Three Soldiers

  Behind the desk, crouched over a heap of typewritten reports, sat a little man with scanty sandy hair, who screwed up his eyes and smiled when Andrews approached the desk.

  “Well, did you fix it up for me?” he asked.

  “Fix what?” said Andrews.

  “Oh, I thought you were someone else.” The smile left the regimental sergeant-major’s thin lips. “What do you want?”

  “Why, Regimental Sergeant-Major, can you tell me anything about a scheme to send enlisted men to colleges over here? Can you tell me who to apply to?”

  “According to what general orders? And who told you to come and see me about it, anyway?”

  “Have you heard anything about it?”

  “No, nothing definite. I’m busy now anyway. Ask one of your own non-coms to find out about it.” He crouched once more over the papers.

  Andrews was walking towards the door, flushing with annoyance, when he saw that the man at the desk by the window was jerking his head in a peculiar manner, just in the direction of the regimental sergeant-major and then towards the door. Andrews smiled at him and nodded. Outside the door, where an orderly sat on a short bench reading a torn Saturday Evening Post, Andrews waited. The hall was part of what must have been a ballroom, for it had a much-scarred hardwood floor and big spaces of bare plaster framed by gilt- and lavender-colored mouldings, which had probably held tapestries. The partition of unplaned boards that formed other offices cut off the major part of a highly decorated ceiling where cupids with crimson-daubed bottoms swam in all attitudes in a sea of pink- and blue- and lavender-colored clouds, wreathing themselves coyly in heavy garlands of waxy hothouse flowers, while cornucopias spilling out squashy fruits gave Andrews a feeling of distinct insecurity as he looked up from below.

  “Say are you a Kappa Mu?”

  Andrews looked down suddenly and saw in front of him the man who had signalled to him in the regimental sergeant-major’s office.

  “Are you a Kappa Mu?” he asked again.

  “No, not that I know of,” stammered Andrews puzzled.

  “What school did you go to?”

  “Harvard.”

  “Harvard. … Guess we haven’t got a chapter there. … I’m from North Western. Anyway you want to go to school in France here if you can. So do I.”

  “Don’t you want to come and have a drink?”

  The man frowned, pulled his overseas cap down over his forehead, where the hair grew very low, and looked about him mysteriously.

  “Yes,” he said.

  They splashed together down the muddy village street.

  “We’ve got thirteen minutes before tattoo. … My name’s Walters, what’s yours?” He spoke in a low voice in short staccato phrases.

  “Andrews.”

  “Andrews, you’ve got to keep this dark. If everybody finds out about it we’re through. It’s a shame you’re not a Kappa Mu, but college men have got to stick together, that’s the way I look at it.”

  “Oh, I’ll keep it dark enough,” said Andrews.

  “It’s too good to be true. The general order isn’t out yet, but I’ve seen a preliminary circular. What school d’you want to go to?”

  “Sorbonne, Paris.”

  “That’s the stuff. D’you know the back room at Baboon’s?”

  Walters turned suddenly to the left up an alley, and broke through a hole in a hawthorn hedge.

  “A guy’s got to keep his eyes and ears open if he wants to get anywhere in this army,” he said.

  As they ducked in the back door of a cottage, Andrews caught a glimpse of the billowy line of a tile roof against the lighter darkness of the sky. They sat down on a bench built into a chimney where a few sticks made a splutter of flames.

  “Monsieur désire?” A red-faced girl with a baby in her arms came up to them.

  “That’s Babette; Baboon I call her,” said Walters with a laugh.

  “Chocolat,” said Walters.

  “That’ll suit me all right. It’s my treat, remember.”

  “I’m not forgetting it. Now let’s get to business. What you do is this. You write an application. I’ll make that out for you on the type-writer tomorrow and you meet me here at eight tomorrow night and I’ll give it to you. … You sign it at once and hand it in to your sergeant. See?”

  “This’ll just be a preliminary application; when the order’s out you’ll have to make another.”

  The woman, this time without the baby, appeared out of the darkness of the room with a candle and two cracked bowls from which steam rose, faint primrose-color in the candle light.

  Walters drank his bowl down at a gulp, grunted and went on talking.

  “Give me a cigarette, will you? … You’ll have to make it out darn soon too, because once the order’s out every son of a gun in the division’ll be making out to be a college man. How did you get your tip?”

  “From a fellow in Paris.”

  “You’ve been to Paris, have you?” said Walters admiringly. “Is it the way they say it is? Gee, these French are immoral. Look at this woman here. She’ll sleep with a feller soon as not. Got a baby too!”

  “But who do the applications go in to?”

  “To the colonel, or whoever he appoints to handle it. You a Catholic?”

  “No.”

  “Neither am I. That’s the hell of it. The regimental sergeant-major is.”

  “Well?”

  “I guess you haven’t noticed the way things run up at divisional headquarters. It’s a regular cathedral. Isn’t a mason in it. … But I must beat it. … Better pretend you don’t know me if you meet me on the street; see?”

  “All right.”

  Walters hurried out of the door. Andrews sat alone looking at the flutter of little flames about the pile of sticks on the hearth, while he sipped chocolate from the warm bowl held between the palms of both hands.

  He remembered a speech out of some very bad romantic play he had heard when he was very small.

  “About your head I fling … the Cross of Ro-me.”

  He started to laugh, sliding back and forth on the smooth bench which had been polished by the breeches of generations warming their feet at the fire. The red-faced woman stood with her hands on her hips looking at him in astonishment, while he laughed and laughed.

  “Mais quelle gaieté, quelle gaieté,” she kept saying.

  The straw under him rustled faintly with every sleepy movement Andrews made in his blankets. In a minute the bugle was going to blow and he was going to jump out of his blankets, throw on his clothes and fall into line for roll call in the black mud of the village street. It could-n’t be that only a month had gone by since he had got back from hospital. No, he had spent a lifetime in this village being dragged out of his warm blankets every morning by the bugle, shivering as he stood in line for roll call, shuffling in a line that moved slowly past the cookshack, shuffling along in another line to throw what was left of his food into garbage cans, to wash his mess kit in the greasy water a hundred other men had washed their mess kits in; lining up to drill, to march on along muddy roads, splattered by the endless trains of motor trucks; lining up twice more for mess, and at last being forced by another bugle into his blankets again to sleep heavily while a smell hung in his nostrils of sweating woolen clothing and breathed-out air and dusty blankets. In a minute the bugle was going to blow, to snatch him out of even these miserable thoughts, and throw him into an automaton under other men’s orders. Childish spiteful desires surged into his mind. If the bugler would only die. He could picture him, a little man with a broad face and putty-colored cheeks, a small rusty mustache and bow-legs lying like a calf on a marble slab in a butcher’s shop on top of his blankets. What nonsense! There were other buglers. He wondered how many buglers there were in the army. He could picture them all, in dirty little villages, in stone barracks, in towns, in great camps that served the country for miles with rows of black warehouses and narrow barrack buildings standing with their feet a little apart; gi
ving their little brass bugles a preliminary tap before putting out their cheeks and blowing in them and stealing a million and a half (or was it two million or three million) lives, and throwing the warm sentient bodies into coarse automatons who must be kept busy, lest they grow restive, till killing time began again.

  The bugle blew. With the last jaunty notes, a stir went through the barn.

  Corporal Chrisfield stood on the ladder that led up from the yard, his head on a level with the floor shouting:

  “Shake it up, fellers! If a guy’s late to roll call, it’s K.P. for a week.”

  As Andrews, while buttoning his tunic, passed him on the ladder, he whispered:

  “Tell me we’re going to see service again, Andy … Army o’ Occupation.”

  While he stood stiffly at attention waiting to answer when the sergeant called his name, Andrews’s mind was whirling in crazy circles of anxiety. What if they should leave before the General Order came on the University plan? The application would certainly be lost in the confusion of moving the Division, and he would be condemned to keep up this life for more dreary weeks and months. Would any years of work and happiness in some future existence make up for the humiliating agony of this servitude?

  “Dismissed!”

  He ran up the ladder to fetch his mess kit and in a few minutes was in line again in the rutted village street where the grey houses were just forming outlines as light crept slowly into the leaden sky, while a faint odor of bacon and coffee came to him, making him eager for food, eager to drown his thoughts in the heaviness of swiftly-eaten greasy food and in the warmth of watery coffee gulped down out of a tin-curved cup. He was telling himself desperately that he must do something—that he must make an effort to save himself, that he must fight against the deadening routine that numbed him.

  Later, while he was sweeping the rough board floor of the company’s quarters, the theme came to him which had come to him long ago, in a former incarnation it seemed, when he was smearing windows with soap from a gritty sponge along the endless side of the barracks in the training camp. Time and time again in the past year he had thought of it, and dreamed of weaving it into a fabric of sound which would express the trudging monotony of days bowed under the yoke. “Under the Yoke”; that would be a title for it. He imagined the sharp tap of the conductor’s baton, the silence of a crowded hall, the first notes rasping bitterly upon the tense ears of men and women. But as he tried to concentrate his mind on the music, other things intruded upon it, blurred it. He kept feeling the rhythm of the Queen of Sheba slipping from the shoulders of her gaudily caparisoned elephant, advancing towards him through the torchlight, putting her hand, fantastic with rings and long gilded fingernails, upon his shoulders so that ripples of delight, at all the voluptuous images of his desire, went through his whole body, making it quiver like a flame with yearning for unimaginable things. It all muddled into fantastic gibberish—into sounds of horns and trombones and double basses blown off key while a piccolo shrilled the first bars of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

  He had stopped sweeping and looked about him dazedly. He was alone. Outside, he heard a sharp voice call “Attenshun!” He ran down the ladder and fell in at the end of the line under the angry glare of the lieutenant’s small eyes, which were placed very close together on either side of a lean nose, black and hard, like the eyes of a crab.

  The company marched off through the mud to the drill field.

  After retreat Andrews knocked at the door at the back of the Y.M.C.A., but as there was no reply, he strode off with a long, determined stride to Sheffield’s room.

  In the moment that elapsed between his knock and an answer, he could feel his heart thumping. A little sweat broke out on his temples.

  “Why, what’s the matter, boy? You look all wrought up,” said Sheffield, holding the door half open, and blocking, with his lean form, entrance to the room.

  “May I come in? I want to talk to you,” said Andrews.

  “Oh, I suppose it’ll be all right. … You see I have an officer with me …” then there was a flutter in Sheffield’s voice. “Oh, do come in”; he went on, with sudden enthusiasm. “Lieutenant Bleezer is fond of music too. … Lieutenant, this is the boy I was telling you about. We must get him to play for us. If he had the opportunities, I am sure he’d be a famous musician.”

  Lieutenant Bleezer was a dark youth with a hooked nose and pincenez. His tunic was unbuttoned and he held a cigar in his hand. He smiled in an evident attempt to put this enlisted man at his ease.

  “Yes, I am very fond of music, modern music,” he said, leaning against the mantelpiece. “Are you a musician by profession?”

  “Not exactly … nearly.” Andrews thrust his hands into the bottoms of his trouser pockets and looked from one to the other with a certain defiance.

  “I suppose you’ve played in some orchestra? How is it you are not in the regimental band?”

  “No, except the Pierian.”

  “The Pierian? Were you at Harvard?”

  Andrews nodded.

  “So was I.”

  “Isn’t that a coincidence?” said Sheffield. “I’m so glad I just insisted on your coming in.”

  “What year were you?” asked Lieutenant Bleezer, with a faint change of tone, drawing a finger along his scant black moustache.

  “Fifteen.”

  “I haven’t graduated yet,” said the lieutenant with a laugh.

  “What I wanted to ask you, Mr. Sheffield. …”

  “Oh, my boy; my boy, you know you’ve known me long enough to call me Spence,” broke in Sheffield.

  “I want to know,” went on Andrews speaking slowly, “can you help me to get put on the list to be sent to the University of Paris? … I know that a list has been made out, although the General Order has not come yet. I am disliked by most of the non-coms and I don’t see how I can get on without somebody’s help … I simply can’t go this life any longer.” Andrews closed his lips firmly and looked at the ground, his face flushing.

  “Well, a man of your attainments certainly ought to go,” said Lieutenant Bleezer, with a faint tremor of hesitation in his voice. “I’m going to Oxford myself.”

  “Trust me, my boy,” said Sheffield. “I’ll fix it up for you, I promise. Let’s shake hands on it.” He seized Andrews’s hand and pressed it warmly in a moist palm. “If it’s within human power, within human power,” he added.

  “Well, I must go,” said Lieutenant Bleezer, suddenly striding to the door. “I promised the Marquise I’d drop in. Good-bye. … Take a cigar, won’t you?” He held out three cigars in the direction of Andrews.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Oh, don’t you think the old aristocracy of France is just too wonderful? Lieutenant Bleezer goes almost every evening to call on the Marquise de Rompemouville. He says she is just too spirituelle for words. … He often meets the Commanding Officer there.”

  Andrews had dropped into a chair and sat with his face buried in his hands, looking through his fingers at the fire, where a few white fingers of flame were clutching intermittently at a grey beech log. His mind was searching desperately for expedients.

  He got to his feet and shouted shrilly:

  “I can’t go this life any more, do you hear that? No possible future is worth all this. If I can get to Paris, all right. If not, I’ll desert and damn the consequences.”

  “But I’ve already promised I’ll do all I can. …”

  “Well, do it now,” interrupted Andrews brutally.

  “All right, I’ll go and see the colonel and tell him what a great musician you are.”

  “Let’s go together, now.”

  “But that’ld look queer, dear boy.”

  “I don’t give a damn, come along. … You can talk to him. You seem to be thick with all the officers.”

  “You must wait till I tidy up,” said Sheffield.

  “All right.”

  Andrews strode up and down in the mud in front of the house, snappin
g his fingers with impatience, until Sheffield came out, then they walked off in silence.

  “Now wait outside a minute,” whispered Sheffield when they came to the white house with bare grapevines over the front, where the colonel lived.

  After a wait, Andrews found himself at the door of a brilliantly-lighted drawing room. There was a dense smell of cigar smoke. The colonel, an elderly man with a benevolent beard, stood before him with a coffee cup in his hand. Andrews saluted punctiliously.

  “They tell me you are quite a pianist. … Sorry I didn’t know it before,” said the colonel in a kindly tone. “You want to go to Paris to study under this new scheme?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What a shame I didn’t know before. The list of the men going is all made out. … Of course perhaps at the last minute … if somebody else doesn’t go … your name can go in.”

  The colonel smiled graciously and turned back into the room.

  “Thank you, Colonel,” said Andrews, saluting.

  Without a word to Sheffield, he strode off down the dark village street towards his quarters.

  Andrews stood on the broad village street, where the mud was nearly dry, and a wind streaked with warmth ruffled the few puddles; he was looking into the window of the café to see if there was anyone he knew inside from whom he could borrow money for a drink. It was two months since he had had any pay, and his pockets were empty. The sun had just set on a premature spring afternoon, flooding the sky and the grey houses and the tumultuous tiled roofs with warm violet light. The faint premonition of the stirring of life in the cold earth, that came to Andrews with every breath he drew of the sparkling wind, stung his dull boredom to fury. It was the first of March, he was telling himself over and over again. The fifteenth of February, he had expected to be in Paris, free, or half-free; at least able to work. It was the first of March and here he was still helpless, still tied to the monotonous wheel of routine, incapable of any real effort, spending his spare time wandering like a lost dog up and down this muddy street, from the Y.M.C.A. hut at one end of the village to the church and the fountain in the middle, and to the Divisional Headquarters at the other end, then back again, looking list-lessly into windows, staring in people’s faces without seeing them. He had given up all hope of being sent to Paris. He had given up thinking about it or about anything; the same dull irritation of despair droned constantly in his head, grinding round and round like a broken phonograph record.