The Guarded Heights Part 69

Mrs. Planter came back to George's mind, momentarily as primeval as a man surrendered to the battle l.u.s.t. What one saw, except in self-destructive emergencies, he told himself, was all veneer. Ages, epochs, generations, merely determined its depth. The h.e.l.l after war!

Did Wandel mean there was danger then of an attempt to thin the veneer?

Was Lambert, of all people, going to a.s.sist the Allens to plane it away?

"It would mean another dark ages," he mused.

His own little self-imposed coat he saw now had gone on top of a far thicker one without which he would have been as helpless as a bushman or some anthropoidal creature escaped from an unexplored country.

He laughed, but uncomfortably. Those two had made him uneasy, and Squibs, naturally, was at Lambert's folly. There had been a letter a day or two ago which he had scarcely had time to read because of the demands of an extended movement and the confusion of receiving replacements and re-equipping the men he had. He read it over now. "Understanding,"

"Brotherhood."

"You are helping to bring it about, because you are helping to win this war."

In a fit of irritation he tore the letter up. What the devil was he fighting the war for?

The question wouldn't let him asleep. Lambert, Wandel, and Squibs between them had made him for the first time in his life thoroughly, uncomfortably, abominably afraid--physically afraid--afraid of being killed. For all at once there was more than Sylvia to make him want to live. He didn't see how he could die without knowing what the deuce he was fighting this man's war for, anyway.

XI

He hadn't learned any more about it when Lambert and he were caught on the same afternoon a week later.

In the interminable, haggard thicket the attack had abruptly halted.

Word reached George that Lambert's company was falling back. To him that was beyond belief if Lambert was still with his men. He hurried forward before regimental headquarters had had a chance to open its distant mouth. There were machine-gun nests ahead, foolish stragglers told him.

Of course. Those were what he had ordered Lambert to take. The company was disorganized. Little groups slunk back, dragging their rifles as if they were too heavy. Others squatted in the underbrush, waiting apparently for some valuable advice.

George found the senior lieutenant, crouched behind a fallen log, getting the company in hand again through runners.

"Where's Captain Planter?"

The lieutenant nodded carelessly ahead.

"Hundred yards or so out there. He ran the show too much himself," he complained. "Bunch of Jerries jumped out of the thicket and threw potato mashers, then crawled back to the guns. When the captain went down the men near him broke. Sort of thing spreads like a pestilence."

"Dead?" George asked.

"Don't know. Potato mashers!"

"Why haven't you found out?" George asked, irritably.

The complaining note increased in the other's voice.

"He's at the foot of that tree. Hear those guns? They're just zipping a few while they wait for someone to get to him."

"Pull your company together," George said with an absurd feeling that he spoke to Mrs. Planter. "I'll go along and see that we get him and those nests. They're spoiling the entire afternoon."

The lieutenant glanced at him, startled.

"I can do it----"

"You haven't," George reminded him.

He despatched runners to the flank companies and to regimental headquarters announcing that he was moving ahead. When the battalion advanced, like a lot of fairly clever Indians, he was in the van, making straight for the tree. He had a queer idea that Mrs. Planter quietly searched in the underbrush ahead of him. The machine guns, which had been trickling, gushed.

"You're hit, sir," the lieutenant said.

George glanced at his right boot. There was a hole in the leather, but he didn't feel any pain. He dismissed the lieutenant's suggestion of stretcher bearers. He limped ahead. Why should he a.s.sume this risk for Lambert? Sylvia wouldn't thank him for it. She wouldn't thank him for anything, but her mother would. He had to get Lambert back and complete his task, but he was afraid to examine the still form he saw at last at the base of the tree, and he knew very well that that was only because Lambert was his friend. He designated a man to guide the stretcher bearers, and bent, his mind full of swift running and vicious tackles, abrupt and brutal haltings of this figure that seemed to be asleep, that would never run again.

Lambert stirred.

"Been expecting you, George," he said, sleepily.

"Anything besides your leg?" George asked.

"Guess not," Lambert answered. "What more do you want? Thanks for coming."

George left him to the stretcher bearers and hurried on full of envy; for Lambert was going home, and George hadn't dared stop to urge him to forget that dangerous nonsense he had talked the other night. Nonsense!

You had only to look at these brown figures trying to flank the spouting guns. Why did they have to glance continually at him? Why had they paused when he had paused to speak to Lambert? Same side of the window!

But a few of them stumbled and slept as they fell.

He had just begun to worry about the blood in his right boot when something snapped at the bone of his good leg, and he pitched forward helplessly.

"Some tackle!" he thought.

Then through his brain, suddenly confused, flashed an overwhelming grat.i.tude. He couldn't walk. He couldn't go forward. He wouldn't have to take any more risks beyond those shared with the stretcher bearers who would carry him back. Like Lambert, he was through. He was going home--home to Sylvia, to success, to the coveted knowledge of why he had fought this war.

The lieutenant, frightened, solicitous, crawled to him, summoning up the stretcher bearers, for the advance had gone a little ahead, the German range had shortened to meet it.

"How bad, sir?"

George indicated his legs.

"Never learned how to walk on my hands."

The lieutenant straightened, calling out cursing commands. George managed to achieve a sitting posture. By gad! This leg hurt! It made him a little giddy. Only once before, he thought vaguely, had he experienced such pain. What was the trouble here? The advance had halted, probably because the word had spread that he was down.

What was it Lambert had said about putting the rank and file on the same side of the window? The rank and file wanted an officer, and the higher the officer the farther it would go. That was answer enough for Lambert, Squibs, Allen----And he would point it out to them all, for the stretcher bearers had come up, had lifted him to the stretcher, were ready to start him back to decency, to safety----

Thank G.o.d there wasn't any mult.i.tude or an insane trainer here to order him about.

"They've stopped again," the lieutenant sobbed. "Some of them are coming back."

That sort of thing did spread like a pestilence, but there was nothing George could do about it. He had done his job. Good job, too. Soft billet now. Decency. Sylvia. No Green. No mult.i.tude----

"You make a touchdown!"

And he became aware at last of the mult.i.tude--raving higher officers in comfortable places; countless victims of invasion, waiting patiently to go home; myriads in the cities, intoxicated with enthusiasm and wine, tumbling happily from military play to patriotic bazaar; but most eloquent of all in that innumerable company were the silent and cold brown figures lying about him in the underbrush.

His brain, a little delirious, was filled with the roaring from the stands. The crowd was commanding him to get ahead somehow, to wipe out those deadly nests, to let the regiment, the army, tired nations, sweep on to peace and the end of an unbelievable madness.