The Gay Cockade Part 18

"But Napoleon, monsieur--surely he would not fail France?"

The thing that followed was inevitable. Randolph and Mademoiselle Julie fell in love with each other. He drew her as he had drawn us at school.

She was not a Madge Ballou, mundane and mercenary; she was rather a Heloise, a Nicolette, a Jeanne d'Arc, self-sacrificing, impa.s.sioned. She met Randolph on equal ground. They soared together--mixed love of country with love of lovers. They rose at dawn to wors.h.i.+p the sun, they walked forth at twilight to adore together the crescent moon.

And all the while war was at the gates; we could hear the boom of big guns. The spring drive was on and the Germans were coming back.

I shall never forget the night that Randolph and I were ordered to the front. Mademoiselle had come in with her hands full of violets.

Randolph, meeting her for the first time after a busy day, took her hands and the frail blossoms in his eager clasp. He was an almost perfect lover--Auca.s.sin if you will--Abelard at his best.

"Violets," he said. "May I have three?"

"Why three, monsieur?"

"For love, mademoiselle, and truth and constancy."

He took his prayer-book from his pocket, and she gave him the violets.

He touched them to her lips, then crushed them to his own. I saw it--sitting back in the shadows. I should never have thought of kissing a girl like that. But it was rather wonderful.

He shut the violets in the little book.

They sat very late that night by the fire. I went in and out, not disturbing them. I saw him kneel at her feet as he left her, and she bent forward and kissed his forehead.

He talked of her a great deal after that. More than I would have talked of love, but his need of an audience drove him to confidences. He felt that he must make himself worthy of her--to go back to her as anything less than a hero might seem to belittle her. I am not sure that he was braver than other men, but his feeling for effect gave him a sort of reckless courage. Applause was a part of the game--he could not do without it.

And so came that night when a small band of us were cut off from the rest. We were intrenched behind a small eminence which hid us from our enemies, with little hope of long escaping their observation. It had been wet and cold, and there had been no hot food for days. We, French and Americans, had fought long and hard; we were in no state to stand suspense, yet there was nothing to do but wait for a move on the other side, a move which could end in only one way--bayonets and bare hands, and I, for one, hated it.

I think the others hated it, too, all but Randolph. The rain had stopped and the moon flooded the world. He turned his face up to it and dreamed.

The knowledge came to us before midnight that the Huns had found us. It became only a matter of moments before they would be upon us, the thing would happen which we hated--bayonets and bare hands, with the chances in favor of the enemy!

Somewhere among our men rose a whimper of fear, and then another. You see, they were cold and hungry and some of them were wounded, and they were cut off from hope. It wasn't cowardice. I call no man a coward.

They had faced death a thousand times, some of them. Yet there was danger in their fears.

Randolph was next to me. "My G.o.d, MacDonald," he said, "they've lost their nerve--"

There wasn't a second to spare. I saw him doing something to his hat.

As I have said, there was a moon. It lighted that battle-scarred world with a sort of wild beauty, and suddenly in a clear s.p.a.ce above us on the little hill a figure showed, motionless against the still white night--a figure small yet commanding, three-cornered hat pulled low--oh, you have seen it in pictures a thousand times--Napoleon of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Jena, of Friedland--but over and above everything, Napoleon of France!

Of course the Germans shot him. But when they came over the top they were met by Frenchmen who had seen a ghost. "C'est l'Empereur! C'est l'Empereur!" they had gasped. "He returns to lead us."

They fought like devils, and--well, the rest of us fought, too, and all the time, throughout the b.l.o.o.d.y business, I had before me that vision of Randolph alone in the moonlight. Or was it Randolph? Who knows? Do great souls find time for such small business? And was it small?

His medals were, of course, sent to the colonel. But the violets in the little book went back to mademoiselle. And the old hat, crushed into three-cornered shape, went back. And I told her what he had done.

She wrote to me in her stiff English:

"I have loved a great man. For me, monsieur, it is enough. Their souls unite in victory!"

THE RED CANDLE

It was so cold that the world seemed as stiff and stark as a poet's h.e.l.l. A little moon was frozen against a pallid sky. The old dark houses with their towers and gables wore the rigid look of iron edifices. The saint over the church door at the corner had an icicle on his nose.

Even the street lights shone faint and benumbed through clouded gla.s.s.

Ostrander, with his blood like ice within his veins, yearned for a Scriptural purgatory with red fire and flame. To be warm would be heaven. It was a wise old Dante who had made h.e.l.l cold!

As he crossed the threshold of his filthy tenement he felt for the first time a sense of its shelter. Within its walls there was something that approached warmth, and in his room at the top there was a bed with a blanket.

Making his way toward the bed and its promise of comfort, he was stopped on the second stairway by a voice which came out of the dark.

"Mr. Tony, you didn't see our tree."

Peering down, he answered the voice: "I was going up to get warm."

"Milly said to tell you that we had a fire."

"A real fire, p.u.s.s.y? I didn't know that there was one in the world."

He came down again to the first floor. p.u.s.s.y was waiting--a freckled dot of a child tied up in a man's coat.

The fire was in a small round stove. On top of the stove something was boiling. The room was neat but bare, the stove, a table, and three chairs its only furnis.h.i.+ng. In a room beyond were two beds covered with patchwork quilts.

On the table was a tree. It was a Christmas tree--just a branch of pine and some cheap spangly things. The mother of the children sewed all day and late into the night. She had worked a little longer each night for a month that the children might have the tree.

There was no light in the room but that of a small and smoky lamp.

Milly spoke of it. "We ought to have candles."

Ostrander, shrugged close to the stove, with his hands out to its heat, knew that they ought to have electric lights, colored ones, a hundred perhaps, and a tree that touched the stars!

But he said: "When I go out I'll bring you a red candle--a long one--and we'll put it on the shelf over the table."

Milly, who was resting her tired young body in a big rocker with the baby in her arms, asked: "Can we put it in a bottle or stand it in a cup? We haven't any candlestick."

"We can do better than that," he told her, "with a saucer turned upside down and covered with salt to look like snow."

p.u.s.s.y, economically anxious, asked, "Can we eat the salt afterward?"

"Of course."

"Then, may we do it, Milly?"

"Darling, yes. How nice you always fix things, Mr. Tony!"