"When did you get back?"
And his answer came as if clicked on a typewriter. "Me, I stayed, Mon Capitaine. It had an air too dangerous, out there."
I stared in a white rage. You'll imagine—one of my men to dare tell me that! And at that second, simultaneously, came the flare of a shell star and a shout of a man struck down, and I knew the voice—John Dudley. He was out there, [pg 187] the tail end of the party, wounded. I saw him as he fell, on the farther side of the new trench. Of course, one's instinct was to dash back and bring him in, and I started. And I found my foot gone—I couldn't walk. Quicker than I can tell it I turned to Beauramé, the coward, who'd been afraid to go over the top, and I said in French, because, though I hadn't time to think it out, I yet realized that it would get to him faster so—I said:
"Get over there, you deserter. Save the lieutenant—Lieutenant Dudley. Go."
For one instant I thought it was no good and I was due to have him shot, if we both lived through the night. And then—I never in my life saw such a face of abject fear as the one he turned first to me and then across that horror of No Man's Land. The whites of his eyes showed, it seemed, an eighth of an inch above the irises; his black eyebrows were half way up his forehead, and his teeth, luxuriously upholstered with fillings, shone white and gold in the unearthly light. It was such a mad terror as I'd never [pg 188] seen before, and never since. And into it I, mad too with the thought of my sister if I let young John Dudley die before my eyes—I bombed again the order to go out and bring in Dudley. I remember the fading and coming expressions on that Frenchman's face like the changes on a moving picture film. I suppose it was half a minute. And here was the coward face gazing into mine, transfigured into the face of a man who cared about another man more than himself—a common man whose one high quality was love.
"C'est bien, Mon Capitaine," Beauramé spoke, through still clicking teeth, and with his regulation smile of good will he had sprung over the parapet in one lithe movement, and I saw him crouching, trotting that absurd, powerful fast trot through the lane in our barbed wire, like lightning, to the shallow new trench, to Dudley. I saw him—for the Germans had the stretch lighted—I saw the man pick up my brother-in-law and toss him over his shoulders and start trotting back. Then I saw him fall, both of them fall, and I knew that he'd stopped a bullet. And [pg 189] then, as I groaned, somehow Beauramé was on his feet again. I expected, that he'd bolt for cover, but he didn't. He bent over deliberately as if he had been a fearless hero—and maybe he was—and he picked up Dudley again and started on, laboring, this time in walking. He was hit badly. But he made the trench; he brought in Dudley.
Then such a howl of hurrahs greeted him from the men who watched the rescue as poor little Aristophe Beauramé—"
"Ah!" I interjected, and Bobby turned and stared—"as the poor little scared rat had not dreamed, or had any right to dream would ever greet his conduct on earth. He dropped Dudley at my feet and turned with his flabby mouth open and his great stupid eyes like saucers, towards the men who rushed to shake his hand and throw at him words of admiration that choked them to get out. And then he keeled over. So you see. It was an equal chance at one second, whether a man should be shot for a deserter or—win the Victoria Cross."
"What!" I shouted at my guest. "What! Not the Victoria Cross! Not Aristophe!"
Bobby looked at me in surprise. "You're a great claque for me," he said. "You seem to take an interest in my hero. Yes, he got it. He was badly hurt. One hand nearly gone and a wound in his side. I was lucky enough to be in London on a day three months later, and to be present at the ceremony, when the young French-Canadian, spoiled for a soldier, but splendid stuff now for a hero, stood out in the open before the troops in front of Buckingham Palace and King George pinned the V.C. on his breast. They say that he's back in his village, and the whole show. I hear that he tells over and over the story of his heroism and the rescue of 'Mon Lieutenant.' to never failing audiences. Of course, John is looking after him, for the hand which John saved was the hand that was shot to pieces in saving John, and the Tin Lizzie can never make his living with that hand again. A deserter, a coward—decorated by the King with the Victoria Cross! Queer things happen in war!" [pg 191] There was a stir, a murmur as of voices, of questions beginning, but Bobby was not quite through.