Three Soldiers

The train pulled out of the station.

III

Henslowe poured wine from a brown earthen crock into the gla.s.ses, where it s.h.i.+mmered a bright thin red, the color of currants. Andrews leaned back in his chair and looked through half-closed eyes at the table with its white cloth and little burnt umber loaves of bread, and out of the window at the square dimly lit by lemon-yellow gas lamps and at the dark gables of the little houses that huddled round it.

At a table against the wall opposite a lame boy, with white beardless face and gentle violet-colored eyes, sat very close to the bareheaded girl who was with him and who never took her eyes off his face, leaning on his crutch all the while. A stove hummed faintly in the middle of the room, and from the half-open kitchen door came ruddy light and the sound of something frying. On the wall, in brownish colors that seemed to have taken warmth from all the rich scents of food they had absorbed since the day of their painting, were scenes of the b.u.t.te as it was fancied to have once been, with windmills and wide fields.

"I want to travel," Henslowe was saying, dragging out his words drowsily. "Abyssinia, Patagonia, Turkestan, the Caucasus, anywhere and everywhere. What do you say you and I go out to New Zealand and raise sheep?"

"But why not stay here? There can't be anywhere as wonderful as this."

"Then I'll put off starting for New Guinea for a week. But h.e.l.l, I'd go crazy staying anywhere after this. It's got into my blood... all this murder. It's made a wanderer of me, that's what it's done. I'm an adventurer."

"G.o.d, I wish it had made me into anything so interesting."

"Tie a rock on to your scruples and throw 'em off the Pont Neuf and set out.... O boy, this is the golden age for living by your wits."

"You're not out of the army yet."

"I should worry.... I'll join the Red Cross."

"How?"

"I've got a tip about it."

A girl with oval face and faint black down on her upper lip brought them soup, a thick greenish colored soup, that steamed richly into their faces.

"If you tell me how I can get out of the army you'll probably save my life," said Andrews seriously.

"There are two ways...Oh, but let me tell you later. Let's talk about something worth while...So you write music do you?"

Andrews nodded.

An omelet lay between them, pale golden-yellow with flecks of green; a few amber bubbles of burnt b.u.t.ter still cl.u.s.tered round the edges.

"Talk about tone-poems," said Henslowe.

"But, if you are an adventurer and have no scruples, how is it you are still a private?"

Henslowe took a gulp of wine and laughed uproariously.

"That's

They ate in silence for a little while. They could hear the couple opposite them talking in low soft voices. The stove purred, and from the kitchen came a sound of something being beaten in a bowl. Andrews leaned back in his chair.

"This is so wonderfully quiet and mellow," he said.... "It is so easy to forget that there's any joy at all in life."

"Rot...It's a circus parade."

"Have you ever seen anything drearier than a circus parade? One of those jokes that aren't funny."

"Justine, encore du vin," called Henslowe.

"So you know her name?"

"I live here.... The b.u.t.te is the boss on the middle of the s.h.i.+eld. It's the axle of the wheel. That's why it's so quiet, like the centre of a cyclone, of a vast whirling rotary circus parade!"

Justine, with her red hands that had washed so many dishes off which other people had dined well, put down between them a scarlet langouste, of which claws and feelers sprawled over the tablecloth that already had a few purplish stains of wine. The sauce was yellow and fluffy like the breast of a canary bird.

"D'you know," said Andrews suddenly talking fast and excitedly while he brushed the straggling yellow hair off his forehead, "I'd almost be willing to be shot at the end of a year if I could live up here all that time with a piano and a million sheets of music paper...It would be worth it."

"But this is a place to come back to. Imagine coming back here after the highlands of Thibet, where you'd nearly got drowned and scalped and had made love to the daughter of an Afghan chief... who had red lips smeared with loukoumi so that the sweet taste stayed in your mouth." Henslowe stroked softly his little brown mustache.

"But what's the use of just seeing and feeling things if you can't express them?"

"What's the use of living at all? For the fun of it, man; d.a.m.n ends."

"But the only profound fun I ever have is that..." Andrews's voice broke. "O G.o.d, I would give up every joy in the world if I could turn out one page that I felt was adequate.... D'you know it's years since I've talked to anybody?"

They both stared silently out of the window at the fog that was packed tightly against it like cotton wool, only softer, and a greenish-gold color.

"The M.P.'s sure won't get us tonight," said Henslowe, banging his fist jauntily on the table. "I've a great mind to go to Rue St. Anne and leave my card on the Provost Marshal.... G.o.d d.a.m.n! D'you remember that man who took the bite out of our wine-bottle...He didn't give a hoot in h.e.l.l, did he? Talk about expression. Why don't you express that? I think that's the turning point of your career. That's what made you come to Paris; you can't deny it."

They both laughed loudly rolling about on their chairs.

Andrews caught glints of contagion in the pale violet eyes of the lame boy and in the dark eyes of the girl.

"Let's tell them about it," he said still laughing, with his face, bloodless after the months in hospital, suddenly flushed.

"Salut," said Henslowe turning round and elevating his gla.s.s. "Nous rions parceque nous sommes gris de vin gris." Then he told them about the man who ate gla.s.s. He got to his feet and recounted slowly in his drawling voice, with gestures. Justine stood by with a dish full of stuffed tomatoes of which the red skins showed vaguely through a mantle of dark brown sauce. When she smiled her cheeks puffed out and gave her face a little of the look of a white cat's.

"And you live here?" asked Andrews after they had all laughed.

"Always. It is not often that I go down to town.... It's so difficult.... I have a withered leg." He smiled brilliantly like a child telling about a new toy.

"And you?"

"How could I be anywhere else?" answered the girl. "It's a misfortune, but there it is." She tapped with the crutch on the floor, making a sound like someone walking with it. The boy laughed and tightened his arm round her shoulder.

"I should like to live here," said Andrews simply.

"Why don't you?"

"But don't you see he's a soldier," whispered the girl hurriedly.

A frown wrinkled the boy's forehead.