The Guarded Heights Part 67

"Spirit's all through the army," Goodhue complained, bitterly. "Why doesn't it occur to them to get the right men for the right places?"

He sighed.

"Suppose we'll get through somehow, but there'll be too much mourning sold at home."

All along that had been in George's mind, and, in his small way, he did what he could, studying minutely methods of accomplis.h.i.+ng his missions at the minimum cost to his battalion; but on the Vesle he grew discouraged, seeing his men fall not to rise; or to be lifted to a stretcher; or to scramble up and stagger back swathed with first-aid rolls, dodging sh.e.l.ls and machine-gun spirts; or, and in some ways that was hardest of all to watch, to be led by some bandaged ones, blinded and vomiting from gas.

He had no consecutive sleep. He never got his clothes off. He s.n.a.t.c.hed food from a tin can. He suffered from the universal dysentery. He was under constant fire. He lay in shallow funk holes, conferring with his company and platoon commanders. At best he sat in the cellar of a smashed house, poring, by the light of a candle, over maps and complicated orders. Most of the time he wore a gas mask which had the advantage, however, of shutting out the stifling odour of decay. He never had time to find out if he was afraid. He reached a blessed state of indifference where getting hit appeared an inevitable and restful prospect.

Driggs Wandel arrived surprisingly on the day the Germans were falling back to the Aisne, at a moment when most of the artillery fire was coming from the American side, when it was possible to sit on a sunny bank outside the battalion dugout breathing only stale souvenirs of last night's gas sh.e.l.ls.

"_Bon jour_, most powerful and disreputable of majors!"

George held out his hand.

"Bring any chocolate, Driggs? Sit down, you idiot. Jerry's never seen such a nice new uniform."

Suddenly he lost his temper. Why the devil couldn't he get some pleasure out of this extraordinary reunion? Why did he have to greet Wandel as if he had seen him daily since their parting more than three years ago on a dusky pier in New York? He had heard that Wandel, with the declaration of war, had left the ambulance for a commission in the field artillery.

He saw him now wearing the insignia of a general staff major.

"Just attached to your corps headquarters," Wandel said. "Didn't want the job, would rather have been a fighting man with my pretty guns.

Suppose some fool of a friend of the family brought the usual influence without consulting me."

"Glad to see you, Driggs," George muttered, "although I don't seem able to tell you so. How did you get here?"

"Guide from regimental headquarters. Wanted to see how the submerged heroes live. Nasty, noisy, smelly spot to be heroic in."

"A picnic to-day."

"I've always suspected," Wandel said, "that picnics were unhealthy."

"Better have come," George grinned, "any other day we've been here the past few weeks."

Wandel laughed.

"Don't think I didn't pick my day. The general staff takes no unnecessary risks. Tell me, my George, when did you shave last? When did you wash your pretty face last? When did you take your sw.a.n.k clothes off last?"

"I think when I was a very little boy," George sighed.

Wandel became abruptly serious, turned so, perhaps, by a large sh.e.l.l fragment, still warm, which he had picked up. As he fingered it he stared at George.

"I know," George said, "that I point a moral, but even little boys would be glad to be made clean if they got like this. Don't rub it in."

"To the contrary," Wandel said, thoughtfully, "I'm going back over a lot of years. I'm remembering how that most extraordinary man, Freshman George Morton, looked. I'm thinking that I've always been right about you."

The warm sun, the diminution of racket, this sudden companions.h.i.+p, had drawn George a little from his indifferent, half-dazed condition. He, too, could look back, and without discomfort. On the Vesle it was only death that counted. Birth didn't amount to a hill of beans, or money, or education, except in that it made a man an officer. So George answered frankly:

"All along you've guessed a lot about me, Driggs."

"Known, George."

"Would you mind telling me how?"

"It would be a pleasure to point out to you," Wandel drawled, "that a lot of people aren't half as big fools as you've credited them with being. You looked a little what you were at first. You've probably forgotten that when you matriculated you put down a place of residence, a record easily available for one who saw, as I did, means of using you.

Even a fool could have guessed something was up the night Betty was good enough to make herself a part of the _beau monde_. I gathered a lot from Lambert then."

"Yet," George said, almost indifferently, "you went on being a friend."

"Your political manager, George," Wandel corrected. "I'm not sure it would have gone much further if it hadn't been for d.i.c.ky."

George was thoroughly aroused at last.

"Did d.i.c.ky know?"

"Not mere facts," Wandel answered. "What difference did they make? But he could see what you had started from, how great the climb you were taking. That's why he liked and admired you, because of what you were, not because of what you wanted people to think you were. That's really what first attracted me to you, and it amused me to see you fancying you were getting away with so much more than you really were."

"Extraordinary!" George managed. "Then the heights are not so well guarded?"

"Ah, yes--guarded," Wandel said, "but not against great men."

George kicked at the ground with his heel.

"Funny how unimportant it all seems here," he muttered.

It wasn't only the surroundings that made it seem unimportant; it was his remembrance of Sylvia who had known more than Wandel, more than anybody, yet had never opened the gate.

"You've taken all my conceit away," he went on. "Once it might have made me want to put myself out. Now I'm quite content to let Jerry do it."

Wandel's voice warmed, was less affected than George had ever heard it.

"What are you talking about? You've won a great victory. You should carry laurels on your brow. You've climbed to the top. You've defined for us all a possible socialism."

George smiled.

"A h.e.l.l of a thing to talk about here! But tell that to Squibs, will you, little man, when you get back? We've had some rare battles over it."

Wandel hurried on.

"You've made yourself one of us, if it's any satisfaction. You're as good as the best of us--of the inheritors."

George folded his arms on his knees and bowed his head. Wandel's voice was startled.

"What's up?"

"Maybe I'm crying," George mumbled. "Ought to be, because I'm so filthy tired, and I know you're wrong, Driggs. I'm rotten inside. I haven't even started to climb."

But when he looked up there were no tears in his eyes, and his dirty face had altered with its old whimsical smile.