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Page 41
"Get over there, you deserter. Save the lieutenant--Lieutenant Dudley.
Go."
For one instant I thought it was no good and I was due to have him shot,
if we both lived through the night. And then--I never in my life saw
such a face of abject fear as the one he turned first to me and then
across that horror of No Man's Land. The whites of his eyes showed, it
seemed, an eighth of an inch above the irises; his black eyebrows were
half way up his forehead, and his teeth, luxuriously upholstered with
fillings, shone white and gold in the unearthly light. It was such a mad
terror as I'd never seen before, and never since. And into it I, mad
too with the thought of my sister if I let young John Dudley die before
my eyes--I bombed again the order to go out and bring in Dudley. I
remember the fading and coming expressions on that Frenchman's face like
the changes on a moving picture film. I suppose it was half a minute.
And here was the coward face gazing into mine, transfigured into the
face of a man who cared about another man more than himself--a common
man whose one high quality was love.
"_C'est bien, Mon Capitaine_," Beauram� spoke, through still clicking
teeth, and with his regulation smile of good will he had sprung over the
parapet in one lithe movement, and I saw him crouching, trotting that
absurd, powerful fast trot through the lane in our barbed wire, like
lightning, to the shallow new trench, to Dudley. I saw him--for the
Germans had the stretch lighted--I saw the man pick up my brother-in-law
and toss him over his shoulders and start trotting back. Then I saw him
fall, both of them fall, and I knew that he'd stopped a bullet. And
then, as I groaned, somehow Beauram� was on his feet again. I expected,
that he'd bolt for cover, but he didn't. He bent over deliberately as if
he had been a fearless hero--and maybe he was--and he picked up Dudley
again and started on, laboring, this time in walking. He was hit badly.
But he made the trench; he brought in Dudley.
Then such a howl of hurrahs greeted him from the men who watched the
rescue as poor little Aristophe Beauram�--"
"Ah!" I interjected, and Bobby turned and stared--"as the poor little
scared rat had not dreamed, or had any right to dream would ever greet
his conduct on earth. He dropped Dudley at my feet and turned with his
flabby mouth open and his great stupid eyes like saucers, towards the
men who rushed to shake his hand and throw at him words of admiration
that choked them to get out. And then he keeled over. So you see. It was
an equal chance at one second, whether a man should be shot for a
deserter or--win the Victoria Cross."
"What!" I shouted at my guest. "What! Not the Victoria Cross! Not
Aristophe!"
Bobby looked at me in surprise. "You're a great claque for me," he said.
"You seem to take an interest in my hero. Yes, he got it. He was badly
hurt. One hand nearly gone and a wound in his side. I was lucky enough
to be in London on a day three months later, and to be present at the
ceremony, when the young French-Canadian, spoiled for a soldier, but
splendid stuff now for a hero, stood out in the open before the troops
in front of Buckingham Palace and King George pinned the V.C. on his
breast. They say that he's back in his village, and the whole show. I
hear that he tells over and over the story of his heroism and the rescue
of '_Mon Lieutenant_.' to never failing audiences. Of course, John is
looking after him, for the hand which John saved was the hand that was
shot to pieces in saving John, and the Tin Lizzie can never make his
living with that hand again. A deserter, a coward--decorated by the King
with the Victoria Cross! Queer things happen in war!" There was a stir,
a murmur as of voices, of questions beginning, but Bobby was not quite
through.
"War takes the best of the best men, and the best of the cheapest, and
transfigures both. War doesn't need heroes for heroism. She pins it on
anywhere if there's one spot of greatness in a character. War does
strange things with humanity," said Bobby.
And I, gasping, broke out crudely in three words: "Our Tin Lizzie!" I
said, and nobody knew in the least what I meant, or with what memories I
said it.
HE THAT LOSETH HIS LIFE SHALL FIND IT
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