Men in War | Page 6

last car. Quick, quick,"
addressing the sick man's wife, "quick! We must run."
They all rose. The Frau Major passed her arm through the unhappy
little woman's and urged with even greater insistence:
"We'll have a whole hour's walk back to town if we miss the car."
The little wife, completely at a loss, her whole body quivering, bent

over her husband again to take leave. She was certain that his outburst
had reference to her and held a grim deadly reproach, which she did not
comprehend. She felt her husband draw back and start convulsively
under the touch of her lips. And she sobbed aloud at the awful prospect
of spending an endless night in the chilly neglected room in the hotel,
left alone with this tormenting doubt. But the Frau Major drew her
along, forcing her to run, and did not let go her arm until they had
passed the sentinel at the gate and were out on the street. The
gentlemen followed them with their eyes, saw them reappear once
again on the street in the lamplight, and listened to the sound of the car
receding in the distance. The Mussulman picked up his crutches, and
winked at the Philosopher significantly, and said something with a
yawn about going to bed. The cavalry officer looked down at the sick
man curiously and felt sorry for him. Wanting to give the poor devil a
bit of pleasure, he tapped him on his shoulder and said in his free and
easy way:
"You've got a chic wife, I must say. I congratulate you."
The next instant he drew back startled. The pitiful heap on the bench
jumped up suddenly, as though a force just awakened had tossed him
up from his seat.
"Chic wife? Oh, yes. Very dashing!" came sputtering from his
twitching lips with a fury that cast out the words like a seething stream.
"She didn't shed a single tear when I left on the train. Oh, they were all
very dashing when we went off. Poor Dill's wife was, too. Very plucky!
She threw roses at him in the train and she'd been his wife for only two
months." He chuckled disdainfully and clenched his teeth, fighting hard
to suppress the tears burning in his threat. "Roses! He-he! And 'See you
soon again!' They were all so patriotic! Our colonel congratulated Dill
because his wife had restrained herself so well--as if he were simply
going off to maneuvers."
The lieutenant was now standing up. He swayed on his legs, which he
held wide apart, and supported himself on the cavalry captain's arm,
and looked up into his face expectantly with unsteady eyes.

"Do you know what happened to him--to Dill? I was there. Do you
know what?"
The captain looked at the others in dismay.
"Come on--come on to bed. Don't excite yourself," he stammered in
embarrassment.
With a howl of triumph the sick man cut him short and snapped in an
unnaturally high voice:
"You don't know what happened to Dill, you don't? We were standing
just the way we are now, and he was just going to show me the new
photograph that his wife had sent him--his brave wife, he-he, his
restrained wife. Oh yes, restrained! That's what they all were--all
prepared for anything. And while we were standing there, he about to
show me the picture, a twenty-eighter struck quite a distance away
from us, a good two-hundred yards. We didn't even look that way.
Then all of a sudden I saw something black come flying through the
air--and Dill fell over with his dashing wife's picture in his hand and a
boot, a leg, a boot with the leg of a baggage soldier sticking in his
head--a soldier that the twenty-eighter had blown to pieces far away
from where we stood."
He stopped for an instant and stared at the captain triumphantly. Then
he went on with a note of spiteful pride in his voice, though every now
and then interrupted by a peculiar gurgling groan.
"Poor Dill never said another word--Dill with the spur sticking in his
skull, a regular cavalry spur, as big as a five-crown piece. He only
turned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wife's
picture, that she should have permitted such a thing as that. Such a
thing as that! Such a thing! It took four of us to pull the boot out-- four
of us. We had to turn it and twist it, until a piece of his brain came
along--like roots pulled up--like a jellyfish--a dead one--sticking to the
spur."
"Shut up!" the captain yelled furiously, and tore himself away and

walked into the house cursing.
The other two looked after him longingly, but they could not let the
unfortunate