the wilderness. Four or five men in worn but clean clothes--they always start clean--waited on the platform, and there was a rapid fire of "_Bon jour_, m'sieur," as we alighted. Then ten quick eyes took in my colonel in his horizon-blue uniform. I was aware of a throb of interest. At once there was a scurry for luggage because the train must be held till it was off, and the guides ran forward to the baggage-car to help. I bundled the colonel down a sharp, short hill to the river, while smiling, observant Hurons, missing not a line of braid or a glitter of button, passed with bags and _pacquetons_ as we descended. The blue and black and gold was loaded into a canoe with an Indian at bow and stern for the three-mile paddle to the club-house. He was already a schoolboy on a holiday with unashamed enthusiasm.

"But it is fun--fun, zis," he shouted to me from his canoe. "And _lequel_, m'sieur, which is Rafael?"

Rafael, in the bow of my boat, missed a beat of his paddle. It seemed to me he looked older than two years back, when I last saw him. His shoulders were bent, and his merry and stately personality was less in evidence. He appeared subdued. He did not turn with a smile or a grave glance of inquiry at the question, as I had expected. I nodded toward him.

"_Mais oui_," cried out the colonel. "One has heard of you, _mon ami_. One will talk to you later of shooting."

Rafael, not lifting his head, answered quietly, "_C'est bien, m'sieur._"

Just then the canoes slipped past a sandy bar decorated with a fresh moose track; the excitement of the colonel set us laughing. This man was certainly a joy! And with that, after a long paddle down the winding river and across two breezy lakes, we were at the club-house. We lunched, and in short order--for we wanted to make camp that night--I dug into my _pacquetons_ and transformed my officer into a sportsman, his huge delight in Abernethy & Flitch's creations being a part of the game. Then we were off.

One has small chance for associating with guides while travelling in the woods. One sits in a canoe between two, but if there is a wind and the boat is _chargé_ their hands are full with the small craft and its heavy load; when the landing is made and the "messieurs" are _débarqués_, instantly the men are busy lifting canoes on their heads and packs on their backs in bizarre, piled-up masses to be carried from a leather tump-line, a strap of two inches wide going around the forehead. The whole length of the spine helps in the carrying. My colonel watched Delphise, a husky specimen, load. With a grunt he swung up a canvas U.S. mailbag stuffed with _butin_, which includes clothes and books and shoes and tobacco and cartridges and more. With a half-syllable Delphise indicated to Laurent a bag of potatoes weighing eighty pounds, a box of tinned biscuit, a wooden package of cans of condensed milk, a rod case, and a raincoat. These Laurent added to the spine of Delphise.

"How many pounds?" I asked, as the dark head bent forward to equalize the strain.

Delphise shifted weight with another grunt to gauge the pull. "About a hundred and eighty pounds, m'sieur--quite heavy--_assez pesant_." Off he trotted uphill, head bent forward.

The colonel was entranced. "Hardy fellows--the making of fine soldiers," he commented, tossing his cigarette away to stare.

That night after dinner--but it was called supper--the colonel and I went into the big, airy log kitchen with the lake looking in at three windows and the forest at two doors. We gunned over with the men plans for the next day, for the most must be made of every minute of this precious military holiday. I explained how precious it was, and then I spoke a few words about the honor of having as our guest a soldier who had come from the front, and who was going back to the front. For the life of me I could not resist a sentence more about the two crosses they had seen on his uniform that day. The Cross of War, the Legion of Honor! I could not let my men miss that! Rafael had been quiet and colorless, and I was disappointed in the show qualities of my show guide. But the colonel beamed with satisfaction, in everything and everybody, and received my small introduction with a bow and a flourish worthy of Carnegie Hall.

"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.

Jim Barlow, his hands in his pockets, backed up against a house and listened to the clear, high, little voices. "No Man's Land in France--We must advance--What our Yankee boys can do."

As if his throat were gripped by a quick hand, a storm of emotion swept him. The little girls--little girls who were the joy, each one, of some home! Such little things as the Germans--in Belgium--"Oh, my God!" The words burst aloud from his lips. These were trusting--innocent, ignorant--to "What our Yankee boys can do." Without that, without the Yankee boys, such as these would be in the power of wild beasts. It was his affair. Suddenly he felt that stab through him.

"God," he prayed, whispering it as the little girls passed on singing, "help me to protect them; help me to forget myself." And the miracle that sends an answer sometimes, even in this twentieth century, to true prayer happened to Jim Barlow. Behold he had forgotten himself. With his head up and peace in his breast, and the look in his face already, though he did not know it, that our soldier boys wear, he turned and started at a great pace down the street to the recruiting office.

"Why, you did come."

It was nine o'clock and he stood with lighted face in the middle of the little library. And she came in; it was an event to which he never got used, Mary's coming into a room. The room changed always into such an astonishing place.

"Mary, I've done it. I'm--" his voice choked a bit--"I'm a soldier." He laughed at that. "Well not so you'd notice it, yet. But I've taken the first step."

"I knew, Jim. You said you were going to enlist. Why did you telephone you couldn't come?"

He stared down at her, holding her hands yet. He felt, unphrased, strong, the overwhelming conviction that she was the most desirable thing on earth. And directly on top of that conviction another, that he would be doing her desirableness, her loveliness less than the highest honor if he posed before her in false colors. At whatever cost to himself he must be honest with her. Also--he was something more now than his own man; he was a soldier of America, and inside and out he would be, for America's sake, the best that was in him to be.

"Mary, I've got a thing to tell you."

"Yes?" The sure way in which she smiled up at him made the effort harder.

"I fooled you. You think I'm a hero. And I'm not. I'm a--" for the life of him he could not get out the word "coward." He went on: "I'm a blamed baby." And he told her in a few words, yet plainly enough what he had gone through in the long afternoon. "It was the kiddies who clinched it, with their flags and their hair ribbons--and their Yankee boys. I couldn't stand for--not playing square with them."

Suddenly he gripped her hands so that it hurt. "Mary, God help me, I'll try to fight the devils over there so that kiddies like that, and--you, and all the blessed people, the whole dear shooting-match will be safe over here. I'm glad--I'm so glad I'm going to have a hand in it. Mary, it's queer, but I'm happier than I've been in months. Only"--his brows drew anxiously. "Only I'm scared stiff for fear you think me--a coward."

He had the word out now. Thee taste wasn't so bad after all; it seemed oddly to have nothing to do with himself. "Mary, dear, couldn't you--forget that in time? When I've been over there and behaved decently--and I think I will. Somehow I'm not afraid of being afraid now. It feels like a thing that couldn't be done--by a soldier of Uncle Sam's. I'll just look at the other chaps--all heroes, you know--and be so proud I'm with them and so keen to finish our job that I know--somehow I _know_ I'll never think about my blooming self at all. It's queer to say it, Mary, but the way it looks now I'm in it, it's not just country even. It's religion. See, Mary?"

There was no sound, no glance from Mary. But he went on, unaware, so rapt was he in his new illumination.

"And when I come back, Mary, with a decent record--just possibly with a war-cross--oh, my word! Think of me! Then, couldn't you forget this business I've been telling you? Do you think you could marry me then?"

What was the matter? Why did she stand so still with her head bending lower and lower, the color deepening on the bit of cheek that his anxious eyes could see.

"Mary!"

Suddenly she was clutching his collar as if in deadly fear.

"Mary, what's the matter? I'm such a fool, but--oh, Mary, dear!"

With that Mary-dear straightened and, slipping her clutch to the lapel of his old coat, spoke. She looked into his eyes with a smile that was sweeter--oh, much sweeter!--for tears that dimmed it, and she choked most awfully between words. "Jim"--and a choke. "Jim, I'm terrified to think I nearly let you get away. You. And me not worthy to lace your shoes--" ("Oh, gracious, Mary--don't!") "me--the idiot, backing and filling when I had the chance of my life at--at a hero. Oh, Jim!"

"Here! Mary, don't you understand? I've been telling you I was scared blue. I hated to tell you Mary, and it's the devil to tell you twice--"

What was this? Did Heaven then sometimes come down unawares on the head of an every-day citizen with great lapses of character? Jim Barlow, entranced, doubted his senses yet could not doubt the touch of soft hands clasped in his neck. He held his head back a little to be sure that they were real. Yes, they were there, the hands--Barlow's next remark was long, but untranslatable. Minutes later. "Mary, tell me what you mean. Not that I care much if--if this." Language grows elliptical under stress. "But--did you get me? I'm--a coward." A hand flashed across his mouth.

"Don't you dare, Jim, you're the bravest--bravest--"

The words died in a sharp break. "Why, Jim it was a hundred thousand times pluckier to be afraid and then go. Can't you see that, you big stupid?"

"But, Mary, you said you admired it when--when you thought I was a lion of courage."

"Of course. I admired you. Now I adore you."

"Well," summed up, Barlow bewildered, "if women aren't the blamedest!"

And Mary squealed laughter. She put hands each side of his face. "Jim--listen. I'll try to explain because you have a right to understand."

"Well, yes," agreed Jim.

"It's like this. I thought you'd enlist and I never dreamed you were balky. I didn't know you hated it so. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Go on," urged Jim.

"I thought you were mad to be going, like--like these light-headed boys. That you didn't mind leaving me compared to the adventure. That you didn't care for danger. But now--now." She covered his eyes with her fingers, "Now Jim, you need me. A woman can't love a man her best unless she can help him. Against everything--sorrow, mosquitoes, bad food--drink--any old bother. That's the alluring side of tipplers. Women want to help them. So, now I know you need me," the soft, unsteady voice wandered on, and Jim, anchored between, the hands, drank in her look with his eyes and her tones with his ears and prayed that the situation might last a week. "You need me so, to tell you how much finer you are than if you'd gone off without a quiver."

Barlow sighed in contentment. "And me thinking I was the solitary 'fraid-cat of America!"

"Solitary! Why, Jim, there must be at least ten hundred thousand men going through this same battle. All the ones old enough to think, probably. Why Jim--you're only one of them. In that speech the other night the man said this war was giving men their souls. I think it's your kind he meant, the kind that realizes the bad things over there and the good things over here and goes just the same. The kind--you are."

"I'm a hero from Hero-ville," murmured Barlow. "But little Mary, when I come back mangled will you feel the same? Will you marry me then, Mary?"

"I'll marry you any minute," stated Mary, "and when you come back I'll love you one extra for every mangle."

"Any minute," repeated Barlow dramatically. "Tomorrow?"