One of Ours
Book V: "Bidding the Eagles of the West Fly On"
Chapter XIX
The sun is sinking low, a transport is steaming slowly up the narrows with
the tide. The decks are covered with brown men. They cluster over the
superstructure like bees in swarming time. Their attitudes are relaxed and
lounging. Some look thoughtful, some well contented, some are melancholy, and
many are indifferent, as they watch the shore approaching. They are not the same
men who went away.
Sergeant Hicks was standing in the stern, smoking, reflecting, watching the
twinkle of the red sunset upon the cloudy water. It is more than a year since he
sailed for France. The world has changed in that time, and so has he.
Bert Fuller elbowed his way up to the Sergeant. "The doctor says Colonel
Maxey is dying, He won't live to get off the boat, much less to ride in the
parade in New York tomorrow."
Hicks shrugged, as if Maxey's pneumonia were no affair of his. "Well, we
should worry! We've left better officers than him over there."
"I'm not saying we haven't. But it seems too bad, when he's so strong for
fuss and feathers. He's been sending cables about that parade for weeks."
"Huh!" Hicks elevated his eyebrows and glanced sidewise in disdain. Presently
he sputtered, squinting down at the glittering water, "Colonel Maxey, anyhow!
Colonel for what Claude and Gerhardt did, I guess!". Hicks and Bert Fuller have
been helping to keep the noble fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. They have always
hung together and are usually quarrelling and grumbling at each other when they
are off duty. Still, they hang together. They are the last of their group. Nifty
Jones and Oscar, God only knows why, have gone on to the Black Sea.
During the year they were in the Rhine valley, Bert and Hicks were separated
only once, and that was when Hicks got a two weeks' leave and, by dint of
persevering and fatiguing travel, went to Venice. He had no proper passport, and
the consuls and officials to whom he had appealed in his difficulties begged him
to content himself with something nearer. But he said he was going to Venice
because he had always heard about it. Bert Fuller was glad to welcome him back
to Coblentz, and gave a "wine party" to celebrate his return. They expect to
keep an eye on each other. Though Bert lives on the Platte and Hicks on the Big
Blue, the automobile roads between those two rivers are excellent.
Bert is the same sweet-tempered boy he was when he left his mother's kitchen;
his gravest troubles have been frequent betrothals. But Hicks' round, chubby
face has taken on a slightly cynical expression,—a look quite out of place
there. The chances of war have hurt his feelings . . . not that he ever wanted
anything for himself. The way in which glittering honours bump down upon the
wrong heads in the army, and palms and crosses blossom on the wrong breasts,
has, as he says, thrown his compass off a few points.
What Hicks had wanted most in this world was to run a garage and repair shop
with his old chum, Dell Able. Beaufort ended all that. He means to conduct a
sort of memorial shop, anyhow, with "Hicks and Able" over the door. He wants to
roll up his sleeves and look at the logical and beautiful inwards of automobiles
for the rest of his life.
As the transport enters the North River, sirens and steam whistles all along
the water front begin to blow their shrill salute to the returning soldiers. The
men square their shoulders and smile knowingly at one another; some of them look
a little bored. Hicks slowly lights a cigarette and regards the end of it with
an expression which will puzzle his friends when he gets home.
By the banks of Lovely Creek, where it began, Claude Wheeler's story still
goes on. To the two old women who work together in the farmhouse, the thought of
him is always there, beyond everything else, at the farthest edge of
consciousness, like the evening sun on the horizon.
Mrs. Wheeler got the word of his death one afternoon in the sitting-room, the
room in which he had bade her good-bye. She was reading when the telephone rang.
"Is this the Wheeler farm? This is the telegraph office at Frankfort. We have
a message from the War Department,—" the voice hesitated. "Isn't Mr. Wheeler
there?"
"No, but you can read the message to me."
Mrs. Wheeler said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver. She felt her way
softly to her chair. She had an hour alone, when there was nothing but him in
the room,—but him and the map there, which was the end of his road. Somewhere
among those perplexing names, he had found his place.
Claude's letters kept coming for weeks afterward; then came the letters from
his comrades and his Colonel to tell her all.
In the dark months that followed, when human nature looked to her uglier than
it had ever done before, those letters were Mrs. Wheeler's comfort. As she read
the newspapers, she used to think about the passage of the Red Sea, in the
Bible; it seemed as if the flood of meanness and greed had been held back just
long enough for the boys to go over, and then swept down and engulfed everything
that was left at home. When she can see nothing that has come of it all but
evil, she reads Claude's letters over again and reassures herself; for him the
call was clear, the cause was glorious. Never a doubt stained his bright faith.
She divines so much that he did not write. She knows what to read into those
short flashes of enthusiasm; how fully he must have found his life before he
could let himself go so far—he, who was so afraid of being fooled! He died
believing his own country better than it is, and France better than any country
can ever be. And those were beautiful beliefs to die with. Perhaps it was as
well to see that vision, and then to see no more. She would have dreaded the
awakening,—she sometimes even doubts whether he could have borne at all that
last, desolating disappointment. One by one the heroes of that war, the men of
dazzling soldiership, leave prematurely the world they have come back to. Airmen
whose deeds were tales of wonder, officers whose names made the blood of youth
beat faster, survivors of incredible dangers,—one by one they quietly die by
their own hand. Some do it in obscure lodging houses, some in their office,
where they seemed to be carrying on their business like other men. Some slip
over a vessel's side and disappear into the sea. When Claude's mother hears of
these things, she shudders and presses her hands tight over her breast, as if
she had him there. She feels as if God had saved him from some horrible
suffering, some horrible end. For as she reads, she thinks those slayers of
themselves were all so like him; they were the ones who had hoped
extravagantly,—who in order to do what they did had to hope extravagantly, and
to believe passionately. And they found they had hoped and believed too much.
But one she knew, who could ill bear disillusion . . . safe, safe.
Mahailey, when they are alone, sometimes addresses Mrs. Wheeler as "Mudder" ;
"Now, Mudder, you go upstairs an' lay down an' rest yourself." Mrs. Wheeler
knows that then she is thinking of Claude, is speaking for Claude. As they are
working at the table or bending over the oven, something reminds them of him,
and they think of him together, like one person: Mahailey will pat her back and
say, "Never you mind, Mudder; you'll see your boy up yonder." Mrs. Wheeler
always feels that God is near,—but Mahailey is not troubled by any knowledge of
interstellar spaces, and for her He is nearer still,—directly overhead, not so
very far above the kitchen stove.
— End —