Three Soldiers

"I'm going to walk," said Andrews.

"You'll get lost, won't you?"

"No danger, worse luck," said Andrews, getting to his feet. "I'll see you fellows at the School Headquarters, whatever those are.... So long."

"Say, Andy, I'll wait for you there," Walters called after him.

Andrews darted down a side street. He could hardly keep from shouting aloud when he found himself alone, free, with days and days ahead of him to work and think, gradually to rid his limbs of the stiff att.i.tudes of the automaton. The smell of the streets, and the mist, indefinably poignant, rose like incense smoke in fantastic spirals through his brain, making him hungry and dazzled, making his arms and legs feel lithe and as ready for delight as a crouching cat for a spring. His heavy shoes beat out a dance as they clattered on the wet pavements under his springy steps. He was walking very fast, stopping suddenly now and then to look at the greens and oranges and crimsons of vegetables in a push cart, to catch a vista down intricate streets, to look into the rich brown obscurity of a small wine shop where workmen stood at the counter sipping white wine. Oval, delicate faces, bearded faces of men, slightly gaunt faces of young women, red cheeks of boys, wrinkled faces of old women, whose ugliness seemed to have hidden in it, stirringly, all the beauty of youth and the tragedy of lives that had been lived; the faces of the people he pa.s.sed moved him like rhythms of an orchestra. After much walking, turning always down the street which looked pleasantest, he came to an oval with a statue of a pompous personage on a ramping horse. "Place des Victoires," he read the name, which gave him a faint tinge of amus.e.m.e.nt. He looked quizzically at the heroic features of the sun king and walked off laughing. "I suppose they did it better in those days, the grand manner," he muttered. And his delight redoubled in rubbing shoulders with the people whose effigies would never appear astride ramping-eared horses in squares built to commemorate victories. He came out on a broad straight avenue, where there were many American officers he had to salute, and M. P.'s and shops with wide plate-gla.s.s windows, full of objects that had a s.h.i.+ny, expensive look. "Another case of victories," he thought, as he went off into a side street, taking with him a glimpse of the bluish-grey pile of the Opera, with its pompous windows and its naked bronze ladies holding lamps.

He was in a narrow street full of hotels and fas.h.i.+onable barber shops, from which came an odor of cosmopolitan perfumery, of casinos and ballrooms and diplomatic receptions, when he noticed an American officer coming towards him, reeling a little,--a tall, elderly man with a red face and a bottle nose. He saluted.

The officer stopped still, swaying

"Shonny, d'you know where Henry'sh Bar is?"

"No, I don't, Major," said Andrews, who felt himself enveloped in an odor of c.o.c.ktails.

"You'll help me to find it, shonny, won't you?... It's dreadful not to be able to find it.... I've got to meet Lootenant Trevors in Henry'sh Bar." The major steadied himself by putting a hand on Andrews' shoulder.

A civilian pa.s.sed them.

"Dee-donc," shouted the major after him, "Dee-donc, Mons.h.i.+er, ou ay Henry'sh Bar?"

The man walked on without answering.

"Now isn't that like a frog, not to understand his own language?" said the major.

"But there's Henry's Bar, right across the street," said Andrews suddenly.

"Bon, bon," said the major.

They crossed the street and went in. At the bar the major, still clinging to Andrews' shoulder, whispered in his ear: "I'm A. W. O. L., shee?... Shee?.... Whole d.a.m.n Air Service is A. W. O. L. Have a drink with me.... You enlisted man? n.o.body cares here.... Warsh over, Sonny.... Democracy is shafe for the world."

Andrews was just raising a champagne c.o.c.ktail to his lips, looking with amus.e.m.e.nt at the crowd of American officers and civilians who crowded into the small mahogany barroom, when a voice behind him drawled out:

"I'll be d.a.m.ned!"

Andrews turned and saw Henslowe's brown face and small silky mustache.

He abandoned his major to his fate.

"G.o.d, I'm glad to see you.... I was afraid you hadn't been able to work it."...Said Henslowe slowly, stuttering a little.

"I'm about crazy, Henny, with delight. I just got in a couple of hours ago...." Laughing, interrupting each other, they chattered in broken sentences.

"But how in the name of everything did you get here?"

"With the major?" said Andrews, laughing.

"What the devil?"

"Yes; that major," whispered Andrews in his friend's ear, "rather the worse for wear, asked me to lead him to Henry's Bar and just fed me a c.o.c.ktail in the memory of Democracy, late defunct.... But what are you doing here? It's not exactly... exotic."

"I came to see a man who was going to tell me how I could get to Rumania with the Red Cross.... But that can wait.... Let's get out of here. G.o.d, I was afraid you hadn't made it."

"I had to crawl on my belly and lick people's boots to do it.... G.o.d, it was low!... But here I am."

They were out in the street again, walking and gesticulating.

"But 'Libertad, Libertad, allons, ma femme!' as Walt Whitman would have said," shouted Andrews.

"It's one grand and glorious feeling.... I've been here three days. My section's gone home; G.o.d bless them."

"But what do you have to do?"

"Do? Nothing," cried Henslowe. "Not a blooming b.l.o.o.d.y G.o.ddam thing! In fact, it's no use trying... the whole thing is such a mess you couldn't do anything if you wanted to."

"I want to go and talk to people at the Schola Cantorum."

"There'll be time for that. You'll never make anything out of music if you get serious-minded about it."

"Then, last but not least, I've got to get some money from somewhere."

"Now you're talking!" Henslowe pulled a burnt leather pocket book out of the inside of his tunic. "Monaco," he said, tapping the pocket book, which was engraved with a pattern of dull red flowers. He pursed up his lips and pulled out some hundred franc notes, which he pushed into Andrews's hand.

"Give me one of them," said Andrews.

"All or none.... They last about five minutes each."

"But it's so d.a.m.n much to pay back."

"Pay it back--heavens!... Here take it and stop your talking. I probably won't have it again, so you'd better make hay this time. I warn you it'll be spent by the end of the week."

"All right. I'm dead with hunger."

"Let's sit down on the Boulevard and think about where we'll have lunch to celebrate Miss Libertad.... But let's not call her that, sounds like Liverpool, Andy, a horrid place."

"How about Freiheit?" said Andrews, as they sat down in basket chairs in the reddish yellow sunlight.

"Treasonable... off with your head."

"But think of it, man," said Andrews, "the butchery's over, and you and I and everybody else will soon be human beings again. Human; all too human!"

"No more than eighteen wars going," muttered Henslowe.

"I haven't seen any papers for an age.... How do you mean?"

"People are fighting to beat the cats everywhere except on the' western front," said Henslowe. "But that's where I come in. The Red Cross sends supply trains to keep them at it.... I'm going to Russia if I can work it."

"But what about the Sorbonne?"