The Last Shot Part 63

"A hogshead of jelly might be good to bathe in!" said the banker's son.

"I haven't had a bath for a month."

"I have. I turned my underclothes inside out!" said the barber's son. He was aiming to take Hugo's place as humorist, in the confidence of one sprung from a talkative family.

Scanning the faces, the judge's son found many new ones--those of the older reservists--while many of the faces of barrack days were missing.

"Whom have we lost?" he asked.

The answer, given with dull matter-of-factness, revealed that, of the group that had talked so light-heartedly of war six weeks before, only little Peterkin, the valet's son, and Pilzer, the butcher's son, and the barber's and the banker's sons survived. They were sitting in a row, from the instinct that makes old a.s.sociates keep together even though they continually quarrel. The striking thing was that Peterkin looked the most cheerful and well-kept of the four. As the proud possessor of a pair of scissors, he had trimmed a surprisingly heavy beard Van Dyck fas.h.i.+on, which emphasized his peaked features and a certain consciousness of superiority; while the barber's son sported only a few scraggly hairs. The scant, reddish product of Pilzer's cheeks, leaving bare the liver patch, only accentuated its repulsiveness and a savagery in his voice and look which was no longer latent under the conventional discipline of every-day existence. The company had not been in the first Engadir a.s.sault, but, being near the Engadir position, had suffered heavily in support.

"You were in the big attack night before last?" asked the judge's son.

"We started in," said Peterkin, "but Captain Fraca.s.se brought us back,"

he added in a way that implied that only orders had kept him from going on.

Peterkin, the trembling little Peterkin of the baptismal charge across the line of white posts, had been the first out of the redoubt on to the glacis in that abortive effort, living up to the bronze cross on his breast. He was one of the half dozen out of the score that had started to return alive. The psychology of war had transformed his gallantry; it had pa.s.sed from simulation to reality, thanks to his established conviction that he led a charmed life. Little Peterkin, always pale but never getting paler, was ready to lead any forlorn hope. A superst.i.tious nature, which, at the outset of the war, had convinced him that he must be killed in the first charge, now, as the result of his survival, gave him all the faith of Eugene Aronson that the bullet would never be made that could kill him.

"Was the attack general all along the front?" some one asked. "We couldn't tell. All we knew was the h.e.l.l around us."

"Yes," answered the judge's son.

"Did we accomplish anything?"

"A few minor positions, I believe."

"But we will win!" said Peterkin. "The colonel said so."

"And the news--what is the news?" demanded the barber's son. "You needn't be afraid," he added. "The officers are on the other side of the redoubt. They get sick of the sight of us and we of them and this is their recess and ours from the eternal digging."

"Yes, the news from home!"

"Yes, from home! We don't even get letters any more. They've shut off all the mails."

"I met a man from our town," said the judge's son. "He said that after that story was published in the press about Hugo's d.a.m.ning patriotism and hurrahing for the Browns--it was fearfully exaggerated--his old father and mother shut themselves up in the house and would not show their faces for shame. But his sweetheart, however much her parents stormed, refused to renounce him. She held her head high and said that the more they abused him the more she loved him, and she knew he could do nothing wrong."

"Hugo was not a patriot. It takes red blood to make a patriot!" said Peterkin. In the pride of heroism and prestige, he was becoming an oracular enunciator of commonplaces from the lips of his superiors.

"The absence of any word from the front only increases the suspense of the people. They do not know whether their sons and brothers and husbands are living or dead," continued the judge's son.

"Up to a week ago they let us write," said Pilzer, "though they wouldn't let us say anything except that we were well."

"That was because it might give information to the enemy," said Peterkin.

"As if I didn't know that!" grumbled Pilzer. "The enemy seems to be always ready for us, anyway," he added.

"The chief of staff stopped the letters because he said that mothers who received none took it for granted that their sons were dead," explained the judge's son. "Besides, he a.s.serts that casualties are not heavy and asks for patience in the name of patriotism."

"The--!" exclaimed Pilzer, referring to Westerling. He who had set out to be an officers' favorite had become bitter against all officers, high and low.

Peterkin was speechlessly aghast. The others said nothing. They were used to Pilzer's oaths and obscenity, with a growing inclination to profanity on their own part. Besides, they rather agreed with his view of the chief of staff.

"Did you see many dead and wounded?" asked a very tired voice, that of one of the older reservists who was emaciated, with a complexion like blue mould.

"How can I tell you what I saw? Ought I to tell you?"

"When you've had to wipe a piece of brains out of your eye, as I have--it was warm and jelly-like," said Pilzer, "you ain't as squeamish as Hugo Mallin. I wonder they don't give him a bronze cross!"

"Bronze crosses are given for bravery in action," said Peterkin in his new-fas.h.i.+oned parrot way since he had become great. "You should not do anything to affect the spirit of corps."

"The boy wonder from the butler's pantry! Our dear, natty little b.u.t.tons! Bullets glide off him!" snarled Pilzer, who had set out to win a bronze cross, only to see it won by a pygmy.

"Did you see many dead and wounded?" persisted the very tired voice of the old reservist.

"Yes, yes--and every kind of destruction!" answered the judge's son.

"And--I kept thinking of Hugo Mallin."

"I'm glad they didn't shoot Hugo," said the very tired voice. "I'm sorry for his old father and mother. I'm a father myself."

"I certainly had a good farewell kick at him!" declared Pilzer. "Lean on yourself!" he added, giving a shove to the old reservist who was next him.

"I saw men who had ceased to be human. That reminds me, Pilzer," the judge's son went on, "I saw one wounded man, lying beside another, turn and strike him, and he said: 'I had to hit somebody or something!' And I heard a wounded man who was waiting in line before the surgeon's table say: 'There's others hurt worse than me. I can wait.' I heard men begging the doctors to put them out of their misery. I saw two dead men with their hands clasped as they were when they died. Then there were the men who went mad. One had to be held by force. He kept crying with demoniacal laughs: 'I want to go back and kill--kill! Let's all kill, kill, kill!' Another insisted on dancing, despite a bandaged leg. 'Look, look at the little red spots!' he was saying. 'You must step on one every time; if you don't, the automatic will get you!' Another declared that he had been through h.e.l.l and insisted that he would live forever now. Another was an artist, a landscape-painter, who had lost his eyesight. He was seeing beautiful landscapes, and the nurses had to strap him to his cot to keep him from struggling to his feet and trying to use an imaginary brush on imaginary canvases. He died seeing beautiful landscapes.

"A pretty dreary sight, too, was the field of the dead, as I called it.

As the bodies were brought in they were laid in long rows, until there was no more room without moving a supply depot. So there was nothing to do but begin to pile them two deep. A service-corps man took off each man's metal identification tag and tossed it into an ammunition box. One box was already full and a second half full. c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k--tags of the rich man's son and the poor man's son, the doctor of philosophy and the illiterate; c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k--a life each time. They'll take the tags to the staff office and tired clerks will find the names that go with the numbers."

"You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs," said Peterkin, quoting high authority. "Some have to be killed."

"The last I heard from home my wife and one of the children were sick and my employer had gone bankrupt," broke in the very tired voice rather irrelevantly.

"Yes, my father's last letter was pretty blue about business," said the banker's son. He was looking at his dirty hands. The odor of clothes unlaundered for weeks, in which the men had slept, tortured his sensitive nostrils. "A millionaire and filthy as swine in a sty!" he exclaimed. "Digging like a navvy in order to get admission to the abattoir!"

"Were there any reserves coming our way?" asked the barber's son.

"Yes, ma.s.ses."

"Perhaps they will relieve us and we'll go into the reserves for a while," suggested the very tired voice.

"No fear!" growled Pilzer.

"They have called out the old men, the fellows of forty-five to fifty, who were supposed to be out of it for good," said the judge's son.

"Westerling says they are to guard prisoners and property when we cross the range and start on the march to the Browns' capital. Then all the other men can be on the firing-line and force the war to a mercifully quick end with a minimum loss. I saw numbers of them just arriving at La Tir, footsore and limping."

"I know. Mine's been indoor work, making paints," said the very tired voice. "When you've had long hours in the shop and had to sit up late with sick babies, you aren't fit for marching. And I think I've got lead-poisoning."

"Whew!" The judge's son put his hand over his nose as a breeze sprang up from the direction of the Brown lines.

"I thought we got them all," said the barber's son.

"Must have missed one that was buried by a sh.e.l.l and another sh.e.l.l must have dug him up!" muttered Pilzer, glaring at the barber's son. "It's not nice on people with ladylike nostrils. James, get the _eau de cologne_ and draw his bath for our plutocrat!"