The Best Short Stories of 1918 Part 45

They were stationed at Jubecourt, outside Verdun, and for months the struggle had raged, attack and counterattack, for the possession of Hill 304. Corey had gone up to the front _poste de secour_ at Esnes, where in an underground shelter fitted up in what had been the bas.e.m.e.nt of an ancient chateau, reduced now to ruins by the German sh.e.l.ls, he was giving first aid to the wounded brought in from the trenches.

Word had come into the _poste_ one night that an officer, lying in a trench dugout, was too far gone to move. And Corey had volunteered to go, alone, on foot, along the zigzag communication trench that led to the dugout, under the incessant sh.e.l.ling, and see what he could do. And early that morning, about three o'clock, they had been carried in, Corey and his officer-the only two who had come out of that trench alive.

From the officer they had the story of what Corey had done; not many words, to be sure, and little embellishment, but such accounts need no flowers, no figures of speech. The facts are enough, told in gasps, as this one was, hurriedly, while yet there was strength, as one pays a debt, all at once, for fear he may never again have gold to pay.

A trench torpedo had found its mark. And Corey, bending above him, had deliberately braced himself, holding his arms out, and had received in his stead the exploding pieces of sh.e.l.l. He raised himself on his elbow to look at Corey, unconscious, on the next stretcher. He wanted it understood. He sent for an orderly and dictated a message which he managed to sign, and despatched it post-haste to Staff Headquarters. And then he resigned himself to the hands of those about him.

The news had come in to Jubecourt by telephone, and just before dawn Burke had gone up to see what could be done. When he reached the _poste_ Corey had regained consciousness, and was waiting for him. He had sent word ahead that he was coming. And Corey was wounded, Burke said, in a way no other man could have withstood. And the "queer" thing now was that he knew it, and when Burke leaned over him there was a gleam in his eyes as if he were keeping it there by his own will power.

He seemed relieved then, and began at once-he had saved a surprising amount of strength-to speak. He knew Burke planned to go to New York, and he wanted him to deliver some papers. They were in his bag, at Jubecourt; he told him where he should find the key, and then he asked Burke to write down Mr. Ewing's name and address.

It was while Burke was crossing the dim, lamp-lighted room in search of a pencil or pen that some one had stopped him to say that the General was coming at eleven to confer upon Corey the _Medaille Militaire_. It had given Burke a distinct kind of shock. Could it be, he wondered, that _that_ was what Corey had saved himself for? For Corey knew, as well as they, that the _Medaille Militaire_ was the one decoration never conferred upon dead men. He had gone on and borrowed the pen, and on the way back had asked if he might be allowed to tell Corey. It might, he said, do him some good. That news had turned the balance for more than one man.

But when, a few moments later, Burke, receiving permission, had told Corey his news, he had been for a moment afraid that the balance _had_ turned-and in the wrong way. Corey had seemed hardly to comprehend, and then a sudden unaccountable change had come over his face.

"The _Medaille_!" he gasped. "What time did you say?"

"Eleven," Burke told him-"three hours from now."

He seemed then to be considering something deep within himself, so that Burke hardly heard when he said, "That's time enough." And Burke, thinking that he had been measuring his strength against the time, hastened a little awkwardly to rea.s.sure him. But Corey, ignoring his a.s.surance, had seemed to arrive at some secret conclusion.

"Did you put down the name?" he asked.

Burke had forgotten the name, and Corey told him again, patiently, spelling out the address. He watched while Burke wrote.

"The papers all go to him." He was silent a moment. Then: "Listen," he said. "Will you give him this message for me?"

Burke promised, whatever he wished, word for word.

"Tell him," he said, "that it breaks a man's luck to know what he wants."

"Yes," said Burke. "Is there anything else?"

The strength had drained out of Corey's voice with the last words. Again he waited while he seemed to decide. And when he spoke, at last, a strange gentleness had come into his tone, so that Burke was not surprised to hear that the message was meant now for a woman.

"Tell him," said Corey, "there's no use letting _her_ know about the _Medaille Militaire_."

And although Burke had divined some obscure meaning in Corey's words, he was yet not quite certain that he had heard aright. "You mean that she's _not_ to know?"

Corey nodded his head, yes, and Burke saw that he was no longer able to speak. Turning, he motioned an orderly to his side, and whispered that he was afraid Corey would never last until eleven.

The orderly sped away, and a moment later the French doctor in charge stood beside Corey's stretcher, opening his hypodermic case.

And then, Burke said, he had done what seemed to him the "queerest"

thing of all. He had made a signal for Burke to come nearer, and when he had leaned down, he said, "Remember to tell him I didn't take _that_."

He was looking at the hypodermic the doctor held in his hand.

"But the _Medaille_-" began Burke, and was stopped by the strangeness of Corey's expression. He had, he said, smiled a secret mysterious smile, and closed his eyes with a curious look of contentment.

And even the French doctor had seen, by something in his faint gesture of refusal, that Corey would never submit to his restorative. He put the case down on a box, with a nod to the orderly, in case Corey should change his mind.

And Burke had stayed by until the Division General, just half an hour too late, had arrived at exactly eleven o'clock. Corey had not changed his mind....

That, then, was the end of the story.

So much affected was I at the nature of poor Corey's death that I almost forgot Mr. Ewing, sitting there across from me in our comfortable smoking-car, and that he might, in all decency, expect some comment from me. Indeed, I think I should have forgotten altogether if I had not felt after a little a relaxation of his long-continued gaze, and I knew he was going to speak.

"Why," he said, "do _you_ think he didn't want her to know?"

So that was the thing which had puzzled him in New York, the thing which still puzzled him now.

Well, it had puzzled me, too; and I could give him no answer, except to confess that I didn't know. But long after the train had pa.s.sed through Dubuque, and Mr. Ewing and I had said good-by, an answer, perhaps right, perhaps wrong, presented itself to my mind.

If one followed Corey at all, one must follow him all the way; perhaps he had wished to save her the pang of an added disgrace.

THE DARK HOUR

_By_ WILBUR DANIEL STEELE From _The Atlantic Monthly_ _Copyright, 1918, by The Atlantic Monthly Co._ _Copyright, 1919, by Wilbur Daniel Steele._

The returning s.h.i.+p swam swiftly through the dark; the deep, interior breathing of the engines, the singing of wire stays, the huge whispering rush of foam streaming the water-line made up a body of silence upon which the sound of the doctor's footfalls, coming and going restlessly along the near deck, intruded only a little-a faint and personal disturbance. Charging slowly through the dark, a dozen paces forward, a dozen paces aft, his invisible and tormented face bent forward a little over his breast, he said to himself,-

"What fools! What blind fools we've been!"

Sweat stood for an instant on his brow, and was gone in the steady onrush of the wind.

The man lying on the cot in the shelter of the cabin companionway made no sound all the while. He might have been asleep or dead, he remained so quiet; yet he was neither asleep nor dead, for his eyes, large, wasted, and luminous, gazed out unwinking from the little darkness of his shelter into the vaster darkness of the night, where a star burned in slow mutations, now high, now sailing low, over the rail of the s.h.i.+p.

Once he said in a washed and strengthless voice, "That's a bright star, doctor."

If the other heard, he gave no sign. He continued charging slowly back and forth, his large dim shoulders hunched over his neck, his hands locked behind him, his teeth showing faintly gray between the fleshy lips which hung open a little to his breathing.

"It's dark!" he said of a sudden, bringing up before the cot in the companionway. "G.o.d, Hallett, how dark it is!" There was something incoherent and mutilated about it, as if the cry had torn the tissues of his throat. "I'm not myself to-night," he added, with a trace of shame.

Hallett spoke slowly from his pillow.

"It wouldn't be the subs to-night? You're not that kind, you know. I've seen you in the zone. And we're well west of them by this, anyhow; and as you say, it's very dark."

"It's not that darkness. Not that!"

Again there was the same sense of something tearing. The doctor rocked for a moment on his thick legs. He began to talk.

"It's this _war_-" His conscience protested: "I ought not to go on so-it's not right, not right at all-talking so to the wounded-the dying-I shouldn't go on so to the dying-" And all the while the words continued to tumble out of his mouth. "No, I'm not a coward-not especially. You know I'm not a coward, Hallett. You know that. But just now, to-night, somehow, the whole black truth of the thing has come out and got me-jumped out of the dark and got me by the neck, Hallett. Look here; I've kept a stiff lip. Since the first I've said, 'We'll win this war.' It's been a matter of course. So far as I know, never a hint of doubt has shadowed my mind, even when things went bad. 'In the end,'

I've said, 'in the end, of course, we're bound to win.'"

He broke away again to charge slowly through the dark with his head down, b.u.t.ting; a large, overheated animal endowed with a mind.