The Splendid Outcast

by George Gibbs

FREEDOM

Meanwhile, Destiny was at her loom, weaving with careless hand. The American and French armies were moving closer to the Rhine, but the Infantry regiment to which Harry Horton belonged lay at Château Dix awaiting orders. There Harry went upon the morning following the return of Barry Quinlevin from Ireland. Upon his breast he wore the Croix de Guerre, but in his soul was a deathly sickness, the inward reflection of the physical discomfort with which he had awakened. The prospect that lay before him was not to his liking. The period during which he had been out of uniform, the weeks of secrecy, of self-indulgence and abasement, had marked him for their own, and unfitted him for the rigorous routine of discipline that awaited him. And so he faced the ordeal with a positive distaste for his old associations, aware of a sinking feeling in his breast that was not entirely the result of his heavy potations while in Paris.

He felt the burden of his failure and a terror that he would not be able to live up to the record Jim Horton had made for him. There would be no more fighting perhaps, but always beside him there would stalk the specter of his military sin, of which the medal at his breast was to be the perpetual reminder. On the train down from Paris, the medal and its colorful bit of green and red seemed to fill the whole range of his vision. D—— the thing! He tore it off and put it in his pocket, and then, somewhat relieved, sank back into his seat and tried to doze. But his nerves were most uncertain. Every sound, even the smallest, seemed to beat with an unpleasant staccato, upon his ear drums. And he started up and gazed out of the window, trying to soothe himself with tobacco. That helped. But he knew that what he wanted was stronger drugging—whisky or brandy—needed it indeed to exorcise the demons that inhabited him. And the thought of the difficulties that would lie in the way of getting what he craved, to-day, to-morrow, and the long days and nights that were to follow still further unmanned him.

Before Moira had left for Nice, he had given her his promise to report for duty fit and sober, and he had put his will to the task, aware that the first impression he created with his Colonel was to be important. It was for this reason that he did not dare to open his valise and touch the bottles hidden there because he knew that one drink would not be enough to sooth either his nerves or the dull pangs of his weary conscience. That he had a conscience, he had discovered in the house in the Rue Charron when the desire of Monsieur Tricot and Le Singe to put Jim Horton out of the way for good had brought him face to face with the evil image of himself. He hated his brother Jim as much as ever, because he was all the things that Harry was not, but the plans of Quinlevin which seemed to stop at nothing, not even Moira herself, now filled him with dread and repugnance. His nerve was gone—that was it. His nerve—his nerve....

But arrival at regimental headquarters restored him for awhile. His Colonel gave him a soldierly welcome, fingered with some envy the Croix de Guerre, which Harry had pinned on his breast again before leaving the railroad, and summoned Harry's Major, whose greeting left nothing to be desired. And for the moment it almost seemed to Harry as though he might be able to "put it over." But the next day was difficult. He managed a drink early and that kept him going for awhile; but they gave him his company in the morning, and from that moment the intimate contact with those who had known him began—a lieutenant he had never liked, a sergeant who was a psychologist, and a familiar face here and there associated unpleasantly with the long weary days of training and preparation until the regiment had been worked up into the advanced position. But his long sickness in the hospital and his unfamiliarity with recent orders served him well for excuse, and the Croix de Guerre upon his breast served him better. A corporal and a sergeant with whom in the old days he had had nothing in common, each of whom wore decorations, came up to him, saluting, and reported that it was they who had carried him back to the dressing station from the rocks at Boissière Wood. He shook them by the hands with a cordiality which did not disguise from himself the new terror, and when they attempted a recital of the events of the great fight in which they had shared, he blundered helplessly for a while and then cut the interview short, pleading urgent affairs.

Then, too, there was the nasty business of the wounds. He hadn't any. He was scathless. He had tried the ruse of the adhesive tape on Moira with disastrous effect. Here the result of the discovery of his unblemished skin would prove still more disastrous. And so at once he discouraged familiarity, kept to his billet and attempted with all the courage left to him to put through his daily round with all credit to his new office. But it irked him horribly. His supply of strong drink did not last long, and the thin red wines, the only substitute procurable, were merely a source of irritation.

And there were others in his company of whose approbation he was not at all certain. There was the sergeant, who had had the platoon that had been caught with his own in the wheat-field. There were four or five men of one of his own squads who had been close beside him in the same wheat-field when he had been taken ill and they had left him face to face with the grinning head of the hated Levinski. And there was the late Levinski's own "buddy," Weyl, who had sometimes shared in Harry's reprobation. Weyl annoyed him most perhaps, with his staring, fishy eye and his Hebraic nose, so similar to that of his lamented tent-mate. Weyl had been in the wheatfield and his heavy face seemed to conceal a malevolent omniscience. The large staring eyes followed the new Captain of infantry, inquisitive, accusing and contemptuous. Whenever Corporal Weyl came within the range of Harry's vision, their glances seemed at once to meet and hold each other and it was the Captain who always looked away. Weyl's fishy eye fascinated and haunted him. He saw it by day, dreamed of it by night, and he cursed the man in his heart with a fury that did nothing for his composure.

One day as Harry was making his way to mess, he came upon Corporal Weyl standing at ease just outside his billet. The man's eye seemed more round, more fishy, and his demeanor more contemptuous than ever. The last of the whisky was gone. Harry Horton's heart was behaving queerly within him, and muscles with which he was unfamiliar announced their existence in strange twitchings. The breakfast coffee would help. In the meanwhile—he glared at Corporal Weyl, his fists clenched.

"What the H—— do you mean by staring at me all the time?" he asked.

Weyl came to attention and saluted in excellent form.