answered.
“Dismissed!” snapped the sergeant disgustedly.
They straggled off into the darkness towards one of the lights, their feet splashing confusedly in the puddles.
Fuselli strolled up to the sentry at the camp gate. He was picking his teeth meditatively with the splinter of a pine board.
“Say, Phil, you couldn't lend me a half a dollar, could you?” Fuselli stopped, put his hands in his pockets and looked at the sentry with the splinter sticking out of a corner of his mouth.
“Sorry, Dan,” said the other man; “I'm cleaned out. Ain't had a cent since New Year's.”
“Why the hell don't they pay us?”
“You guys signed the pay roll yet?”
“Sure. So long!”
Fuselli strolled on down the dark road, where the mud was frozen into deep ruts, towards the town. It was still strange to him, this town of little houses faced with cracked stucco, where the damp made grey stains and green stains, of confused red-tiled roofs, and of narrow cobbled streets that zigzagged in and out among high walls overhung with balconies. At night, when it was dark except for where a lamp in a window spilt gold reflections out on the wet street or the light streamed out from a store or a cafe, it was almost frighteningly unreal. He walked down into the main square, where he could hear the fountain gurgling. In the middle he stopped indecisively, his coat unbuttoned, his hands pushed to the bottom of his trousers pockets, where they encountered nothing but the cloth. He listened a long time to the gurgling of the fountain and to the shunting of trains far away in the freight yards. “An' this is the war,” he thought. “Ain't it queer? It's quieter than it was at home nights.” Down the street at the end of the square a band of white light appeared, the searchlight of a staff car. The two eyes of the car stared straight into his eyes, dazzling him, then veered off to one side and whizzed past, leaving a faint smell of gasoline and a sound of voices. Fuselli watched the fronts of houses light up as the car made its way to the main road. Then the town was dark and silent again.
He strolled across the square towards the Cheval Blanc, the large cafe where the officers went.
“Button yer coat,” came a gruff voice. He saw a stiff tall figure at the edge of the curve. He made out the shape of the pistol holster that hung like a thin ham at the man's thigh. An M. P. He buttoned his coat hurriedly and walked off with rapid steps.
He stopped outside a cafe that had “Ham and Eggs” written in white paint on the window and looked in wistfully. Someone from behind him put two big hands over his eyes. He wriggled his head free.
“Hello, Dan,” he said. “How did you get out of the jug?”
“I'm a trusty, kid,” said Dan Cohan. “Got any dough?”
“Not a damn cent!”
“Me neither.... Come on in anyway,” said Cohan. “I'll fix it up with Marie.” Fuselli followed doubtfully. He was a little afraid of Dan Cohan; he remembered how a man had been court-martialed last week for trying to bolt out of a cafe without paying for his drinks.
He sat down at a table near the door. Dan had disappeared into the back room. Fuselli felt homesick. He was thinking how long it was since, he had had a letter from Mabe. “I bet she's got another feller,” he told himself savagely. He tried to remember how she looked, but he had to take out his watch and peep in the back before he could make out if her nose were straight or snub. He looked up, clicking the watch in his pocket. Marie of the white arms was coming laughing out of the inner room. Her large firm breasts, neatly held in by the close-fitting blouse, shook a little when she laughed. Her cheeks were very red and a strand of chestnut hair hung down along her neck. She picked it up hurriedly and caught it up with a hairpin, walking slowly into the middle of the room as she did so with her hands behind her head. Dan Cohan followed her into the room, a broad grin on his face.
“All right, kid,” he said. “I told her you'ld pay when Uncle Sam came across. Ever had any Kummel?”
“What the hell's that?”
“You'll see.”
They sat down before a dish of fried eggs at the table in the corner, the favoured table, where Marie herself often sat and chatted, when wizened Madame did not have her eye upon her.
Several men drew up their chairs. Wild Dan Cohan always had an audience.
“Looks like there was going to be another offensive at Verdun,” said Dan Cohan. Someone answered vaguely.
“Funny how little we know about what's going on out there,” said one man. “I knew more about the war when I was home in Minneapolis than I do here.”
“I guess we're lightin' into 'em all right,” said Fuselli in a patriotic voice.
“Hell! Nothin' doin' this time o' year anyway,” said Cohan. A grin spread across his red face. “Last time I was at the front the Boche had just made a coup de main and captured a whole trenchful.”
“Of who?”
“Of Americans—of us!”
“The hell you say!”
“That's a goddam lie,” shouted a black-haired man with an ill-shaven jaw, who had just come in. “There ain't never been an American captured, an' there never will be, by God!”
“How long were you at the front, buddy,” asked Cohan coolly. “I guess you been to Berlin already, ain't yer?”
“I say that any man who says an American'ld let himself be captured by a stinkin' Hun, is a goddam liar,” said the man with the ill-shaven jaw, sitting down sullenly.
“Well, you'd better not say it to me,” said Cohan laughing, looking meditatively at one of his big red fists.
There had been a look of apprehension on Marie's face. She looked at Cohan's fist and shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
Another crowd had just slouched into the cafe.
“Well if that isn't wild Dan! Hello, old kid, how are you?”
“Hello, Dook!”
A small man in a coat that looked almost like an officer's coat, it was so well cut, was shaking hands effusively with Cohan. He wore a corporal's stripes and a British aviator's fatigue cap. Cohan made room for him on the bench.
“What are you doing in this hole, Dook?” The man twisted his mouth so that his neat black mustache was a slant.
“G. O. 42,” he said.
“Battle of Paris?” said Cohan in a sympathetic voice. “Battle of Nice! I'm going back to my section soon. I'd never have got a court-martial if I'd been with my outfit. I was in the Base Hospital 15 with pneumonia.”
“Tough luck!”
“It was a hell of a note.”
“Say, Dook, your outfit was working with ours at Chamfort that time, wasn't it?”
“You mean when we evacuated the nut hospital?”
“Yes, wasn't that hell?” Dan Cohan gulped down half a glass of red wine, smacked his thick lips, and began in his story-telling voice:
“Our section had just come out of Verdun where we'd been getting hell for three weeks on the Bras road. There was one little hill where we'd have to get out and shove every damn time, the mud was so deep, and God, it stank there with the shells turning up the ground all full of mackabbies as the poilus call them.... Say, Dook, have you got any money?”
“I've got some,” said Dook, without enthusiasm.
“Well, the champagne's damn good here. I'm part of the outfit in this gin mill; they'll give it to you at a reduction.”
“All