1923 One of Ours by Willa Cather

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

long enough to look at his wrist watch.... The men behind him saw Claude sway as if he had lost his balance
and were trying to recover it. Then he plunged, face down, outside the parapet. Hicks caught his foot and
pulled him back. At the same moment the Missourians ran yelling up the communication. They threw their
machine guns up on the sand bags and went into action without an unnecessary motion.
Hicks and Bert Fuller and Oscar carried Claude forward toward the Snout, out of the way of the supports that
were pouring in. He was not bleeding very much. He smiled at them as if he were going to speak, but there
was a weak blankness in his eyes. Bert tore his shirt open; three clean bullet holes. By the time they looked at
him again, the smile had gone... the look that was Claude had faded. Hicks wiped the sweat and smoke from
his officer's face. "Thank God I never told him," he said. "Thank God for that!"
Bert and Oscar knew what Hicks meant. Gerhardt had been blown to pieces at his side when they dashed back
through the enemy barrage to find the Missourians. They were running together across the open, not able to
see much for smoke. They bumped into a section of wire entanglement, left above an old trench. David cut
round to the right, waving Hicks to follow him. The two were not ten yards apart when the shell struck. Then
Sergeant Hicks ran on alone.
XIX
The sun is sinking low, a transport is steaming slowly up the narrows with the tide. The decks are covered
with brown men. They cluster over the superstructure like bees in swarming time. Their attitudes are relaxed
and lounging. Some look thoughtful, some well contented, some are melancholy, and many are indifferent, as
they watch the shore approaching. They are not the same men who went away.
Sergeant Hicks was standing in the stern, smoking, reflecting, watching the twinkle of the red sunset upon the
cloudy water. It is more than a year since he sailed for France. The world has changed in that time, and so has
he.
One of Ours 184
Bert Fuller elbowed his way up to the Sergeant. "The doctor says Colonel Maxey is dying, He won't live to
get off the boat, much less to ride in the parade in New York tomorrow."
Hicks shrugged, as if Maxey's pneumonia were no affair of his. "Well, we should worry! We've left better
officers than him over there."
"I'm not saying we haven't. But it seems too bad, when he's so strong for fuss and feathers. He's been sending
cables about that parade for weeks."
"Huh!" Hicks elevated his eyebrows and glanced sidewise in disdain. Presently he sputtered, squinting down
at the glittering water, "Colonel Maxey, anyhow! Colonel for what Claude and Gerhardt did, I guess!" Hicks
and Bert Fuller have been helping to keep the noble fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. They have always hung
together and are usually quarrelling and grumbling at each other when they are off duty. Still, they hang
together. They are the last of their group. Nifty Jones and Oscar, God only knows why, have gone on to the
Black Sea.
During the year they were in the Rhine valley, Bert and Hicks were separated only once, and that was when
Hicks got a two weeks' leave and, by dint of persevering and fatiguing travel, went to Venice. He had no
proper passport, and the consuls and officials to whom he had appealed in his difficulties begged him to
content himself with something nearer. But he said he was going to Venice because he had always heard
about it. Bert Fuller was glad to welcome him back to Coblentz, and gave a "wine party" to celebrate his
return. They expect to keep an eye on each other. Though Bert lives on the Platte and Hicks on the Big Blue,
the automobile roads between those two rivers are excellent.
Bert is the same sweet-tempered boy he was when he left his mother's kitchen; his gravest troubles have been
frequent betrothals. But Hicks' round, chubby face has taken on a slightly cynical expression,--a look quite out
of place there. The chances of war have hurt his feelings... not that he ever wanted anything for himself. The
way in which glittering honours bump down upon the wrong heads in the army, and palms and crosses
blossom on the wrong breasts, has, as he says, thrown his compass off a few points.
What Hicks had wanted most in this world was to run a garage and repair shop with his old chum, Dell Able.
Beaufort ended all that. He means to conduct a sort of memorial shop, anyhow, with "Hicks and Able" over
the door. He wants to roll up his sleeves and look at the logical and beautiful inwards of automobiles for the
rest of his life.
As the transport enters the North River, sirens and steam whistles all along the water front begin to blow their
shrill salute to the returning soldiers. The men square their shoulders and smile knowingly at one another;
some of them look a little bored. Hicks slowly lights a cigarette and regards the end of it with an expression
which will puzzle his friends when he gets home.
By the banks of Lovely Creek, where it began, Claude Wheeler's story still goes on. To the two old women
who work together in the farmhouse, the thought of him is always there, beyond everything else, at the
farthest edge of consciousness, like the evening sun on the horizon.
Mrs. Wheeler got the word of his death one afternoon in the sitting-room, the room in which he had bade her
good-bye. She was reading when the telephone rang.
"Is this the Wheeler farm? This is the telegraph office at Frankfort. We have a message from the War
Department,--" the voice hesitated. "Isn't Mr. Wheeler there?"
"No, but you can read the message to me."
One of Ours 185
Mrs. Wheeler said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver. She felt her way softly to her chair. She had an
hour alone, when there was nothing but him in the room,--but him and the map there, which was the end of his
road. Somewhere among those perplexing names, he had found his place.
Claude's letters kept coming for weeks afterward; then came the letters from his comrades and his Colonel to
tell her all.
In the dark months that followed, when human nature looked to her uglier than it had ever done before, those
letters were Mrs. Wheeler's comfort. As she read the newspapers, she used to think about the passage of the
Red Sea, in the Bible; it seemed as if the flood of meanness and greed had been held back just long enough for
the boys to go over, and then swept down and engulfed everything that was left at home. When she can see
nothing that has come of it all but evil, she reads Claude's letters over again and reassures herself; for him the
call was clear, the cause was glorious. Never a doubt stained his bright faith. She divines so much that he did [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Podobne