Chapter III

Gray knew exactly what was happening inside the house when Tommy took the general’s niece in to see him. She would go upstairs and speak to the general from the door, and they would stand round bored and hardly talking until she came down. And then they would all become animated and tell anecdotes; and the chief of staff would sit at the piano and sing wistfully; and an aide-de-camp would bring him some canary seed; and the chaplain would give his imitation of Harry Lauder making a speech; and Tommy—

“Get the hell out of here!” he snarled at a cow ambling gently along the street.

The general entertained vicariously at dinner that night for his niece. There were her visiting escort and part of the staff and the general’s own household. And before dinner the chaplain, who had had the mumps, came and sat with him.

“Well?” said the general.

The chaplain lighted one of the general’s cigarettes.

“She has seen him,” he observed. “He was as you arranged, in charge of a detail cleaning out the town well. He was game all right. I thought he’d probably hide, but he didn’t. I’m bound to say, however, that he’s been in a fighting state of mind ever since.”

“But he didn’t hide. That’s the point. What’s she doing now?”

“They are having tea,” said the chaplain. “There are eight of them—and at least seven are planning to sit beside her at dinner.”

The general chuckled. Lying there in the high bed, his face gave rather the impression of a small barrel needing to be hooped.

“I’m going to have him wait at table to-night, Chaplain,” he rumbled. “If there’s any nonsense about either of ’em, that’ll cure it.”

“I don’t know,” observed the chaplain in a doubtful voice. “I like Gray and I don’t believe that you’ll do any good by humiliating him. He enlisted to fight. It isn’t his fault that he isn’t fighting now.”

* * * * *

The above space represents what the general said just there about the division not getting forward. But when he became calmer:

“Got to offset the idea she’s got about Gray,” he justified himself. “She knows that story about him roping me over a fence, and like a fool I spent a whole evening telling about the mischief he’s been up to at different times. She’s got to see him with his claws clipped.”

The chaplain differed and said so:

“Life,” he pronounced in his best pulpit manner, “life clips all our claws eventually. But why not leave to the young their illusions and their dreams?”

“Piffle!” said the general rudely.

Now Peggy took off her uniform that night, which was forbidden in the little book she carried round with her, and came down to dinner to meet the waiting household in something rather unwarlike and very pleasing to behold. Not real evening dress, you understand, for the war was still on though dying fast. And had her hand kissed by a French officer who had invented an errand so as to meet her. Then they all went in to dinner; and there were commissary chocolates on the table; and four candles standing in saucers; and on a side table a box of the general’s most cherished cigars, which he had thought were safely hidden away in one of his kit bags.

The chief of staff sat at the head of the table and Peggy sat on his right.

The rest drew lots of an army cap to see who should sit next to her—and Tommy won.

“How nice!” she said, when he sat down. She would have said the same thing to any one, but Tommy grew quite lyric.

“It is Fate,” he said. “Kismet. Even though the rest of them fall on me afterward and rend me, this hour is mine.”

“Think of it!” said Peggy in the exact words used by every girl who got to France and met some one she knew over there. “Meeting here like this so far from home!”

“If one wants a thing badly enough,” said Tommy, “it just naturally comes.”

“Soup, sir?” said a deep bass at his elbow.

Tommy glanced up hurriedly, but all he saw was Sergeant Gray’s rather fine profile as he placed the soup plate.

There was a very quiet little game played at dinner that night. Only Peggy and the players knew about it. It consisted mainly of most obsequious and zealous service on the part of Sergeant Gray, so that Tommy had not a moment for any real conversation. Between courses Gray stood firm and silent behind Tommy’s chair, and when he disappeared kitchenward Tommy would try hastily to make up for lost time.

“If you could only know what this glimpse of you means to me, Miss Peggy. You know, when you are thinking a lot about one particular person—”

“More chicken, sir?”

“No!”

Gray would move on and Tommy would begin again, the light of desperation in his eyes.

“It’s been hard to keep my mind on war, I can tell you. Ever since I heard you were coming—”

“More potatoes, sir?”

“Look here,” Tommy said finally in a low and furious voice, “when I want more food I’ll ask for it. D’you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Gray in the tone of a well-bred butler.

After that he offered Tommy nothing whatever and left him conspicuously without dessert. Peggy, who had been rather flushed and silent during the meal, smiled somewhat grimly at that. But she ate very little. The plain truth was that Miss Peggy was having to reassort quite a number of ideas, and among them was that mental picture of Sergeant Gray in a steel helmet leading a forlorn hope across No Man’s Land and later being decorated by her uncle, the general. Getting accustomed to having the greatest military figure in the Army in bed upstairs with the mumps and the devil of the Headquarters Troop carrying round the mashed potatoes was rather a strain.

Her escort left that night and Peggy slept at a Red Cross hut in the village, but before she left she had a few words with the general.

“I do think,” she began spiritedly, advancing into the sick room. “I do think—”

“Go on out!” roared the general. “Do you want to go round with a face like a balloon? Go on out!”

“Don’t waste that military tone on me,” said Peggy severely. “I don’t care whether I get it or not. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think about you.”

She then sat down on the general’s bed and stared at him coldly.

“Don’t you think,” she said, “that when you have gentlemen round you—”

“Get off the bed, Peggy,” begged the general in a different tone. “Don’t you know there is always some fool inspector or other looking for things to take back to G. H. Q.? Do you want to ruin me?”

“You ought to be ruined. Let me tell you, you haven’t fooled me for a minute. And if you think it is funny to take a friend of mine and just because you have the authority—”

Here—to the general’s horror—she curled up on the foot of his bed and began to cry. He was really awfully disturbed. He sat up in his blue-silk pajamas—he was president of the pajama club the aides had got up, because he had a monogram on his left cuff; but he did not know he was president—and patted her and in his anxiety revealed a great deal he had not meant to reveal—vocally, not physically.

“Good heavens,” he said at last, “what do you want me to do, anyhow? Kiss him?”

“He ought to be an officer and you know it,” she said in a smothered tone. Her face was buried in the eiderdown comfort. “He’d be a good officer, too, and you know that. He wants it more than anything.”

“I dare say,” said the general rather grimly. “Well, if you’ll get up and behave according to the regulations and not have me court-martialed, I’ll see what I can do.”

She sat up then and gave every evidence of being about to kiss his inflated face, but he held her off.

“May I tell him?” she asked.

“You may not,” said the general sternly. “I may have my weak moments and submit to being bullied when I’m sick. But the time hasn’t come yet when I allow the women of my family to make my promotions, thank heaven! Now run and have the chaplain take you home. And for heaven’s sake, remember that he’s a married man and susceptible.”

Peggy left at the crack of dawn the next day. If she had expected to be seen off with the éclat of her arrival she was disappointed. Not an aide showed up; but a tall young man with a sergeant’s chevrons and a pair of hungry eyes was standing outside the general’s doorway.

“I had to see you,” said Sergeant Gray rather huskily. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“Well, if you hadn’t—” said Peggy.

“I made a fool of myself last night, you know. I was nearly crazy. Not,” he added hastily, “that I cared a snap about what I was doing. That’s all in the day’s work. But to have to listen to that— Am I ever going to see you again?”

“I don’t see why not,” said Peggy briskly. But there was a shake in her voice. Because after all there was a rather considerable chance against it. Sooner or later they would move up, and then—

“Of course we’re going to meet again,” she said determinedly. And because that was an emotional sort of subject she added: “Isn’t it queer there is nobody up? I thought the Army rose at the crack of dawn.”

There was a scarcely perceptible twitch of Sergeant Gray’s upper lip and inside the house the general’s bell was ringing furiously.

“Great luck for me they’re not here,” he said. “I’ll carry any message you care to leave. I’m a sort of cross between a nursery maid and a messenger boy, anyhow.”

“I shan’t leave any messages,” said Peggy coldly.

“You’ll—do you mind letting me know your address when you’re located?”

Of course this was only surface talk, because the car had come up which was to take her back, and the chauffeur, who was from the troop, was staring straight ahead and listening hard. Also, the general was now beating a tattoo with his bell and the noise was horrible. What Sergeant Gray was really saying with his eyes was that he worshipped her.

“I’ll be very glad to let you know,” replied Peggy primly, and got into the car. It is entirely significant of the sort of girl Peggy was that Sergeant Gray ran true to form and tucked her in.

“Are you sure your feet will be warm?” he asked tenderly.

Even Peggy, who was feeling awfully slighted by Tommy and the others, smiled at that. It was so exactly the tone the maudlin captain had used coming down. Gray gave a final pat to the rug, a tender pat because it covered Peggy, and lowered his voice.

“I had a lot of things to say to you,” he said hurriedly. “But every time I think of something I remember that he said it to you last night. The only thing he didn’t say was—”

“Yes?” said Peggy expectantly.

But the chauffeur had planned that by starting early and going very fast he could get four hours in Paris, and so moved off. Long after the car had disappeared down the crooked little street, and while the general’s bell gave evidence of hysteria, Sergeant Gray stood looking after it.

At least he had seen her alone. There would be a price to pay for it, but it had been worth any price. As to punishment:

“_Ça ne fait rien_,” muttered Sergeant Gray. Which is army French for not giving a tinker’s damn.

Exactly one hour late that morning, a shaking William took the general his coffee.

“Clock an hour slow!” the general shouted in a frenzy. “Are you going to tell me that every clock in this whole house is crazy?”

“’Pears like they are, sir,” quavered William. “The cook’s clock and mine—they’re both off an hour. I just called the aides-de-camp, sir, and Captain Trowbridge’s like he’s out of his head.”

The general put four lumps of sugar in his coffee and stirred it reflectively.

“Who saw my niece off, William?”

“’Pears like nobody did, sir.”

“I see,” said the general thoughtfully. “William, find Sergeant Gray and send him here.”

When Gray arrived, somewhat breathless, the general let him stand at attention for some time. The feeling Gray had now and then that a touch of spot remover would take him out entirely returned very strongly.

“For some curious reason, sergeant,” said the general, “two clocks in this house lost an hour last night. Do you know anything about it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Humph!”

The general looked away. Drat the boy, anyhow! He wondered if he had ever had such desperate eyes when he fell in love for the first time. He had been in love in a perfectly nice way so many times since. But he rather hoped he had never looked like a cross between a sheep and a Bengal tiger.

“I’ll give you one minute to explain,” said the general coldly.

“I wanted a word alone with Miss Peggy, sir. I’m sorry if it caused any trouble.”

“Trouble!” bawled the general, and sank back among his pillows. “The plain truth is, Gray, that I’ve got to get rid of you. You’re making an old man of me. I’m going to turn you over to somebody else.”

“Yes, sir,” said Gray, growing even paler.

“You will have a week’s C. B. and K. P.,” said the general. Which sounds rather like the conferring of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, but is not. “And after that I’m going to send you to an officers’ training school. And,” added the general grimly, “if you don’t behave yourself may the Lord have mercy on your soul!”

So Sergeant Gray pared potatoes and did various menial duties for a week in the headquarters kitchen and sang as he worked, mostly about wanting a belt just like the belt that all the shavetails wore. He irritated the cook considerably. And now and then he encountered Tommy and saluted him according to the regulations and without any particular rancour. Because very soon now he, too, would be clattering about in a belt and spurs, and so on—and Tommy’s single advantage would be gone.

Now and then Tommy addressed him rather sharply, and at those times Sergeant Gray bore himself with admirable humility and muttered: “_Ça ne fait rien_.” He was unbelievably well behaved those days.

Then the time came to leave, and the general gave him a little talk on the responsibilities of being an officer and the spirit that lay behind service to his country and pretty nearly brought him to tears. After that he went away, and with him from the general’s household went something of gaiety and youth and irrepressible spirits. The division drilled and waited, and outside his military family the general was his rigid and soldierly self. He made rounds on horseback, accompanied generally by Tommy, and discovered a number of things he wasn’t meant to see; and then rode back to divisional headquarters and searched his dispatches for the orders to move forward. But none came and the Germans were breaking.

In his secret heart Tommy was a bit relieved. He was willing enough to fight, but after all the end of the war would have its advantages. On the long rides through the French lanes he took again to visualising the little house somewhere and Peggy in it and golf for two on Saturday afternoons. After all, if the Germans gave up it would be not only because of the army in the field but of those—like themselves—who waited behind the lines. He offered that to the general one day and the general was unappreciative.

“Don’t talk like a jackass, Tommy,” was what he said.

So through all the early fall the Germans slowly retreated; and the division waited, growing more and more down-spirited; and the girl in a seaport French town poured innumerable cups of coffee and cut innumerable sandwiches; and Candidate Gray worked for his commission. He worked doggedly night and day. He sat up at night studying and dragged his tired young body out of bed at reveille and shaved and made his bed and ate his breakfast hurriedly, and was all that a candidate should be.

Now and then he got a very brief letter from Peggy. It would detail her work carefully, but it would say very little about herself, and after a time he grew jealous of her work. She seemed to be obsessed with it, and the slow and painful fact dawned on him that she loved the whole Army.

“She doesn’t give a hang for me,” he said to himself more than once. “She was nice to me because of the uniform and what it meant. And she’s being just as nice to about six hundred a day right now.”

The sad part of it was that he was nearly right. The girl had just discovered service and was enamoured of it. She went back at night to her dreary room in a cold French house, and heated water and soaked her tired feet in it and then crawled into bed to keep warm. But at daylight she was up again, putting on all the extra clothing she had and drinking a cup of execrable coffee sweetened with saccharin before starting on her tramp through the incessant rain to the canteen.

She was too busy to think about Gray or Tommy in the daytime and too tired at night. She began to feel old and matronly and rather like a mother to all the world. And when the hospital trains arrived all the love in her went out to the cheerful boys who were so grateful to her for what she sometimes felt was so pitifully little.

So her letters grew detached and impersonal, and Candidate Gray, studying them carefully, found no hope in them and set his teeth doggedly. If only the Germans didn’t break entirely! If only he’d get his chance!

Then the Germans broke.

It was too cruel! Too incredible! The thing was over and he had had no part in it. The division had had no part in it. The day of the armistice, that brought so much joy with it, brought to about two million men a sickening sense of futility; of lost opportunity and wasted effort.

Candidate Gray sat in his barracks and gloomed. After all the commission had been only a means to an end. He wanted to fight. If he had had a boyish feeling that he wanted to lead instead of being led—well, he was very young. And he wanted terribly to prove that he was a man.

And after a time, however, he brightened up. The fellows in the trenches would have a rest, anyhow. Of course he felt that the armistice was a blunder. The Hun ought to have been licked to a finish. But at least the war was over. He dreamed a dream of a little house within motoring distance of town and Peggy in it and golf for two on Saturday afternoons.

Having thus begun to see the brighter side of things he wandered into town to look for the disbursing paymaster and buy him a drink or two, this being preliminary to an appeal to get permission to sign a cash receipt for his month’s pay, thus saving a certain amount of time in case the armistice meant twenty-four hours’ leave—which was important. It meant getting into the nearby city early and thus getting the best room in its only hotel. And it meant, too, sending off as soon as possible a letter to Peggy which was in his pocket.

“I’ve been recommended for my commission,” he had written, “and it ought to be along pretty soon. I shall get a few days’ leave then, and I thought if you didn’t mind I’d drop in and see you.” Dropping in to see her meant travelling a day and a night in a French train and probably sleeping on the floor or in a baggage rack. He had tried this last and it wasn’t bad. “I’m pretty well knocked out by the armistice naturally, but I suppose a lot of poor devils who have had it hard will be mighty thankful.” He had hesitated over the signature and finally ended it “yours.”

“And that’s God’s truth too,” he had muttered.

Then he went out and played the eternal game of the private soldier in a small French village full of officers—did his best to avoid saluting by trying to look as though he was invisible and, if that ruse failed, never looking above the second blouse button of any uniform he met.

“What you don’t see won’t hurt you,” he muttered.

In ten days or so Peggy’s letter came back.

“How splendid to think you are going to be an officer,” she wrote. “But I always knew you would be. And, of course, I shall be delighted to see you, though I’m afraid I shall be awfully busy. Yesterday we served—”

All the balance was about her work. It was not entirely a satisfactory letter, and there was a casual mention of a Red Cross major that set him frowning. Of course those Red Cross chaps would be hanging round her. There was always some one hanging round her. He added that day a new jealousy to the ever-present one of Tommy, and had to go out and buy his lieutenant’s insignia to cheer himself up.

Then one day a rumour spread through the camp; an incredible thing that took all the courage out of the hundreds of expectant young hearts and sent the weak sisters among them to the French wine shops to forget their wrongs in cognac. The rumour was that all promotions were cancelled.

Gray got it from the one-time mess sergeant of the Headquarters Troop from the old division. The M. S. had been recommended, too, and was looking blue round the lips.

“I don’t believe it,” said Gray stoutly, but with a sinking heart.

“All right. You’ll find out.”

“But—but why? We’ve worked like dogs. Sending us here was equivalent to a promise that if we made good—”

“Any old time they’ll keep a promise they don’t want to! Come on and have some cognac. I’m going to drink myself to death.”

Candidate Gray went back to his barracks and sat down on his bed. The bottom had dropped out of his world. All that study and effort, and now—nothing. Back where he had been. And not even a fight to look forward to. Something of the fine faith he had in his Government and its promises died that afternoon, never after to be wholly revived. For the incredible rumour proved to be true. All promotions were cancelled. All earned commissions were cancelled. From that time on effort in the Army was to be without reward.

The Army generally adopted an attitude of _ça ne fait rien_. And Sergeant Gray said it, too, but without any conviction. He was seared to the very soul.

There were thirty-eight desertions from the Candidates’ School in the first twenty-four hours. After that they lessened, for most of the weak sisters had gone. But the spirit was gone out of the men.

On the tenth day Gray wrote again to Peggy—a cheerful letter which almost made her cry.

“I had expected to put on a little side when I came to see you. But two things have interfered. First, I won’t be able to come. Second, there isn’t any side to put on. I have buried my officer’s equipment in an old beet field and perhaps some day it will be recovered and hung in a museum as a relic of the great war. Probably I wasn’t officer stuff, anyhow, so it’s just as well. Way down in my little inside I’m a bit disappointed, but _ça ne fait rien_.

“I’m not going to bother you with any more letters. I know you are busy and I haven’t any right to take up your time.”

He hesitated a long time after that and then just wrote “God bless you” in a shaky hand and sent it off before he lost his courage. Because his courage was not quite so good as it had been. He was beginning to lose faith in himself.

Of course his psychology was wrong. He felt this new and cruel army order as a personal stigma. He was somehow less of a man for it. He gave the girl up on the head of it and took to wandering round the camp at night, giving her up again every minute.

He was entirely inarticulate and there was no one to voice his misery to, so he did like most lovers and chose some other’s disconsolate words to fit his case. On a bright night he was prone to sit on the barracks steps, for instance, and plaintively bay at the moon:

_The hours I spent with thee, dear heart_
_Are as a string of pearls to me._

He would be carried away by emotion after a time and forget the one hundred and eleven disgruntled candidates within.

_My rosary. My rose-a-a-a—ree._

His heartbroken wail would penetrate the thin walls and loose window frames of the barracks, and a chorus of groans would echo from the inside, followed by the opening of a window.

“Aw, go to bed and forget it!” a voice would say.

And after a time, chilled to the bone and having finally renounced her, he would retire to his cot, take off his shoes and putties, his hat and blouse, and turn in.

Once warmed through, he slept extremely well.

He went back to the old division after a time, to find things going on much the same. The general was too good a soldier to tolerate any slacking. But there was a subtle difference. Only the chaplain remained the same, for only the chaplain had not hoped for promotion, and the general, who had been in the Army a long time, and had therefore developed a sort of armor-plate philosophy.

And on the third day of Gray’s return Tommy came back from seven days’ leave. Sergeant Gray saw him coming back, gay and debonair and clanking, and viewed him with lowering suspicion. A little later Lewis came to the door for a breath of air and Gray stalked up to him.

“Where has he been?” he asked. “Trowbridge?”

“He says he’s been to Paris,” said Lewis rather fretfully. The general’s uncertain temper had been very certain the last few days.

“Like hell he’s been to Paris!”

“I don’t know where he’s been,” said Lewis, “and what’s more I don’t care. I’ll tell you this, Gray: If the Old Man doesn’t stop working me day and night I’m going to—”

“I know where he has been,” said Gray darkly, and stalked away.

That night, the chauffeur being laid up, Sergeant Gray drove the aides to a Red Cross dance, and carefully and with extreme deliberation ditched the lot of them six miles from anywhere. The aides, after considerable conversation, walked back in the mud and Gray curled himself up inside the car and gloomed for quite a length of time. After which he went asleep and wakened in the cold dawn with a sort of ready-made conviction that he was going to ditch Tommy as easily as he had the car and much more permanently.

But that very day he had to acknowledge that the honours of the game Tommy and he were playing were Tommy’s—to that point.

After nightfall it was the chaplain’s benevolent custom to show moving pictures in the village square.

The chaplain considered it an excellent time to enlighten the French population as to America; but as most of the pictures were of the old Wild West, doubtless the French will continue to think it our native pastime to shoot up gambling hells and ride madly on horseback with drawn revolvers after people we do not happen to fancy.

In the square Gray met Lewis and paired off with him out of sheer loneliness.

“The Old Man thinks we’ll be going home soon,” said Lewis.

“Humph!” said Sergeant Gray, whose faith in the general was moribund along with other things.

“Well, don’t you want to go?”

“_Ça ne fait rien_,” observed Sergeant Gray out of a low mind.

The hero in the picture, having rescued the girl from eleven bandits and fired sixteen shots without reloading his revolver, now took the girl in his arms and turned Lewis’ mind into a new channel.

“Say,” he offered, “you were right about Trowbridge. He didn’t go to Paris.”

“No?” observed Sergeant Gray indifferently, but with an extra heartbeat.

“He went to see that niece of the general’s. They’re kidding him to death about it.”

This receiving no acknowledgment he turned toward Sergeant Gray, but that young gentleman was moving rapidly away in the crowd. So that was it. This then was what the Army did to a fellow. It took him over to France and stuck him in a mudhole and didn’t let him fight and offered him a commission and then took it away. And any stuffed shirt in a belt and leather putties could amble all over France and give the impression he’d won the war. Hell’s bells!

The winter passed slowly. Once he got a letter from Peggy and he walked a mile out of town to read it alone.

“I was so sorry about your commission,” she wrote. “I think it’s a perfect shame, and somebody ought to write to the War Department about it. I know you had counted on it.”

Good heavens—sympathy! He didn’t want sympathy. If he wasn’t a better man than a dozen aides-de-camp he’d cut his throat. He threw the letter away and then got it out of the mud again and stood for quite a time holding it in both hands. But he did not answer it. He had, you understand, given her up.

So the winter passed and the general sent for the chaplain one day and said: “There’s something wrong with Gray, chaplain, and I’m blessed if I know what it is.”

“What’s he been doing now?” said the chaplain, helping himself to a tin of commissary chocolates on the executive desk.

“Nothing! That’s what I’m wondering about. Don’t throw that paper on the floor! It’s about six weeks now since he’s been up to any mischief. That was when he ditched my aides.”

“Must be sick,” said the chaplain rather thickly through the chocolates.

“He ditched Tommy, you may recall, the night he returned from his leave.”

“I see. Probably meant to kill the lot to get Tommy.”

“Very likely,” said the general calmly. “I could have spared one or two of them too. However, I didn’t send for you about Gray—only I’m blamed if I know what’s got into girls nowadays. They can’t see any farther than their noses. What I want to know is, why the deuce when you get twenty-four hours’ Paris leave you stay a week.”