He walked recklessly on, the rain blinding him. When he finally stepped into the light he was so dazzled he could not see who was in the wine shop.
“Well, I'll be damned, Chris,” said Andrews's voice. Chrisfield blinked the rain out of his lashes. Andrews sat writing with a pile of papers before him and a bottle of champagne. It seemed to Chrisfield to soothe his nerves to hear Andy's voice. He wished he would go on talking a long time without a pause.
“If you aren't the crowning idiot of the ages,” Andrews went on in a low voice. He took Chrisfield by the arm and led him into the little back room, where was a high bed with a brown coverlet and a big kitchen table on which were the remnants of a meal.
“What's the matter? Your arm's trembling like the devil. But why.... O pardon, Crimpette. C'est un ami.... You know Crimpette, don't you?” He pointed to a youngish woman who had just appeared from behind the bed. She had a flabby rosy face and violet circles under her eyes, dark as if they'd been made by blows, and untidy hair. A dirty grey muslin dress with half the hooks off held in badly her large breasts and flabby figure. Chrisfield looked at her greedily, feeling his furious irritation flame into one desire.
“What's the matter with you, Chris? You're crazy to break out of quarters this way?”
“Say, Andy, git out o' here. Ah ain't your sort anyway.... Git out o' here.”
“You're a wild man. I'll grant you that.... But I'd just as soon be your sort as anyone else's.... Have a drink.”
“Not now.”
Andrews sat down with his bottle and his papers, pushing away the broken plates full of stale food to make a place on the greasy table. He took a gulp out of the bottle, that made him cough, then put the end of his pencil in his mouth and stared gravely at the paper.
“No, I'm your sort, Chris,” he said over his shoulder, “only they've tamed me. O God, how tame I am.”
Chrisfield did not listen to what he was saying. He stood in front of the woman, staring in her face. She looked at him in a stupid frightened way. He felt in his pockets for some money. As he had just been paid he had a fifty-franc note. He spread it out carefully before her. Her eyes glistened. The pupils seemed to grow smaller as they fastened on the bit of daintily colored paper. He crumpled it up suddenly in his fist and shoved it down between her breasts.
Some time later Chrisfield sat down in front of Andrews. He still had his wet slicker on.
“Ah guess you think Ah'm a swine,” he said in his normal voice. “Ah guess you're about right.”
“No, I don't,” said Andrews. Something made him put his hand on Chrisfield's hand that lay on the table. It had a feeling of cool health.
“Say, why were you trembling so when you came in here? You seem all right now.”
“Oh, Ah dunno,'” said Chrisfield in a soft resonant voice.
They were silent for a long while. They could hear the woman's footsteps going and coming behind them.
“Let's go home,” said Chrisfield.
“All right.... Bonsoir, Crimpette.”
Outside the rain had stopped. A stormy wind had torn the clouds to rags. Here and there clusters of stars showed through. They splashed merrily through the puddles. But here and there reflected a patch of stars when the wind was not ruffling them.
“Christ, Ah wish Ah was like you, Andy,” said Chrisfield.
“You don't want to be like me, Chris. I'm no sort of a person at all. I'm tame. O you don't know how damn tame I am.”
“Learnin' sure do help a feller to git along in the world.”
“Yes, but what's the use of getting along if you haven't any world to get along in? Chris, I belong to a crowd that just fakes learning. I guess the best thing that can happen to us is to get killed in this butchery. We're a tame generation.... It's you that it matters to kill.”
“Ah ain't no good for anythin'.... Ah doan give a damn.... Lawsee, Ah feel sleepy.”
As they slipped in the door of their quarters, the sergeant looked at Chrisfield searchingly. Andrews spoke up at once.
“There's some rumors going on at the latrine, Sarge. The fellows from the Thirty-second say we're going to march into hell's halfacre about Thursday.”
“A lot they know about it.”
“That's the latest edition of the latrine news.”
“The hell it is! Well, d'you want to know something, Andrews.... It'll be before Thursday, or I'm a Dutchman.”
Sergeant Higgins put on a great air of mystery.
Chrisfield went to his bunk, undressed quietly and climbed into his blankets. He stretched his arms languidly a couple of times, and while Andrews was still talking to the sergeant, fell asleep.
IV
––––––––
THE MOON LAY AMONG clouds on the horizon, like a big red pumpkin among its leaves.
Chrisfield squinted at it through the boughs of the apple trees laden with apples that gave a winey fragrance to the crisp air. He was sitting on the ground, his legs stretched limply before him, leaning against the rough trunk of an apple tree. Opposite him, leaning against another tree, was the square form, surmounted by a large long-jawed face, of Judkins. Between them lay two empty cognac bottles. All about them was the rustling orchard, with its crooked twigs that made a crackling sound rubbing together in the gusts of the autumn wind, that came heavy with a smell of damp woods and of rotting fruits and of all the ferment of the overripe fields. Chrisfield felt it stirring the moist hair on his forehead and through the buzzing haze of the cognac heard the plunk, plunk, plunk of apples dropping that followed each gust, and the twanging of night insects, and, far in the distance, the endless rumble of guns, like tomtoms beaten for a dance.
“Ye heard what the Colonel said, didn't ye?” said Judkins in a voice hoarse from too much drink.
Chrisfield belched and nodded his head vaguely. He remembered Andrews's white fury after the men had been dismissed, how he had sat down on the end of a log by the field kitchen, staring at the patch of earth he beat into mud with the toe of his boot.
“Then,” went on Judkins, trying to imitate the Colonel's solemn efficient voice, “'On the subject of prisoners'”—he hiccoughed and made a limp gesture with his hand—“'On the subject of prisoners, well, I'll leave that to you, but juss remember... juss remember what the Huns did to Belgium, an' I might add that we have barely enough emergency rations as it is, and the more prisoners you have the less you fellers'll git to eat.'”
“That's what he said, Judkie; that's what he said.”
“'An the more prisoners ye have, the less youse'll git to eat,'” chanted Judkins, making a triumphal flourish with his hand.
Chrisfield groped for the cognac bottle; it was empty; he waved it in the air a minute and then threw it into the tree opposite him. A shower of little apples fell about Judkins's head. He got unsteadily to his feet.
“I tell you, fellers,” he said, “war ain't no picnic.”
Chrisfield stood up and grabbed at an apple. His teeth crunched into it.
“Sweet,” he said.
“Sweet, nauthin',” mumbled Judkins, “war ain't no picnic.... I tell you, buddy, if you take any prisoners”—he hiccoughed—“after what the Colonel said, I'll lick the spots out of you, by God I will.... Rip up their guts that's all, like they was dummies. Rip up their guts.” His voice suddenly changed to one of childish dismay. “Gee, Chris,