Chrisfield had been watching the scene at the door with unseeing eyes. A terrified nervousness that he tried to beat off had come over him. It was useless to repeat to himself again and again that he didn't give a damn; the prospect of being brought up alone before all those officers, of being cross-questioned by those curt voices, frightened him. He would rather have been lashed. Whatever was he to say, he kept asking himself; he would get mixed up or say things he didn't mean to, or else he wouldn't be able to get a word out at all. If only Andy could go up with him, Andy was educated, like the officers were; he had more learning than the whole shooting-match put together. He'd be able to defend himself, and defend his friends, too, if only they'd let him.
“I felt just like those little birds that time they got the bead on our trench at Boticourt,” said Jenkins, laughing.
Chrisfield listened to the talk about him as if from another world. Already he was cut off from his outfit. He'd disappear and they'd never know or care what became of him.
The mess-call blew and the men filed out. He could hear their talk outside, and the sound of their mess-kits as they opened them. He lay on his bunk staring up into the dark. A faint blue light still came from outside, giving a curious purple color to Small's red face and long drooping nose at the end of which hung a glistening drop of moisture.
Chrisfield found Andrews washing a shirt in the brook that flowed through the ruins of the village the other side of the road from the buildings where the division was quartered. The blue sky flicked with pinkish-white clouds gave a shimmer of blue and lavender and white to the bright water. At the bottom could be seen battered helmets and bits of equipment and tin cans that had once held meat. Andrews turned his head; he had a smudge of mud down his nose and soapsuds on his chin.
“Hello, Chris,” he said, looking him in the eyes with his sparkling blue eyes, “how's things?” There was a faint anxious frown on his forehead.
“Two-thirds of one month's pay an' confined to quarters,” said Chrisfield cheerfully.
“Gee, they were easy.”
“Um-hum, said Ah was a good shot an' all that, so they'd let me off this time.”
Andrews started scrubbing at his shirt again.