CHAPTER XIX
"THE WHITE COMRADE"
Philip, who sat leaning against a tree, with his arm around Jean, softlystroked the lad's dark head. Somehow he had shown more than the usualinterest in the little refugee, undoubtedly drawn to him in recognitionof the fact that he was also a victim of German barbarity, and becausethey both spoke the same language. Nathalie, with a thrill of joy, hadnoticed his tender, protecting watchfulness over the boy, and how Jean'sbig eyes would gaze up at the young man with a gleam in their depthslike that of some adoring dog, who yearns for the hand of his master insilent caress!
"There is not much to tell," returned Philip after a pause, with thehesitancy of one who dislikes to talk about himself, "for you must knowI am no hero." He smiled at the girlish faces so eagerly watching him.Suddenly he sat bolt upright, unconsciously pushing Jean from him. "I aman American," he exclaimed abruptly, "for my father came of good old NewEngland stock, although I was born in the South. But my heart has beenstrangely stirred since I came over here, for the Americans areasleep,--they do not sense what they are up against in this war of thenations." His dark gray eyes flashed into flame. "Sometimes I feel Iwould like to be another Paul Revere, and ride like the wind, knockingon doors and windows, shouting to the slumberers, 'The Huns are coming!'_They must_ be roused to the truth that this war is their war, and thatthey have not buckled to their job."
He paused a moment, the fire dying out of his eyes as he continued, "Iwas feeling in unusually good spirits that summer of 1914, for I hadjust formed a partnership with a well-known architect, and business gaveassurance of giving me a very comfortable income, and place me in aposition to repay my mother, who had denied herself in order to put methrough college.
"Into this mood of complacent satisfaction with myself and world ingeneral, came a jar one day in June when the newspapers announced, inglaring headlines, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. And,almost before we had digested its portent, came Austria's ultimatum tolittle Serbia. People began to grow restive, alarm-fired, keyed to atense state of expectancy that something was in the air, but--what? Thentongues were loosened and eyes flashed fire as the Prime Minister'sscathing denunciation of Germany's 'infamous proposal' was bandied frommouth to mouth, followed by Great Britain's ultimatum that Belgium'sneutrality must be respected.
"Then came hours of anxious suspense, a harrowing waiting-time, withevery one's heart aquiver, while a little group of men in Downing Streetheld their watches in their hands as they awaited Germany's reply. Itcame. The deep-toned clang of Big Ben told to English hearts that theworld's decades of peace had been shattered, and that the Prussianbarbarians had struck their first blow at civilization.
"From every corner and window now glared forth, 'Your King and yourCountry need you.' Those words seared my heart like fire, but no, Iargued, I must make good with mother. But no matter how I tried tocajole myself, the words seemed to follow me around like an accusingfinger. No, he wasn't my king. I was an American by right of birth, butstill they blazoned at me until I could see them with my eyes shut. Theystarred the darkness of night; why, even in my sleep they clutched me ina ghostly dream. The next day and for many days I saw them aflame on thepavement, they were written on the sky in white letters, but still Ifought.
"When England's young manhood sprang, as it were, from the earth, armedto the teeth, and marched shoulder to shoulder in regular beat,--itseemed like the pulsation of my own heart--as they swung along throughthe streets of London, my head swam, my throat tightened, and--But whenI read of heroic little Belgium so nobly holding out against theruthless destroyer of justice and honor, I gave in and became one ofKitchener's mob.
"Those were not pleasant hours," continued Philip, "waiting at the HorseGuard Parade to read when I must report at the regimental depot atHounslow, for I felt I was a misfit, in with a lot of men that, to myinexperienced eyes, seemed the scum of England, and I sickened of myjob.
"But when the news continued to pour in that Liege had fallen, that theGermans had entered Brussels, that the British Expeditionary Forces wereretreating, heroically fighting, that Namur, Louvain, and other townswere being ruthlessly seized and devastated by the enemy, and theirhellish atrocities began to be rumored about, the past, together withall hopes and desires for the future, were wiped out as clean as a slatein a spirit of forgetfulness. I lived in the moment, buoyed by the grimdetermination to fight like hell to down the oppressor of men's rights,to lose my life if need be, in order to give freedom to those who wereto come after.
"My spirits took a leap when I registered at the Hounslow Barracks as aRoyal Fusileer, although I grinned humorously, for if I had felt like amisfit in London I was a guy now, appareled like a bloomin' lay-figurein the cast-off rags of some old-clothes shop, and had sensed that I wasonly a steel rivet in a big machine. I was no duck either, taking to thedrills like water, for I would stand hopelessly bewildered at the sharporders, 'Form fours! One-one-two! Platoon! Form Fours!' and similarcommands, that were like kicks on a befuddled brain. But I gritted myteeth and stuck to my guns.
"As soon as my rawness wore off and I began to get the hang of it, themartial spirit asserted itself. I began to be obsessed by the desire toshow that I was the right stuff, that the heroism of my Americanancestors, the spirit of '76, was in me. Through all my intensivetraining I was feverishly eager to know every detail of company andbattalion drill, musketry and target-practice, and all the daily grindof the other sundry factors in military discipline.
"When I began to 'matey' my comrades, I soon understood why a TommyAtkins is not like an American, who is born with a fine sense ofpersonal independence, and who feels that he is as good as any Lord orDuke; or like a volatile Frenchman, with his easy grace of manner andbuoyant spirit. I realized that although there may be a 'SentimentalTommy' here and there, the average Tommy Atkins is a stolid chap,humdrum and prosaic, but with as kind a heart as any rookie in theworld.
"As spring came along, after months of soldiering in many differentquarters, which meant roughing it in leaky tents where cold, rain, andmud played a large part, and poor equipment a larger, we were no longerraw rookies, parading or drilling before an unadmiring public,--a targetfor pretty girls' laughter, or the ire of a berating sergeant,--for ourbattalion had acquired a high degree of efficiency.
"Our arms were one with us, we had done with squad, platoon formation,and company drills, had shown our metal at the rifle-range at Aldershot,taken part in field maneuvers, bayonet charges, and mimic battles. Wehad become experts at trench-digging, bomb-throwing, and sniping, whilethe machine-gunners were quite up to the mark in that important weapon;in fact, we had become familiar with all branches of the army service.
"Then when every man was 'in the pink' the marching orders came, and weassembled on the barrack-square at Aldershot. Not only were wephysically fit, fine specimens of the trained soldier, but we werecompletely equipped, even to the identification tag, which registeredyour name, regimental number, regiment, and religion; besides, wecarried the first-aid field dressing,--an antiseptic gauze pad andbandage, and a small bottle of iodine. Also, each soldier carried a copyof Lord Kitchener's letter, as to what was expected of every Britishsoldier. The words 'Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honor your King,'meant much to me, although I was an American.
"And then we were off, merry and blithe, no matter what our heartsregistered, cheering like fiends when some of the boys in khaki chalkedthe gun-carriages 'at Berlin,' a new challenge to each Tommy to do hisstunt in making the Huns pay. Then came a drifting period when we wereherded like cattle from one train to another, or made long, wearymarches in the blind,--for nobody seemed to know our destination. But atlast we were in the shadow of the great battle, down in the earth, inone sector of a long line of a serpentine trench, zigzagging from thesea to the Alps.
"This burrowing underground like a mole, digging trenches, or holes, inNo Man's Land, to string up barbed wire entanglemen
ts, or to pilesand-bags on the parapet, or to clean out the wreckage of a trench thathad been battered by German gunners, or a trench-mortar--sometimes togather up the pieces of some 'matey' whom you had chummed with,--allmeant new activities. They were experiences and sounds--the sounds ofhell--and sights that cut deep, with an impelling remembrance hauntingyou like grewsome shadows.
"Yes, it was a strange new life," the young soldier paused musingly,"for this kind of fighting is no battlefield with glittering helmets andbayonets, the furling of colors, the prancing of horses, the roll ofgun-carriages, but stinging eyelids and a choking in thick gray smoke,with the roar of cannonading, the sharp screech of shrapnel, thebursting of star-shells, or the whir of strange, queer monsters aboveyour head.
"There was the turning of night into day,"--Philip's face had a wearyexpression,--"the daily mental strain, the danger constantly facing you,the learning to know the sounds of the different shells and in whatdirection they were going to fall. Involuntarily, with stilled breath,you waited, and then came the sinking of your heart when you sensed thatit was _your turn now_, and then to find yourself still there, but torealize that some of your mates had 'gone West.'
"And the gas. Oh, the horror of the great, greenish balls that camerolling towards you, close to the earth, the celerity of getting intoyour gas-masks, and the _horrible thing_ that a comrade became if hefailed to accomplish this job on time, and lay writhing in an ugly,venomous atmosphere of green.
"Then there were the cooties, the parasites that feed _on you_, and withwhom you maintain a constant warfare," Philip smiled as he saw the girlssquirm; "and the rats, as big as cats, with sharp, ferret-like eyes,darting from some dark crevice, or playing leap-frog over your legs atnight, or mistaking your head for their nest. Ugh! But the dead-and-gonefeeling--exhausted nature asserting her rights--which assailed you atsome critical moment, perhaps when you were trying to be a man at yourjob, just got you through and through.
"Ah, there was the first 'over-the-top' experience, when you stood onthe fire-step with gun in hand, palefaced, but with clenched teeth, inan oppressive silence, waiting to hear the command come down theline,--whispered from mouth to mouth. Then you leaped wildly over intolong-anticipated perils, to become entangled in barbed wire, or perhapsto get your first shock, as the man next you dropped like lead at thefirst 'ptt' of a German sharpshooter's bullet.
"But on you rush in a mad frenzy with red-misted eyes, in the face of aheavy artillery fire and a pitiless gale of shrapnel, through a densesmoke-screen, split with lurid flashes of flame, over a ground pittedwith shell-holes--to stumble over some dead Tommy, whose glazed eyesstare up at you as if in mockery of your determination to play the manin this crusade for humanity.
"Then _my adventure_ came,--a raid on a German trench, an undertakingattended with great peril. With blackened faces, each man, with his bagof bombs and automatic, at the flicker of a white light crawledstealthily into the sable blackness of 'dead man's yard,' and, in adownpour of drenching rain, crept on hands and knees, sometimes wigglingon his stomach,--quickly rolling into a shell-hole if a sound washeard,--until the German trench loomed menacingly only a few feetbeyond.
"Everything was deadly still. Then the signal came, and with a rush weclambered stealthily up and peeped over, to see a yellow-haired Heinieasleep in the little alcove back of his gun-emplacement, the head of thesentry-on-post tipsily nodding on his chest, and two big fellows snoringlike porpoises on the floor near. In just one minute we had slid intothat trench and had our men with hands up. Sure it was a surprise-partyfor Fritz, for the Germans came running out of their dug-outs, wrappedin blankets, noisily demanding to know what was up. They soon knew, andthen came a riot of a time as we let our hand-grenades fly, and ourbayonets too, aided by a lively fire from our machine-guns. And then wewere out, making a quick run for our own trenches with our trophies, andseveral of the surprised ones, with the German guns thundering in ourrear.
"Yes, I had captured my first Hun, and mighty proud I was of myachievement, and pictured my delight-to-be when retailing my adventureto my comrades, when Zipp! and I was downed by the pieces of a burstingshell that got me in the hand and foot. And the prisoner? Oh, the dirtyBoche saw his chance. I saw his hand go up,--he must have had a stilettohidden somewhere,--but I was too quick for him for I let fly ahand-grenade, and--well, he bothered me no more.
"For hours I crawled, or wiggled, along, dropping into a chalk-pit or ashell-hole every few moments, for it was like hell under that liquidfire, Fritzie's aerial bombs and the machine-gun fire; in fact, itseemed as if every kind of projectile had been let loose, for now theGermans were mad clean through. Finally, being too exhausted to make anyfurther headway, I crept into a shell-hole, where I lay for a day and anight, lying on my face most of the time, playing dead, for the Germanfiends would sneak out into No Man's Land at night after a bombardment,and kill every wounded enemy soldier they could find.
"What did I think about, you ask, Miss Nathalie, while lying in thatshell-hole?" Philip smiled a little sadly. "Well, at first I was crazedwith thirst and hunger, and the cold--oh, it was something fierce. Andthen the doubts and misgivings that had assailed me at times, as towhether there was a God in heaven, returned with renewed force. I dumblyfelt that my faith was leaving me, for why this useless slaughter ofmen's bodies, this agonizing devil's gas, this torturing of the aged andweak, this violating of womanhood, this maiming of little, innocentchildren? Ah, the agony of body was nothing compared to the agony of mysoul, as I lay in that hole.
"Then that night--there was no moon, and everything was a dead calm, fora lull had come in fighting--I turned over, face upward, to ease theaching that racked my body. As I lie gazing up at the stars,--theyseemed unusually bright,--something white suddenly flashed before me,and then I saw a face bend down and gaze at me. It was a marvelouslybeautiful face, with such calm serenity of expression as the eyes smiledinto mine, that a strange peace came into my soul, my pains were eased,I was filled with a wonderful joy, and--then I knew;--it was the face ofthe Great White Comrade,--the face of Christ!
"It may have been a delusion from overwrought nerves,--I may have beendreaming,--I don't know, for there had been great talk among thesoldiers of seeing the white apparition of Christ on the battlefield. Hewas said to have appeared to the soldiers, showed them His bleeding sideand hands, and then the suffering ones had felt a wonderful peace comeinto their souls, and their very agonies had made them triumphant in thethought that as He had died to make men holy, so He had given them thegreat privilege of suffering and dying to make men free. No, I didn'tsee any bleeding side, or the nail-prints on the hands, but I sawChrist's face, and, oh, it was Heaven!
"Then my brain cleared. I realized that I had been groping in a greatdarkness, but that a wonderful light had come, and I knew God was in HisHeaven. That smile had brought revelation. It had told me that we wereno better than Christ, and He had suffered,--He, an innocent soul. Andas He had agonized on the cross, and God had suffered with Him, so everymoan, sob, and cry had reached His ears in this great wail fromhumanity. It told me that this bruising of bodies, this rending ofwomen's hearts, this wringing of men's souls, had wrung _His_ heart witha suffering greater than men could know.
"It told me that it was all the working-out of God's great plan for thegood of mankind. It told me that the men, women, and children, who hadpassed through these seas of blood were to come forth with whitegarments, to be a great host led by the Angel of His Presence, and thattheir deeds were to live after them, to bring light into the dark placesin men's souls. It told me that these blood-soaked battlefields were tobecome gardens, where flowers would spring, the glorious flowers offreedom, and that every tear shed was to become great waters, to flowlike a river of peace to all nations."
As Philip ceased speaking, the faces of his young listeners became verygrave, and for a moment there was an impressive stillness, as if eachone had been hushed to a reverent silence. "Well, after that, I wasstrangely happy," continued th
e young man slowly. "I think I must havefallen asleep, for I was suddenly aroused by the cold snout of a dognosing into my face. He was a little beast, not much bigger than Tigehere," softly stroking the refugee's yellow dog as he spoke, at whichJean's eyes grew soft and bright, for with the lad it was "Love me, lovemy dog."
"Yes, it was a Red Cross dog, whose beautiful eyes seemed almost humanas they told me that help was near, and--" Philip stopped abruptly. Hehad had a weary, tired look for some time, but now a sudden palloroverspread his face, and Janet, who had been watching him nervously,stepped quickly to his side, crying, "And now you _must_ stop talking,Mr. de Brie, for you are overdoing."
Philip smiled into her blue eyes, but waved her aside as he cried,sitting up with sudden resolution, "But no, you must let me finish mystory."
"Oh, yes, do let him finish his story!" came a chorus of eager voices.
But at this moment Nathalie, whose face had suddenly brightened, cried,"Oh, no; let's wait, for a big idea has suddenly come to me, and," thegirl's eyes sparkled, "if it turns out all right it will add to ourenjoyment if we wait to hear Mr. de Brie's story some other time."
"A big idea," cried Nita, all aquiver with curiosity. "Oh, Nathalie, dotell us what it is!"
"No, not now," answered the girl. "It will keep; but in the meantime letus have a story from Mr. Darrell. You know he promised to tell us aboutLovewell, the Ranger, and now is his chance, and we are not going to lethim off."