The Splendid Outcast. Gibbs George

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СКАЧАТЬ Jim's rifle and accoutrement with the intention of joining the squad of engineers. But just at that moment there were sounds of shots within the wood, followed by others closer at hand, and then bullets ripped viciously through the foliage just above him. By a movement just ahead of him he knew that the line was advancing. He couldn't … his knees refused him … so he crawled into the thicket along the gully and lay upon the ground among the fallen leaves. More shots. Cries all about him. A grunt of pain after a shrapnel burst nearby … the rush of feet as the second wave filtered through … then the rapid crackle of the engagement in the wood. Jim was there – in his uniform. He'd be taking long chances too. He had always been a fool…

      From his cover he marked the dawn while the fighting raged – then sunrise. The fire seemed to slacken and then move farther away. The line was still advancing and only the wounded were coming in – some of them walking cases, with bandaged heads and arms. He eyed them through the bushes furtively – vengefully. Why couldn't he have gotten a wound like that – in the afternoon in the wheat field – instead of finding the head of Levinski and the terror that it had brought? Other wounded were coming on stretchers now. The gully near him made an easy path to the plain below and many of them passed near him … but he lay very still beneath the leaves. What if Jim came back on a stretcher…! What should he do?

      Then suddenly as though in answer to his question two men emerged from the hollow above and approached, carrying something between them. There was a man of Harry's own platoon and a sergeant of the company. He heard their voices and at the sound of them he cowered lower.

      "Some say he showed yellow yesterday in the wheat field," said the private.

      "Yellow! They'd better not let me hear 'em sayin' it – "

      They were talking about him– Harry Horton. And the figure, lying awkwardly, a shapeless mass – ?

      At the risk of discovery, the coward straightened and peered down into the white face … Jim!

      Harry Horton didn't remember anything very distinctly for a while after that, for his thoughts were much confused. But out of the chaos emerged the persistent instinct of self preservation. There was no use trying to find Jim's squad now. He wouldn't know them if he saw them. And how could he explain his absence with no wound to show? For a moment the desperate expedient occurred to him of thrusting himself through the leg with the bayonet. He even took Jim's weapon out of its scabbard. But the blue steel gave him a touch of the nausea that had come over him in the wheat field… That wouldn't do. And what was the use? They had Harry Horton lying near death on the stretcher. What mattered what happened to the brother? There was no chance now to exchange identities. Perhaps there was never to be a chance.

      He sank down again into the thicket, pulling the leaves about him. He would find a way. It could be managed. "Missing" – that was the safest way out.

      That night, limping slightly, he emerged and made his way to the rear. It was ridiculously easy. Of the men he met he asked the way to the billets of the – th Regiment. But he didn't go where they told him. He followed their instructions until out of sight of them, and then went in the opposite direction.

      He managed at last to get some food at a small farm house and under the pretext of having been sent to borrow peasant clothing for the Intelligence department, managed to get a pair of trousers, shirt, coat and hat. He had buried his rifle the night before and now when the opportunity came he dropped the bundle of Jim Horton's corporal's uniform, weighted by a stone, into deep water from a bridge over a river. With the splash Corporal James Horton of the Engineers had ceased to exist.

      At the end of two weeks, thanks to some money that he had found in Jim's uniform – and a great deal of good luck – he was safe in a quiet pastoral country far from the battle line. Here he saw no uniforms – only old men and women in blouses and sabots, occupying themselves with the harvest, aware only that the Boches were in retreat and that their own fields were forever safe from invasion. He represented himself as an American art student of Paris, driven by poverty from the city, and offered to work for board and lodging. They took him, and there he stayed for awhile. There was a girl in the family. It was very pleasant. The nearest town was St. Florentin, and Paris was a hundred miles away. But after a few weeks he wearied of it, and of the girl, and having twenty francs left in his pockets stole away in the middle of the night.

      Paris was the place for him. There identities were not questioned. He knew something of Paris. Piquette Morin! He could get her help without telling any unnecessary facts. As to Barry Quinlevin and Moira – that was different. It wouldn't be pleasant to fall completely in the power of a man like Barry Quinlevin – even if he was now his father-in-law. And Moira … No. Moira mustn't ever know if he could prevent it. And yet if Jim Horton in Harry's uniform had been killed Harry would be officially dead. He was already dead, to Moira, if Jim Horton had revived enough to tell the truth. It wasn't a pretty story to be spread around. But if Jim were alive … what then?

      There were ways of getting along in Paris. He would find a way even if … Moira! He would have liked to be able to go to Moira. She was the one creature in the world whose opinion seemed to matter now. She would have been his on the next furlough. He knew women. If you couldn't get them one way you could another. Already her letters had been gentler – more conciliatory. His wife – the wife of an outcast! God! Why had he ever gone into the service? How had he known back there that he wouldn't have been able to stand up under fire – that he would have found the grinning head of the hated Levinski in the wheat field? Waves of goose flesh went over him and left him cold and weak… A sullen mood followed, dull, embittered, and vengeful, against all the world, with only one hope… If Jim were alive – and silent!

      That opened possibilities – to substitute with his brother and come back to his own – with all the honors of the fool performance! It was his name, his job that Jim had taken, and his brother couldn't keep him out of them. He could make Jim give them up – he'd make him. If he couldn't come back himself, he would drag Jim down with him – they would be outcast together. In the dark that night he would have managed in some way to carry out the Major's orders if Jim hadn't found him just at the worst moment. What right had Jim to go butting in and making a fool of them both! D – n him!

      He found his way into Paris at the end of a dreary day of tramping. He had a few francs left but he was tired and very hungry. With a lie framed he went straight to the apartment of Piquette Morin. She had gone out of town for a few days.

      That failure baffled him. He had a deposit in a bank, but he dared not draw it out. So he trudged the weary way up to Montmartre, saving his sous, and hired a bed into which he dropped more dead than alive.

      Thus it was that two nights later, unable yet to bring himself to the point of begging from passersby, with scant hope indeed of success, his weary feet brought him at last to the Rue de Tavennes. Hiding his face under the shadow of his hat he inquired of the concierge and found that the apartment of Madame Horton was au troisième. He strolled past the porte cochère and walked on, looking hungrily up at the lighted windows of the studio. Moira was there – his wife, Barry Quinlevin perhaps. Who else? He heard sounds of laughter from somewhere upstairs. Laughter! The bitterness of it! But it didn't sound like Moira's voice. He walked to and fro watching the lighted windows and the entrance of the concierge, trying to keep up the circulation of his blood, for the night was chill and his clothing thin. He had no plan – but he was very hungry and his resolution to remain unknown was weakening. A man couldn't let himself slowly starve, and yet to seek out any one he knew meant discovery and the horrible publicity that must follow. The lights of the troisième étage held a fascination for him, like that of a flame for a moth. He saw a figure come to a window and throw open the sash. He stared, unable to believe his eyes. It was a man in the uniform of an officer of the United States Army – his own uniform and the man who wore it was his brother Jim! Alive – well, covered with honors perhaps – here – in Moira's СКАЧАТЬ