# The Red Book Magazine/Volume 30/Number 4/All the Comrades Were There

Extracted from Red Book magazine, 1918 Feb, pp. 23–27, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150, 151. Accompanying illustrations by Harvey Dunn may be omitted.
The author of this story considers it the best he ever wrote—and he has written with distinction for years. He here presents vividly and poignantly the drama of a man you might never have noticed.
ALL the COMRADES WERE THERE
By ARTHUR TRAIN
Illustrated by Harvey Dunn
JULES VERCEL, arrayed in a magnificent maroon overcoat trimmed with Astrakhan, was standing just inside the doorway of Mat Conway's select garage on Seventy-fifth Street, trying to read the words scrawled in chalk upon the call-board. He was a wiry little man with an exaggerated black mustache, and in his overcoat and kepi he looked quite fierce and military, in spite of the fact that he was in livery and not in uniform.
It was nearly nine o'clock—time for Jules to crank up the big Renault and take his mistress to the opera; but he made no move toward getting out the car. He was waiting for Patrick the footman, who was punctual to the minute—more accurate than the garage clock,—and who lived only a few doors around the corner in the fine new apartment-house on Third Avenue. The fact was that without Patrick he could not start very well, if at all; for Jules could no longer read the words on the call-board—or even be sure of the time by the clock above it, for his eyes had been gradually going back on him for several years now, and it required great adroitness to conceal the fact from his employer and his associates in the garage. So he did not realize to-night that Patrick was already ten minutes late. Once Jules had maneuvered the car through door, he always managed to get along well enough, for it had not been very difficult to inculcate in Patrick the unconscious habit of telling him where to go and to stop. Besides, Jules could see big things very well. To-night, however, the words on the board were the merest blur.
“What's the matter? Aren't you going out to-night?” inquired Mat, emerging from beneath a Delauney Belleville.
“Sure,” answered Jules nonchalantly. He made an elaborate display of taking out his watch and examining it. “Pat has not come.”
“Better go round and find out what's the trouble,” advised the owner of the garage. “It's getting late.”
“He will come,” Jules assured him. “He is always on time.” He laughed nervously. “Isn't that so, eh?”
“But your order is for nine o'clock and it's ten minutes past already,” protested Mat. He flashed a sudden glance at the little Frenchman.
Jules caught his breath, and his heart began to pound. The trouble that had originally disqualified him for service in the army had progressed until now any unusual exertion or excitement was inevitably accompanied by pain and palpitation.
“Sacré nom!” he muttered, biting his mustache. He steadied himself with his hand against the door and gazed helplessly at Mat's good-natured face.
“I don't mind running round for you,” remarked the garage man. “That overcoat must weigh a ton.” He was very fond of Jules.
“Merci bien!” Jules started to add something else in French but checked himself. In moments of agitation he reverted to his own language. But Mat had already gone.
“Sacré nom!” repeated Jules, and the sweat broke out on his forehead so that he took off his kepi. Suppose something should really be the matter with Patrick! If he should be too ill to go out! Jules groped for the chair beside the petrol-tank and sank into it stolidly. What if Patrick did not come! It would be the end. Thank the good God that little Alexis, his nephew, no longer needed money to be educated—that the war had made him a major in the artillery already at twenty-two.
Jules fumbled for his watch, pried open the back and tried to make out the features of the boy on the inside of the cover. He knew that he could not do so, but to try was all that was left to him. It made him feel a little nearer the lad—man, rather. By this time Alexis surely must be a big fellow! He wondered where he was—Verdun, probably. And all his friends who had gone back! There were three chauffeurs just from that one garage.
“Tous les copains sont là!” he murmured.
Mat's returning footsteps brought him to with a jerk.
“Patrick's been taken to the hospital!” he called from the curb. “'Sgot to have his appendix out! Katie's gone with him. The kid told me—she's the only one there. Say, you better get a move on!”
Jules staggered unsteadily to his feet.
“Anything the matter with you?” asked Mat sympathetically.
“Poor Patrick!” stammered Jules in explanation.
“Oh, he'll come through all right!” returned Mat. He could not help feeling that there was something the matter with Vercel, but he couldn't quite make out what.
The chauffeur had walked heavily to the hood of the Renault and was reaching for the crank. She always was hard on the ignition. In Jules' movements there was a suggestion of age—a strange inelasticity.
“Here!” exclaimed Mat roughly. “Get up in your seat. I'll crank her up for you.”
He turned quickly to make sure both street-doors were open and then gave the handle a quick, vigorous twist. Instantly a roar filled the garage, amidst which could be heard the grinding of gears.
“All right!” yelled Mat above the noise, leaping to one side.
Jules let in the clutch, and the car started forward. As well as he could, he steered for the middle of the opening.
“Left!” shouted Mat. “Left!”
It was too late. There was a sound of ripping ironwork, and splintering wood as the right-hand fender struck the door-post. The Renault hung fire for a moment, tore herself free and jumped out into the street with a crumpled wing. Then she stopped, backed swiftly, turned and disappeared around the corner of Lexington Avenue, smoke pouring from her exhaust. It was easy enough for Jules to find the house, for even if it had not had a white marble front, he could have gone there with his eyes shut.
“Holy mackerel!” gasped Mat, examining critically the two-inch strip that had been split off the doorpost, “If I didn't know he never took a thing, I'd almost think he'd been drinking.”
Mr. and Mrs. Amos Hollinsbee, with two friends, had been standing impatiently in their front hall for nearly ten minutes before the butler announced that their car was outside. He had already telephoned twice to the garage without eliciting any response, owing to Mat's absence while looking up Patrick. Now the party made a hasty if properly haughty exit.
“This must not occur again, Jules!” remarked Mrs, Hollinsbee severely, pausing with one satin-slippered foot on the running-board as she lifted her dress. “You are nearly fifteen minutes late. And where is Patrick?”
Jules touched his cap.
“Patrick is sick and has gone to the hospital, madame. I am very sorry. It could not be helped.”
“I need not have been kept waiting!” answered his mistress curtly. “I am sorry about Patrick, but that is no excuse. Go to the opera—the Broadway entrance. We have not time to go around by Seventh Avenue!”
“Oui, madame!” answered Jules, saluting again. “I am very sorry, madame!” he added. He felt a momentary relief. Luckily, as the fender was on the other side of the car, its condition for the time had escaped notice. Also it would be much easier for him to go straight down Broadway than to take the complicated route necessary to arrive at the side entrance of the opera-house.
The butler slammed the door, and Jules, peering through the wind-shield, cautiously let in the clutch and started toward Park Avenue. He surely would be able to drive the car safely to the Metropolitan.....
Nobody at Conway's garage knew exactly how old Jules Vercel was. He passed for about forty, in spite of the wrinkles which close inspection revealed around the corners of his eyes. But of course he would hardly care to acknowledge fifty-five years if applying for a chauffeur's job, so Jules skillfully dyed his hair, mustache and eyebrows and consistently referred to himself as thirty-nine—forty on his next birthday, to be strictly accurate.
Jules had been just ten when the Prussians had poured over the border into his native Alsace. He remembered that day more vividly than anything else in his life. Most of the men in the town had gone away to join the army, but a few who had come from other places trying to find their regiments had hidden themselves in the vineyards. They had intended no resistance; their only thought had been to escape detection. But one of them—a victim of ague—had gone out of his head with the heat and staggering out into the road, had fired his gun into the air. In a moment he had been shot down and mutilated with bayonets, while detachments of Prussians had dashed into the vines on either side of the road shooting whomever they found there.
Thus had died Jules' grandfather, who had courageously continued at his spading until struck down by a bullet. It appeared that that single shot had frightened the invaders almost out of their senses. Then had come the tragedy of the town. Its inhabitants had done nothing—unless to give water and bread to wandering sons of France be a military offense, but the shot of one crazy man had been an excuse to stamp them all as franc-tireurs.
Jules and his little sweetheart Nanette Duchaux, the daughter of the pastry-cook, who had been walking home from school together, had heard the shooting, and ignorant of its significance, had run from the hill down to the big poplar trees at the entrance of the town. They had seen dust down the road, puffs of smoke here and there among the vineyards, and heard the intermittent crack of the rifles.
“What is it, Jules? What is it?” little Nanette had asked, clinging to his arm. Before he could answer, something had struck her a violent blow between the shoulders, and she had sunk in a heap motionless at his feet, blood pouring from her mouth. For a moment Jules' world had turned black—then he had rushed screaming into the road just as the vanguard of the Prussians appeared around the turn. At their head had stalked a gigantic sergeant, the kindly father of a family of boys back in Posen. He had seen only another barelegged boy like his nine-year-old Albrecht, screaming in the road and shaking a school geography at him. Then Jules had rushed at him, striking at him with his book, biting, kicking and always screaming. The sergeant had not seen the killing of Nanette. He was amused at Jules; this boy was a little fighter. So he had taken him by the waistband of his breeches, just as he would have taken Albrecht, and lifting him bodily off the ground, had carried him along sprawling in the air to the main square of the town, where he had let the boy go.
That had been Jules' awakening to manhood. For forty years he had carried a smoldering torment of revenge and hatred inside his breast—waiting, hoping, praying for the day when he could avenge Alsace, his grandfather and Nanette. Once he thought the time had come,—the summer of Agadir,—and he had hurried to the consulate to volunteer for enlistment; but they had told him that was too old, that he had angina pectoris and that his sight was going.
Then broke the heart of Jules Vercel. From that moment his hopes were centered in little Alexis, the only son of his widowed sister Martha—the boy whose picture he carried inside his watch. Jules had paid for his education, and the lad had done well and had graduated with honors from St. Cyr. Now he was at the front.
Jules' three brothers—Henri, Pierre and Gaspard—had been brought up in France. But now his brothers were dead—all three of them killed by shrapnel within the first six weeks. And he could not go! He alone of the lot,—he the head of the family,—must remain behind in America while France poured out her blood in a never-ceasing, ever-broadening torrent. “All the comrades were there”—all had either died for France already or were fighting and suffering in the trenches, while he was driving a rich woman around in an automobile, an automobile lined with cretonne, decorated with artificial flowers and redolent of musk. What did they think of him out there? What did the boys in the different garages think of him?
Not that he had not done what he could! Every penny that was not actually needed for his board and lodging he sent every month to Martha—for Alexis and his mother and for France. But if he lost his job, what could he do for France?
THERE was a drug-store on the corner, with green and red bottles in the window; Jules steered for that and made Fifth Avenue in safety. From that point it was comparatively easy for him to reach Forty-second Street since the theater rush was over and the new street-lamps were big and bright. Only once or twice he hesitated, for the red tail-lights on the motors in front of him seemed very tiny, but at last he turned without mishap into Broadway. He could not very well miss the opera-house—all covered over with lights and with so big an entrance. He joined the slowly crawling line of motors, stopping when it stopped and then grinding heavily along on low gear. There it was! His hazardous journey was safely over. He stopped in front of the glaring lights and leaped down to open the door of the motor, intending to explain again how inevitable it was that he should have been late.
Mr. Hollinsbee, bending his head so as to protect his hat, cautiously emerged and stopped midway just as Jules touched his cap.
“Mrs. Hollinsbee told you to go to the Metropolitan Opera House!” he snapped, backing into the motor again. “Didn't you hear her?”
“Oui, m'sieur,” stammered Jules. “L'opéra—certainement! What could be the matter?”
“Well, this isn't the opera—it's the Broadway Theater!” retorted his employer icily. “Go where you're told.”
Slowly Jules walked round the motor and climbed into his seat. The long lines of lights heaved up and down like an undulating sea. What was this that he had done! Just ahead on the same side of the street, a block or two further on, was another cluster of lights, another line of motors. Of course that was the opera. But what explanation was possible? He did not descend when he brought the car to a standstill in front of the entrance, but let the big negro open the door instead. Mr. Hollinsbee emerged with the gentleman; the other lady followed, and the three started across the sidewalk together, as if by prearrangement. Then Mrs. Hollinsbee, holding herself very stiff, stepped down and turning to Jules, said very distinctly and with obvious significance:
“You need not come back for us. We shall take a taxi home from the opera.”
“Oui, madame!” faintly answered Jules, touching his cap. “Mais—” But Mrs. Hollinsbee was not waiting for explanations.
Her husband was waiting to help her off with her opera-cloak in the back of their box.
“It's the first time I ever knew him to be like that,” he said regretfully. “Don't you think you might give him another chance? He's been very good—for three years.”
“You're mistaken. It isn't the first time,” she answered with an air of finality. “I've noticed something queer about him for the last six months. I didn't suspect him at first, because his skin is so clear and he speaks so distinctly. But lately I've noticed occasionally that his eyes look bleary. It's too bad.”
Hollinsbee sighed.
Through the curtains came the chorus of the “Marseillaise at the conclusion of the first act of “Sans Gêne.”
Besides,” added his wife scornfully, “there must be something wrong with any Frenchman who doesn't go back to fight for his country.” She parted the curtains and made her entry into the box just as the colors of France were being carried triumphantly across the stage.
By a half-instinctive sort of dead reckoning, or perhaps guided by St. Christopher, Jules managed to work the Renault gradually back to the garage. Conway was waiting to give him a black-bordered letter which had come earlier in the day and had been overlooked. The postman had brought three others just like it in the last few months. Mat didn't want anybody to give it to Jules but himself—they might not know what to say or how to say it. Jules left the car in the street and dragged himself wearily inside.
“Don't you feel well?” asked Conway sympathetically. “Shall I bring her in for you?”
Jules nodded. His face showed no emotion.
“I lose my job,” he said, staring at Mat.
“What for?” demanded Conway. “Say, you're kiddin' me, aint you? You're the best chauffeur in the place. Anyhow you can get another job to-morrow if you want it.”
Jules shook his head.
“I will get no more job,” he answered in a toneless voice. “I cannot see any more—except the very big things in the day and the very bright things in the night, and I cannot tell which is which. No, I cannot drive any more.”
“Oh, well! Cheer up! Things aint always so bad as they look. Now, some doctor, maybe—”
“The doctor told me long ago,” said Jules.
Mat fingered nervously the black-bordered letter in his pocket. It was a fine time to deliver a letter like that! He walked back once to the end of the garage trying to make up his mind. Then he turned to Jules and said:
“Jules, I've got a letter for you.”
He tried to put a lot of friendliness and sympathy into his voice, as they did on the stage.
“Yes,” answered Jules.
Mat fished it out awkwardly and looked away.
“Will you read it to me?” asked Jules, handing it back after a moment. “I cannot read any longer.”
“It's got black on it,” muttered Conway.
“That I can see,” replied Jules.
Mat stepped over to the light and unfolded the letter.
“It begins ‘Mon cher Jules,'” he said.
“Yes,” answered Jules steadily, “they all begin that way. That is ‘My dear Jules.'”
Conway cleared his throat.
“Notre Alexis est mort,” he spelled out haltingly. He looked up quickly at Jules. Alexis might be a near relative. But Jules' expression did not change. He had drawn himself up and was gazing fixedly over Mat's shoulder—as if he were seeing things a long way off.
“Our Alexis is dead!” repeated Jules mechanically.
“Mais tout va bien pour la France!” went on Mat.
Jules stiffened and threw up his hand at the salute.
“But all goes well for France!” he said, “You need not read the rest. Our Alexis is dead—but all goes well for France! It is well.”
THE anticipated summons to go around to the house to see Mr. Hollinsbee came by telephone the next morning at ee o'clock.
“Er—Jules,” began Mr. Hollinsbee awkwardly, “after what happened last hight I—er—we—shall be obliged to let you go. It was very inconsiderate for you to—er—be like that at this time Of year when it is so hard to get a chauffeur—and Patrick sick too. I don't know what Mrs. Hollinsbee will do! However, it would be quite impossible to keep you—quite impossible! I trust that you understand that, yourself?”
“Oui, m'sieur,” answered Jules simply. “I understand. I-am sorry, m'sieur.”
He had thought over the whole situation carefully during the night. Should Mr. Hollinsbee suspect the truth about his eyes, he would be obliged to make some allusion to the facts in his reference, which would thereupon become valueless. But if his employer supposed merely that he had been drinking, he might be able to find another place. So he made no protest. Mr. Hollinsbee was a little disconcerted by Jules' ready acquiescence.
“Oh!” he stammered. “Well, I'm glad you see it that way! Now, as I am discharging you for cause, I am not, of course, obliged to pay you after last night. However, I sha'n't be technical. Here are twenty dollars in addition to what I owe you.” .
“Merci, m'sieur,” said Jules. “Will not m'sieur deduct something for the mud-guard which was damaged?”
“Mud-guard?” inquired his ex-employer. “Oh, that's all right. We'll say nothing about that. Let it go!”
“Merci, m'sieur,” repeated Jules.
There was a momentary silence while Mr. Hollinsbee peeled the bills from a roll which he took from his pocket. Then he produced an envelope and handed it to Jules with the money,
“And here is your recommendation,” he added in a relieved tone. “It is a good one, considering what has happened. Only I don't make any reference in it to temperance—I couldn't truthfully say you were sober, you know, so I didn't say anything. No doubt you can explain it as an oversight, if anyone notices it!” he continued half jocularly.
Jules made no reply.
“Well!” remarked Mr. Hollinsbee with great cheerfulness, lighting a cigarette. “Sorry to lose you! No hard feeling, I hope! Good luck to you!”
JULES made his way mechanically back to the garage. It was still early in the month, and he had received in all less than fifty dollars. His expenses with the French family with which he boarded were about eight dollars a week. He could surely get along for five or six weeks, and during that time he ought to be able to find another place. He returned to his boarding-place and carefully pressed his only threadbare suit of blue serge and asked Conway to make him up a list of possible places from the want-columns of the evening papers.
It was late in the season, however, and it seemed as if few families wanted chauffeurs. Moreover, such persons as needed one did not keep a footman—a necessary condition in the case of Jules. Once or twice when it seemed as if he were on the point of being successful, this only stood in the way.
“Pardon, madame,” he would say timidly, at the conclusion of an interview when everything seemed to have been arranged. “May I ask if madame employs a footman?”
And the lady would look at him in surprise and reply rather coldly:
“Why, no, I do not keep a footman. What difference can that possibly make?”
But Jules would answer regretfully:
“My English, madame, is not very good. A footman would make it much easier for me at first. I think perhaps I had better not take the place, madame.”
And he would bow himself out, while the lady would remark indignantly:
“What a pretentious man! Too good for his job! I am well rid of him!'
Around the garage Conway encouraged him as best he could, but after three weeks Jules began to lose hope. He had been obliged to buy a new pair of shoes and an overcoat, which were absolutely necessary, and he had only fourteen dollars left. Still he pursued his search, chasing prospective employers from house to office, and waiting long hours in front halls for ladies who forgot their appointments with him.
He began to feel old and discouraged, and when the bottle of dye had been used up and he could not afford to buy another, a curious change manifested itself in his appearance: his once jet-black hair, mustache and eyebrows became a ludicrous mottled gray. Whereas, hitherto, he had been a model of smartness, the type of alert, trim chauffeur eagerly sought after by women of fashion, he now, since the dimness of his eyes made it hard for him to keep as neat as before, became shabby and unkempt; and because he was always tired from walking—being without money for carfare—he acquired a dispirited, hopeless air which did not impress people favorably. He looked, in fact, nearer sixty-five than the fifty-five that he was. Yet he kept courageously upon his quest.
At last the day came when he had no more money left, and Mat, suspecting the truth, offered him, the job of washer in the garage, a job just left vacant by a young Scotchman who had volunteered with the Canadian troops. Jules accepted the place with alacrity and gratitude. Any sort of regular occupation would be a godsend to him. For a while all went well. He did not mind taking the night-shift and staying up until three in the morning, and he worked hard and was almost happy. His eyesight was quite good enough to enable him to wash the cars very well. Indeed, Mat said they had never looked so bright and clean. But one night when he was all alone in the garage, it became necessary for him to shift the cars about so that he could get at one which stood in a corner. Jules found that by exerting all his force he could manage to shove them around so as to reach the one he wanted. Suddenly there came a buzzing in his ears, the lights faded, and he fell to the floor with his heart pumping and the sweat pouring from his face. He dared not get up for a long time, and when he did it was only to crawl into a chair and sit there weakly until morning.
When Mat came down to open the garage, Jules was huddled up, his feet on one of the rungs of the chair and his chin on his knees, and in the gray light with his pallid face and mottled mustache he looked very ill indeed. Mat saw at a glance that he had no business to be there—and besides, the cars had not been washed. He would have to get busy and clean them himself. But he laid a kindly hand on Jules' shoulder and said:
“You hadn't ought to be here. You go home—see? And go to bed!”
“But the cars are not washed!” expostulated Jules. “I must do my work!”
“Aw, rats!” replied Mat. “Cut it out! You'll be all right to-morrow. It wont hurt them cars not to be washed, for once.”
AS soon as Jules had gone, Mat put on his overalls and proceeded to do the work that the other could not do. Jules feebly dragged himself back to his boarding-place and lay down on his cot. His landlady brought him hot coffee and toast; and by noon he felt better—almost himself. Outside on the street he could hear the newsboys calling an extra. Something had happened “out there.” Whether victory or defeat, he had no share in it. If only he too could die for France instead of gradually going to pieces, alone, like this!
But he determined to stick it out. He would be more careful about moving the cars, and then probably the faintness would not come again. So at ten o'clock that evening he presented himself as usual at the garage and climbed into his borrowed rubber boots, looking, as one of the chauffeurs remarked, “like Jeff.” Mat was already at work on the cars.
“Hello!” he said genially. “Didn't expect you back so soon! Glad you're all right. Thought sure we wouldn't see you before to-morrow! Just put some air in that tire, will you?”
Jules was only too delighted to do anything that he could, and when he had finished blowing up the tire, Conway set him at cleaning some spark-plugs with gasoline and an old toothbrush. By twelve o'clock the cars were all done except one which had not yet come in, and Jules had not grasped the subterfuge by which Conway had managed to do all his work for him. The garage man yawned loudly and looked at the clock.
“Gettin' along toward mornin!” said he. “You go along home. The day man can wash the Pierce when she blows in! Beat it now!”
“But who will open the garage the Pierce comes?” demanded Jules, suspiciously.
“Sure, he'll ring, wont he?” retorted Conway. “And then I'll come down. No use your stayin' here just for that.”
Jules turned away. Did Conway intend to keep him on but not to allow him to do any work? Mat was a good boy! But it would not do. He could not be an object of charity. He would try it one more night and see.
He spent the next day in bed and went early to the garage—as soon as the day-wash had gone off. Once more he got into the rubber boots, and he was just going to turn the hose on a big limousine when one of the chauffeurs called out:
“Say, Jooles, Mat said for me to tell you not to wash any cars until he he came in. There's a muffler on the Mercedes needs fixin'. He wants you to mend it.”
Jules shuddered. So it was true. Mat thought he was no good. He was not be allowed to wash any more. Mat would go on cleaning the cars for him long as he stayed there—and paying him, too. He mended the muffler on the Mercedes and then took off the boots and got into his own clothes. It was a Tuesday, and Mat had paid him up to Saturday night. He had earned nothing worth speaking of during the last three days.
“You tell Mat I got a job,” he said to the big chauffeur who had transmitted the order about the muffler. “Tell him good-by for me. So long, boys!”
He walked a little unsteadily, but his head was erect, and he smiled as he crossed the threshold.
JULES slept in his room for the last time that night; early in the morning he arose and made a bundle of his few possessions. He had paid his board a week in advance, and there was nothing to keep him. He must go somewhere else where no one would feel obliged to look after him—like Mat. There was still work that he could do. He wrapped everything up into a parcel and made his way downstairs before anybody was up. He wanted no more good-bys and the consequent explanations.
It was a beautiful day, almost spring like, in spite of the patches of snow here and there upon the asphalt, and he started along Park Avenue whistling, intending to buy a roll at the bakers near Sixty-fourth Street. He had some unformulated plans of going to see the French consul afterward. The baker was not open; but over the door—his heart leaped,—softly fluttering in the morning breeze, hung the flag of his beloved France. Jules stopped, electrified; his breast heaved; tears rushed to his dim eyes. With quivering lips he doffed his bicycle-cap. The flag of France! His flag! Like himself, in a foreign land! He stood there very still for a time. Was this as near as he would ever come to fighting for his flag? Must he wander uselessly around while they were all dying over there? Tous les copains! Was there nothing—nothing he could do, if not to help, at least to show his loyalty to the cause?
A few blocks away on Sixty-seventh Street a swarm of khaki-clad figures streaming out from a red brick (illegible text) and presently a band, also in khaki, began to play “Tipperary.” Soldiers. Jules hurried toward them as they formed in marching order. They were hardly more than boys, a militia regiment going on a “hike,” but they were the nearest approach to real soldiers that he had seen since the war started. They had full field-equipment, and besides the band, there was a heavily loaded wagon or two of supplies, and an ambulance.
Soon the band struck up, “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Own Kit-bag,” and the companies swung forward. After them rumbled the wagons. Last of all came Jules, lugging his bundle, drawn by an invisible, irresistible force, a lone camp-follower bound no one knew or cared whither, not even himself, so long as he was marching—marching. The strains of the band, the shriek of the fifes and. the rattle of the drums excited his spirit so that he no longer felt any fatigue or hunger, and in his imagination the boys in khaki became the poilus of his native land, and their flag the flag of France.
The regiment marched briskly up Park Avenue, turned into One Hundred and Tenth Street, thence into St. Nicholas Avenue, and at last arrived at the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street Ferry, where they boarded the ferryboat for Fort Lee. After them toiled Jules. One noticing that he looked pale, handed him a sandwich. Jules had hardly finished eating it before the boat had reached the Jersey side and the regiment was falling in again. Once more the roll of the drums, the whistle of the fifes; once more the chup-chup-chup of hundreds of feet, and the column was striding of away with little Jules tagging on behind. A half-mile or so from the ferry they began to climb a steep hill, and here Jules fell back. They were so young, and they marched so fast! He could not hope to keep up with them. The sound of the fifes got fainter and fainter. Soon at a turn of the hill they vanished.
JULES discovered that he was very tired and sat down heavily upon a whitewashed wall at the side of the road. His heart was thumping, and his eyesight was even more blurred than usual. Across the road there was some sort of shop, and presently a man with a black mustache came to the door and nodded to him.
“Hello!” said the man in a strangely familiar voice. “Some climb. Where are you going? Want a taxi?”
Jules peered at him, trying to recognize his features.
“Taxi!” He shrugged his shoulders. “I do not want a taxi—unless a job to drive one. Do you want a chauffeur?”
“No,” answered the other. “Out of a job?”
Jules nodded. He was trying to remember that voice. He arose and crossed the road. Over the door in large letters was painted the word Garage.
“How are you, Toni?” he said quietly.
The other looked at him, puzzled.
“How do you know my name?” he asked.
“You are Toni Santarosa, answered Jules. “Do you not remember me?”
“I never saw you before!” replied the man.
“Do you recall when you were [day] chauffeur at Madam Gibson's? I am Jules Vercel and drove Mrs. Hollinsbee.”
He held out his hand with a faint smile.
Toni shook his head.
“You are not Jules,” he declared almost roughly.
“It is true. I am,” protested Jules. “But no doubt I have changed a trifle. The dye has come off my mustache.”
Toni examined his former acquaintance with attention.
“Yes,” he admitted at length, “you are Jules Vercel, but you are not the Jules I used to know. I am sorry you are in hard luck. I cannot give you a job, but I can let you sleep under the stairs in the stock-room, and if you like, you can work for your board. I own this garage!” he added proudly.
The garage stood near the top of a long hill, and in addition to a general repair business Toni conducted a sort of livery between Fort Lee and the ferry. Jules found himself kept busy washing up the nondescript, dilapidated cars, pumping up tires and making himself generally useful. Toni rigged up a bunk for him under the stairs, and he took his meals with the family. He was not unhappy, but it was a hard life, and as he received no pay, he gradually became more and more bedraggled.
Sunday was his hardest day, for then the cars came roaring up the hill in endless succession, many of them stopping for oil, gas or repairs. But on Monday things were apt to be easier, and he occasionally got a chance to stroll off by himself.
It was on one of these off Mondays that Jules, having cleaned up a bit, wandered over the hill to rest and think. Ever since he had encountered the soldier-boys, the sound of the fife and drum had not left his head. Always in his dreams he saw and heard soldiers marching, chup-chup-chup, marching up the hill, with the wagons rumbling on behind; but their faces were the faces of his friends,—“les copains” of whom he was always talking to himself,—and their uniforms were the blue-gray uniforms of France. Generally they joked and laughed as they marched, and often they all broke out singing “Tipperairee” or “Auprès de ma blonde.”
Sometimes Jules saw his brothers, and they turned and beckoned to him with smiles, and once he was startled to recognize Alexis on a gray horse and wearing a strange side-arm. He always saw them marching up the hill in a never-ceasing column (like the motors), hundreds of thousands of them; but except for his brothers, never the same; and just over the top of the hill he could hear faint bugle-calls and music and see a great light in the sky. Then he would reach out his arms to the comrades and struggle to join them as they marched along, but always something held him back, unable to stir hand or foot, and he would awake whimpering, his mustache wet with tears. Then it was that Madam Santarosa would ask her husband how long he was going to keep that old pauper hanging around the garage.
JULES, having climbed over the top of the hill, continued on along a muddy country road. He had never been on that road before. Soon he was surprised to come upon a great house all made of glass, several hundred feet in length seemingly a hundred feet high, at least, like the crystal palace in a fairy-story, and through the transparent sides of his house he could see magnificent rooms of various sorts, and beautiful women in gorgeous dresses moving about.
Mysterious blue lights glowed here and there through the building, and weird machinery hung suspended from the roof-beams. Here he gazed with astonishment at a picturesque street precisely resembling that of his native village in Alsace; there he was confronted by the nave of a great cathedral with a cardinal in his robes officiating at the high altar; here was a lady returning home after a ball, and letting herself into a garden gate with a latchkey; and beyond was a sandy beach with half-nude natives standing amid palms about a camp-fire. In front of each group was a man slowly turning a crank attached to a circular camera, while another man gesticulated, and talked through a little horn.
Jules had never seen a moving-picture studio before, but he had no difficulty in perceiving where he was. The actor and actresses from the Famous Filmart Company often telephoned to Toni to bring them up from the ferry, and Jules knew some of them by sight. Presently one of the camera-men came out oof a side door and catching sight of Jules beckoned to him:
“Say, Pop!” he called. “Wanta run down to the street and get me a hot dog? Shootin' fillum' has made me that hungry I could chew up a tin roof.”
“Sure,” answered Jules.
The camera-man felt in his pocket and produced a half-dollar.
“Hump it!” said the man. “And get me a pint of Pilsener—you can keep what's left.”
Jules hurried away as fast as he could and presently returned with the beer and sausage. His pourboire amounted to thirty cents!
“Come on inside,” invited his new friend. “You look kinda down on your luck. Ever seen a studio? Well, there's some doings, believe me! What do you do for a living?”
“Work around the garage,” answered Jules. He liked this camera-man.
“What do they pay you?”
“I work for my keep.”
“Holy Mike!” ejaculated the knight of the celluloid. “And Maxine gettin' five thousand a week! How'd you like to work around this place and kind of help out?”
The very thought of being associated with such a glorious enterprise thrilled Jules. Timidly he ventured to answer that he would be glad to be of service.
Jules stood watching everything with interest for a long time, but it struck him as extraordinary that when nations were dying, anybody could have heart for play-acting. The little Alsatian street fascinated him, for it was exactly like his native town. There was the “mairie” with its courtyard of big cobble-stones, and the fountain in the square with the plane trees, the very spot where the Prussian sergeant had that terrible day so long ago and a dumped him sprawling ignominiously! But around the corner—là-bas—was his own house, and there,—surely!—there was the bakery of M. Duciaux, the father of his little playmate Nanette. Nanette! The thought of her still sent a great pang through his heart. Little Nanette! Dead now these forty years!
The tears blurred Jules' vision, and he rubbed them away with the back of his hand. He could almost rear again the tap-tap-tap of the drum in the squad behind the Prussian sergeant, almost see the dusty road swimming dizzily beneath him as he was swung through the air—almost hear himself screaming with rage and horror. It was just like yesterday—the day they had killed his grandfather and Nanette! He stretched out his clenched hands impotently. If he could only fight!
SUDDENLY Jules came face to face with a French officer in blue service-uniform and helmet. Jules had wandered around the corner of the studio and had found himself unexpectedly in a sort of barracks in the midst of a great gathering of recruits. There were several hundred of them, with here and there a uniform, and it was clear that something important was afoot. At one end of the inclosure was drawn up a field battery, and there was a major on a white horse, just as Jules had dreamed of Alexis. The sergeant was calling the roll, and as each man answered to his name, he was given a uniform, helmet, cartridge-belt and rifle with bayonet. Against a wall rested a beautiful new flag—the flag of France!
Jules commenced to tremble, and the hair on the back of his neck stiffened. They were equipping a regiment! Everything seemed to be in confusion. Perhaps, if he were very clever, he might get himself taken along somehow! He wedged himself into the crowd and worked his way toward a portable soup-kitchen where they were serving out coffee. Presently it was his turn, and he secured a brimming tin cup for himself. The coffee acted on his jaded nerves almost like an intoxicant. Some of the men had started a fire and were standing around it. Jules joined them diffidently. Something was going to happen that evening, for they were all talking about it in disconnected phrases.
Jules tossed his cup into the pile of discards and joined the jostling mob at the other end of the inclosure, where they were distributing the equipment. The sergeant finished calling the names. Only half a dozen of the recruits were without uniforms, and they lingered uncertainly about the pile of empty boxes upon which the sergeant was standing. Among them was Jules, in a fever of expectation. The sergeant shouted to a man in a fur overcoat on the other side of the inclosure.
“Say, Mr. Varick, we're about a dozen men shy.”
The man in the fur overcoat made a gesture of wrath.
“Hang it,” he answered, “what did I tell you! If you haven't enough supers, you'll spoil the picture.”
“I'm not responsible if they don't show up!” retorted the sergeant resentfully.
“Well, can't you raise anybody else? What's the matter with the bunch in front of you?”
“They'll do, if you want em? answered the sergeant.
“Course we want 'em. Take anybody we can get!” yelled Mr. Varick,
JULES did not comprehend this interchange. Even as to place, his mind was confused. But of one thing he was certain—he must not let the sergeant guess either his age or the condition of his eyes. In this he would be aided by the fast-gathering darkness. So with the others he pushed forward. The sergeant looked them over rather contemptuously.
“You're a fierce lot!” he remarked “Well, give us your names!”
When it came his turn, Jules inflated his chest and assumed as military an air as he was capable of.
“Name?”
“Jules Vercel.”
“Oh, a Frenchman?”
“Oui, m'sieur.”
“So much the better. We'll give you a chance to kill a few boches.”
“Oui, m'sieur.”
Tenderly, almost with veneration Jules received the heavy overcoat, th helmet, the rifle with its tremendous bayonet. The coat was much too big for him, and so was the helmet, and after he had been assisted into them, presented a ludicrous effect not unlike a very squat mushroom, with the rifle and bayonet towering above him like a flagpole. Yet in spite of his appearance Jules had never been so happy. At last he was wearing the uniform of his country. If only his comrades could see him! They would hear of him, perhaps—might see his name on the casualty-list. But the officer in the fur overcoat was speaking. He had one of those little horns in his hand.
“Come over here, you chaps!”
The crowd surged to his end of the inclosure. The regiment was now complete—every man in uniform.
“Listen, here!” continued Mr. Varick. “Pay attention to what I have to say. You'll get your actual orders on the field in about half an hour. It takes that long to walk to the trenches. I want you to understand that the success of the biggest thing ever undertaken in our life is in your hands. Any disobedience to orders or fooling around on your own hook will mean the loss of months of preparation and a tremendous amount of money. We have dug the finest trenches ever put in a picture, built entanglements, laid mines, hired artillery, spent thousands of dollars on uniforms equipment, and now it's up to you to make good. Do exactly what you're told. We'll begin to shoot the picture at seven o'clock.”
He climbed down from the boxes and pushed his way through the throng to where the sergeant was smoking cigar.
“Better start 'em along!” he “It'll take this bunch of bums an hour to get there!”
The sergeant nodded.
“I suppose you'll go over in the motor with the camera-man,” he answered enviously. “Say, get onto that little hobo in the big hat? Aint he a sketch?”
Mr. Varick observed Jules critically for the first time. “What a sight!” he whistled. “We'll have to can him!”
He knocked some cigar-ash off his collar and shouted brusquely across to where Jules was standing by the flag.
“Say! You'll have to get out of that uniform!”
Jules turned cold. It was impossible! Incredible! He could not have heard aright!
“Pardon, m'sieur?” he said tremulously, his face ashen with apprehension.
“I said you'd have to climb out of that uniform!” repeated Varick.
Jules lifted a piteous face to his.
“M'sieur! Do not send me away! I would die for France!”
Varick inspected the funny little man curiously. As an experienced director he had an eye for genuine emotion. This seemed like the real thing.
“You'd die for France, eh!”
“Oui, m'sieur,” replied Jules. “Only let me go! Tous les copains sont là-bas!”
Something about the little man took hold of Varick's imagination. These Frenchmen were all good actors. Besides, the man looked down and out—half starved. Needed the two dollars, probably. His eye caught the flag.
“Well,” he yielded. “All right. Go along, if you want to. But you look a scream with that musket.” He glanced at the flag again. “Suppose you carry the colors, instead!”
The blood rushed tingling all through Jules' body. He found difficulty in speaking.
“Merci, m'sieur!” he answered faintly.
THUS it was that when the column started a few minutes later, Jules was at its head with the sergeant, staggering bravely along under the heavy standard. After tramping a mile through the darkness, the column emerged from a wood and turned out into a field by the side of the road. Here they came to a halt, and with relief Jules rested the end of the standard upon the turf. They were, apparently, on the edge of a barren plain that stretched away indefinitely to the north and west. A quarter of a mile distant a searchlight was feeling its way along, disclosing hurrying figures here and there, and a long mound of earth in front of which Jules could see a multitude of stakes connected with what looked like wire.
A hundred yards or so beyond were more stakes and wire and another long mound from which from time to time pulls of white smoke shot out. Jules' heart began to beat violently. They were at the trenches at last. Another searchlight leaped into the air and worked along the inside of the nearer trench. Soon a motor lumbered across the field and came to a stop. In it was the man in the fur overcoat, with several others. He began shouting through the little horn. Jules heard him but dimly, for there was a roaring in his ears. He leaned against the standard and rested his forehead on his two hands in the darkness.
“Now, listen, you fellows,” ordered Varick. “Let me give you a general idea of the lay-out. That long ridge covered with snow over there is the first line of trenches.”
The words startled Jules into quivering alertness.
“It's alive with boches, see? But they don't come out at all. They just shoot you down as you charge across No Man's Land. It's all right. You wont get near enough to feel any powder. This trench here is ours, the advanced French position—get me? That stuff in front is wire—white string, really. You don't need to bother with it. All that space between the trenches is swept by rifle-bullets. You can see the corpses lying about—dummies. That's what you'll be in a minute. When you go over the top, remember, you aint supposed to take the enemy trench. Your attempt fails. That's the whole point of the story. You don't ever get there. You all get killed. So remember to drop dead as you go along. Not all at once—but two or three at a time, scattering. I tell you when. But nobody gets more than halfway. You all die for France, see?”
Jules heard and understood perfectly, at last. Hitherto he had not been quite sure that it was all real. They were all to die for France, just as his brothers and little Alexis, and all the comrades, had died for France. His wish was to be fulfilled. His heart overflowed with happiness. The supreme moment of his life had come!
“Now get down into the trench!” directed Varick. “And do exactly as I tell you. Keep your heads down, or the snipers 'll get you!
BY the light of a couple of blue flares, the column climbed down and sheltered itself behind the trench, Jules just letting the tip of the flag appear above it. He was full of a glorious exaltation. A few moments, and he would be carrying the colors of France into the German trenches. He did not notice the camera-man who had taken up his position just to one side of him, nor hear Varick shout “All ready!—Camera!” All he knew was that suddenly there burst high up just over his head a rocket that made the night drip with stars, while behind him the field battery went into action with a deafening roar.
“Commence firing!” shouted Varick. “Get up on the shelf, you fellows, and fire! Hoist up the flag, there, Frenchy!”
Jules, trembling with excitement, elevated the flag and waved it to and fro defiantly. The men on either side of him along the trench placed their rifles in the loopholes and discharged them. The noise was terrific, and the air began to be surcharged with smoke, clouds of it being loosed from containers at either end of the trench as well as from the German side.
“They're gassing us—see? Put on your masks!”
Each man pulled on the fearsome-looking mask with which he had been provided. Across, the boches were firing furiously from the top of their trench, and the dancing searchlights made the intervening ground light as day, everything throwing into staccato relief scattered débris, shell-craters and huddled human forms.
“Get ready!” shouted Varick. “We're going to set off a mine at one end of the German trench. As soon as that's done, I'll give the order to charge. You must climb over and start across on the run. We've got a fake barrage-fire that will jump along just ahead of you. But remember to drop before you get across. That's the main thing. Now! Camera!”
Jules, crouching in the trench, heard a thunderous detonation and saw a column of flame leap into the air on the other side of No Man's Land. Then it seemed to him as if a rain of fire began to pour down all about him.
“Now then!” yelled Varick. “Up and over!”
With a shout the men swarmed up over the parapet—Jules with the flag among the first. The ground was alive with fire. Shells were bursting all about him. He could hear nothing but Varick's shrill voice: “Die! Drop, you! Die!”
In a moment Jules was free of the entanglement and had raised the flag high in air. The smoke choked and the light blinded him. He was stunned by the closeness of the explosions about him. But no longer did the flag seem heavy; no longer did his coat and cartridge-belt impede him. His soul leaped to sacrifice with a fierce happiness. At last he was with the comrades “out there'”—shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow with them, about to die with them,—to join Henri, Pierre, Gaspard and little Alexis! The joy of it!
“Allons, mes enfants! Vive Valsace! Vive la France!” he cried gayly, and lowering his head, he charged for the German trench.
VARICK, standing by the camera-man, saw Jules carrying the colors steadily ahead of the fast-cropping line of men.
“Some picture, what!” he gasped hoarsely. “I've got to stop that fellow! He'll spoil the picture if he doesn't drop in a second!”
He raised his megaphone.
“Here, you! Frenchy! Drop there! Stop running! Drop! Hear me?”
But Jules did not hear him. All the others had fallen long before they had gained the center of No Man's Land. Now they lay on the ground motionless—arms outstretched, faces. staring at the sky. But Jules still staggered on, carrying the flag exultantly amid a mighty host of shadowy comrades.
“He's crazy!” groaned Varick, gnashing his teeth. “Curse him! Die, you!” he shouted feebly.
At last, on the edge of the boche entanglement, Jules faltered and then dropped to the ground.
“Well—about time!” muttered Varick. “All right, boys! Stop shooting! All up! You're not dead men any more!”
The noise and firing ceased, and the bogus {{wg:poilu|poilus}} arose awkwardly to their feet and limped back to where Varick was chatting to the camera-man.
“Biggest thing yet! You betcha!” he was saying.
Then he looked across No Man's Land with a puzzled air to where Jules was still lying motionless.
“I believe that Frenchman thinks he's really been killed!” he laughed. Presently a change came over his face, and he hurried over to where the little prostrate figure was entangled in the flag. They saw him kneel and put his hand on Jules' breast. Then he slowly rose and removed his hat.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1945, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 78 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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