The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 42

We laughed, all of us, for everybody had seen the cases of medals and decorations at the Galleries. I believe for an instant the youngster was half inclined to think he _had_ bought them. I know _I_ was. As some kind of outlandish practical joke, of course. It seemed, absurd as the idea was, so much likelier than that he could have been through the kind of experiences which result in being decorated by foreign governments.

And such an imposing array! The scarlet ribbon of the Legion of Honor, the green of the j.a.panese "Rising Sun," the brilliant stripes of Russian and English decorations, and strange ones I had never seen before!

You see, he had turned out much more Middle West than we had imagined.

In the first ten minutes of our conversation he had spoken of "home,"

and mentioned the name of the town-Dubuque, Iowa! And a few minutes later he gave us, by the merest chance phrase or two, involving the fact that his married sister lived "a block and a half down the street" from his mother's house, a perfectly complete picture of that street-broad and shady and quiet, of his mother's yellow frame house, and the other, white with a green lawn round it, where his sister lived. And the point was that he was making no effort toward such an effect. He was only being himself.

His dinner companion, the Balkan officer, came in presently and addressed Corey as "Doctor" (I adjusted myself to _that_, still with the Dubuque setting, however), and it was in the conversation following upon the new introduction that the object of his being in Paris came out. He told us, quite by the way, though not in the least depreciating the importance of his mission-that he was in Paris for a few days looking up anesthetics for the Serbian army. He had been working, he said, down in the Balkans since shortly after the outbreak of the war, in charge of a sanitary section. They'd been out of anesthetics for some time now-impossible to get them in-and they'd been operating, amputating the poor devils' legs and arms, _without_ anesthetics; and now at last he'd left things long enough to come up to Paris himself and see what could be done. He was starting back the next day or the day after that.

Corey, from Dubuque! In a makes.h.i.+ft Serbian field hospital, in that terrible cold, performing delicate and difficult operations-wholesale, as they must have been performed-on wounded Balkan soldiers; probing for bullets in raw wounds-_that_ was a picture to set up beside the one we had of him in Dubuque!

And yet-it wasn't at all a question of doubt (we'd read it all in the papers day after day); it wasn't that we didn't believe Corey was telling the truth; his evidence was too obvious for that-the picture didn't somehow succeed in painting itself-I can't to this day say why.

Surely the Balkans just then-operations without anesthetics, the pageantry and blood-red color of war-surely there was pigment of more brilliant hue than any contained in the mere statement that his married sister lived a block and a half down the street from his mother's. But the picture wasn't painted. Corey wasn't the artist to do it. Not, mind you, that he tried; he was as far from trying to impress one, from affectation, as a boy of fourteen.

I do remember my imagination taking me far enough to think that if I were a soldier, and wounded, and had to have a leg or an arm off, I couldn't think of a man I'd rather have do it than Corey. Oh yes, I believed him; I knew he'd been down there in the Balkans, as he said, and was going back again to-morrow-but I went right on seeing him in Dubuque, practising his quiet, prosperous profession in the same suite of offices his father had used before him.

He himself lent, by the things he said, force and reality to the illusion. He'd like nothing better, he declared, than settling down in Dubuque for the rest of his life, and enjoying a home of his own. He intended, in fact, to do just that when he had finished the Balkan business. "I'm that type," he said. "I never was meant to knock around the world like this."

And he _was_ that type, so much the type that it seemed hardly credible he shouldn't turn out the exception to prove the rule. He had already, one would think, made a sufficient divergence.

And that, I suppose-the feeling that no personality _could_ follow so undeviating a line, so obviously its own path-was responsible for my impression, when I came later to hear how completely he _had_ followed it, of his being because of it much more unique than he could ever have made himself by turning aside. True enough, there are people who, if they heard the tale, might maintain that he could hardly have accomplished a more striking divergence from type. I'll have to confess I thought so myself-at the first; certainly I thought so all the while I listened, long afterward, to the quiet, though somewhat nasal, and thoroughly puzzled voice of the gentle old man from Dubuque, who seemed, as he recounted the story, to be seeking in me some solution of Corey's phenomenon.

I thought it even afterward, until, sitting there where he had left me, I began slowly to orient the facts in relation to Corey's character. And then, all at once, it came to me that it was exactly because Corey _hadn't_ diverged that he did what he did. He went straight through everything to his predestined end. Any other man would have had stages, subtleties, degrees of divergence. But Corey knew none of those things.

It was from old Mr. Ewing of Dubuque that I had my first news of Corey after that night in the Paris hotel.

He must have gone back to his army in the Balkans the next day, for we were to have seen him that night again in case he had to stay over, and when I asked I was told that Monsieur had gone.

Things kept reminding me of him. The names of streets and places in Paris recalled his flat American misp.r.o.nunciation of them-misp.r.o.nunciations which sounded half as if he were in fun and half as if he didn't know any better, or hadn't paid enough attention to learn them correctly. I believe he saw, or was subconsciously aware of, his own incongruity. Still, one would think he'd have become, so to speak, accustomed to himself in the strange role by then.

I think I must have spoken of him rather often to people, so long as I remained in Paris; and it was, if not exactly curious, at least a little less than one would expect, that I never came in contact with any one else who knew him, until that day, a little while ago, when I met, in the smoking-car of a west-bound train out of Chicago, the man who told me all there was, or ever will be, for any man to tell about Corey.

He may have been sitting there near me all the time; I don't know. But then he was not the kind of man one notices in a smoking-car, or any other place, for that matter. Certainly you would never suspect that so gray and uninteresting an envelope could inclose the ma.n.u.script of a story like Corey's. You had seen hundreds like him before, and you knew what they contained-stereotyped circular letters full of dull, indisputable facts, nothing you wanted or cared to know. And it was precisely because I wished later on one of those very dull facts that I came to speak to my man.

The train coming to a sudden stop brought me out of my oblivion, and, looking idly out of the window to see what place it might be, I was seized by one of those fits of petty annoyance incident to such interruptions, for the train had run so far past the platform that I found it impossible to see the name of the station. I got myself out of my comfortable position, and tried, by turning completely about, to see back to the station. But we had gone too far. And then-I haven't an idea why, for it was of absolutely no importance to me-I looked about for some one to ask. And nearest me, sitting rather uncomfortably upright in his big leather chair, the little rack at his elbow guiltless of any gla.s.s, and holding listlessly in his hand the latest popular magazine, sat a gray-haired, gray-suited old gentleman, looking lonesomely out of his window.

"I beg pardon," I said. "Can you tell me what place this is?"

He turned gratefully at the sound of my voice. "It's --," he told me.

I've never been able to recall what name he said, because, I suppose, of what came after.

It was certainly not surprising that he should think, from my manner, that I had some interest in the place, and he went on, after a moment's hesitating silence, to say, in his un.o.btrusive but unmistakable Middle-West voice, that the town was a milling center-flour and meal, and that kind of thing.

I saw that I had committed myself to something more in the way of conversation than my laconic word of thanks for his information and a lapse into silence. I wondered what I could say. He was such a nice, kindly old gentleman, and he would never in the world have addressed any one first. I hit upon the most obvious sequence, and asked if, then, he was familiar with that part of the country. He said, oh yes, he was "a native of Iowa."

"Indeed?" I said, for lack of anything else to say, and his statement not having been a particularly provocative one.

"Yes," he said. "My home is Dubuque."

Dubuque! Dubuque! What was it I knew about Dubuque? The name struck me instantly with a sense of importance, as if it had rung the bell of a target concealed out of sight. I sought about in my mind for a full minute before I recalled, with a kind of start-Corey.

So many things had come in between-bigger things than any one man-and overlaid all the pictures that had gone before. Overlaid them with pigment so crude, so roughly applied, that one neither saw nor remembered anything else. All the nations of Europe loosed in the Great War, and America straining hard at her worn leash of neutrality. Small wonder that Corey, of Dubuque, along with countless other memories of that pale time, had faded into a dim, far perspective.

And yet, the sound of that name had brought him-as clearly as I had seen him that night in Paris-before me. I heard his voice, felt the vigor of his personality, saw him throw back his head and laugh. And here, in the chair next my own, and ready to talk, sat a man who, by every rule of probability and chance, would be able to tell me about him.

"I know a townsman of yours," I said, and he evinced at once a kind of mild and flattered surprise.

"From Dubuque?" he said. "Well, well! What's his name?"

"Corey," I said. "Doctor Corey."

It had upon him a most unexpected effect; very much, it seemed, the same effect his announcement had had upon me the moment before. He leaned forward no more than an inch, but his mild gray eyes kindled with a kind of excited intensity.

"You knew Jim Corey! Not here-not in Dubuque?"

"I met him in Paris," I said, "quite a long while ago."

"In _Paris_! Well, well-think of that!"

He shook his head, and regarded me suddenly with a stronger and new kind of interest. I was, apparently, the first person he had ever encountered who had really known Corey abroad, and I could see that the fact had established me immediately in his mind as an intimate friend of Corey's.

I suppose I should have told him that I had only seen Corey once; that I couldn't, as a matter of fact, claim more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance.

But if I had, I should never have heard what I heard. And, anyway, it wouldn't have been, in the sense in which such things count, exactly true-for it had never been, for me at least, a one night's acquaintance.

I had seemed to know Corey better in that one night than one knows most men in a month of companions.h.i.+p. Yes, it was something more than the curiosity of a pa.s.sing acquaintance that caused me to let the old fellow keep his impression.

"It's queer," he said, suddenly, throwing up his head, and pressing open the pages of his popular magazine as if he were about to begin to read, "he was a kind of relative of mine. His father and I-third cousins on our mothers' side." He broke off and regarded me again silently, and I believe now that he was trying to persuade himself not to go on, not to say anything more. But the temptation, the maximum, I might say, of temptation, combined with the minimum of danger that he should ever see me again, overcame his natural shyness and discretion. He seemed to decide, upon my e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, to go on.

"His house is just 'round the corner from mine. His wife lives there now."

"His wife!" The surprise was plain enough in my voice. And this seemed, just for a second, to surprise him, too.

"You knew," he said, "that he had married?"

I explained that I hadn't seen Corey for several years, and added that I had, however, understood that he was thinking of settling down. It put, I could see, a different face upon what he had to tell, for he seemed to adjust himself, as if he must now go back to something he had thought already understood between us.

"You didn't know, then," he said, "that he was dead?"

Dead! Corey dead! So that was what he had to tell. There sprang up in my mind a vague, indefinite vision of something heroic in connection with the Great War. When, I asked, and where did he die?

"A little over three months ago, in Europe. I was his executor."

There was something in the way he made his last statement which lent it a kind of special importance. And it proved, indeed, in the end, the fact of supreme importance. And here, as if it were due me, he told me his name-Ewing; and I told him mine.

"Yes," he said. "I made a trip to New York to see a man who'd been with him before he died. He brought a message from Corey. Queer," he said, "that message. He must have been-a little off, you know, at the last."

It was clear that something had occurred on his trip to New York which had puzzled him then, and continued, in spite of his explanation, to puzzle him still. It was evident in the way he went back, presently, to the beginning, as if he were stating a problem or building up a case.

He began by saying that he supposed n.o.body in Dubuque ever had understood Corey-"and yet"-he faced me-"you wouldn't say he was hard to understand?"

I said that he had seemed to me to have an extremely straightforward and simple personality; that that, to me, had been one of his charms.