Edith Wharton

“ This was what war did! It emptied towns of their inhabitants as it emptied veins of their blood; it killed houses and lands as well as men. Out there, a few miles beyond the sunny vineyards and the low hills, men were dying at that very moment by hundreds, by thousands—and their motionless young bodies must have the same unnatural look as these wan ruins, these gutted houses and sterile fields.... War meant Death, Death, Death—Death everywhere and to everything. ”

“ Belknap added gravely: "By the time Troy grows up I hope wars and war-talk will be over for good and all."
"Oh, well—at his age every fellow wants to go out and kill something," remarked one of his uncles sympathetically.
Troy shuddered at the well-meant words. To go out and kill something! They thought he regarded the war as a sport, just as they regarded it as a moving-picture show! As if any one who had had even a glimpse of it could ever again think with joy of killing! ”

“ For a while feeling ran high, and Troy, listening to the heated talk at his parents' table, perceived with disgust and wonder that at the bottom of the anti-war sentiment, whatever specious impartiality it put on, there was always the odd belief that life-in-itself—just the mere raw fact of being alive—was the one thing that mattered, and getting killed the one thing to be avoided. ”

“ Mrs. Belknap, with a murmur of sympathy, caught up the bunch of roses she had gathered in the ravaged garden of the château, and they picked their way among the smashed and slanting stones of the cemetery to a corner behind the church where wooden crosses marked a row of fresh graves. Half-faded flowers in bottles were thrust into the loose earth, and a few tin wreaths hung on the arms of the crosses. ”

“ Most of the faces on the way were French: as far as Epernay they met their compatriots only in isolated groups. But whenever one of the motor-trucks lumbering by bore a big U.S. on its rear panel Troy pushed his light ambulance ahead and skimmed past, just for the joy of seeing the fresh young heads rising pyramid-wise above the sides of the lorry, hearing the snatches of familiar song—"Hail, hail, the gang's all here!" ”

“ He looked in the direction from which he had come, and saw that the sergeant and the rest of the men were disappearing to the right; then he ramped forward again, forward and forward, till he touched the arm of the motionless man and whispered: "Hi, kid, it's me...."
He tried to rouse the wounded man, to pull him forward, to tow him like a barge along the beaten path in the wheat. But the man groaned and resisted. He was evidently in great pain, and Troy, whom a year's experience in ambulance work had enlightened, understood that he must either be carried away or left where he was. ”

“ As for Paris, isn't it too frivolous for you? It's much farther from the war nowadays than New York. I haven't had a dinner like this since your mother joined the Voluntary Rationing League," Mr. Belknap smiled at him across their little table at the Nouveau Luxe.
"I'm glad to hear it—about New York, I mean," Troy answered composedly. "It's our turn now. But Paris isn't a bit too frivolous for me. Which shall it be, father—the Palais Royal—or the Capucines? They say the new revue there is great fun." ”

“ There had never been anything worth while in the world that had not had to be died for, and it was as clear as day that a world which no one would die for could never be a world worth being alive in.
Luckily most people did not require to reason the matter out in order to feel as Troy did, and in the long run the Lusitania and Plattsburg won the day. America tore the gag of neutrality from her lips, and with all the strength of her liberated lungs claimed her right to a place in the struggle. The pacifists crept into their holes, and only Sophy Wicks remained unconverted. ”

“ The east began to redden through the dust-haze of the cloudless air. As they advanced the road became more and more crowded, and the ambulance was caught in the usual dense traffic of the front: artillery, field-kitchens, motor-trucks, horse-wagons, hay-carts packed with refugees, and popping motor-cycles zigzagging through the tangle of vehicles. The movement seemed more feverish and uncertain than usual, and now and then the road was jammed, and curses, shouts and the crack of heavy whips sounded against the incessant cannonade that hung its iron curtain above the hills to the north-east. ”

“ But she was ready and eager to explain France to Troy, and to the group of young men who gathered about her, listening to her piercing accents and gazing into her deep blue eyes.
"We must carry America right into the heart of France—for she has got a great big heart, in spite of everything," Miss Warlick declared. "We must teach her to love children and home and the outdoor life, and you American boys must teach the young Frenchmen to love their mothers. ”

“ Which of the two would conquer, how many yards farther would the resolute Troy drag on the limp coward through this murderous wood? That was the one thing that mattered....
At length they dropped down into a kind of rocky hollow overhung with bushes, and lay there, finger on trigger, hardly breathing. "Sleep a bit if you can—you look beat," whispered the friendly soldier.
Sleep!
Troy's mind was whirling like a machine in a factory blazing with lights. His thoughts rushed back over the miles he had travelled since he had caught up the rifle by the roadside. ”

“ In Paris, in their brightly-lit and beflowered hotel drawing-room, he was welcomed by Madame Lebuc, an old French lady smelling of crape, who gave him lessons and took him and the bull-dog for walks, and who, as he grew older, was supplemented, and then replaced, by an ugly vehement young tutor, of half-English descent, whose companionship opened fresh fields and pastures to Troy's dawning imagination. ”

“ Some one whispered that the Marne was just beyond the wheat-field, and that the red flares they saw must be over Château-Thierry.
The momentary stillness laid a reassuring touch on Troy's nerves, and he slipped along adroitly at the tail of the line, alert but cool. Far off the red flares still flecked the darkness, but they did not frighten him. He said to himself: "People are always afraid in their first battle. ”

“ Troy Belknap, instead of hanging miserably about marble hotels and waiting with restless crowds for the communiqués to appear in the windows of the newspaper offices, was in the thick of the retreat, swept back on its tragic tide, his heart wrung, but his imagination hushed by the fact of participating in the struggle, playing a small dumb indefatigable part, relieving a little fraction of the immense anguish and the dreadful disarray.
The mere fact of lifting a wounded man "so that it wouldn't hurt" ”

“ Troy crossed to the other desk. An old woman sat before it in threadbare mourning, a crape veil on her twitching head. She spoke in a low voice, slowly, taking a long time to explain; each one of Miss Batchford's quick questions put her back, and she had to begin all over again.
"Oh, these refugees!" cried Miss Batchford, stretching a bangled arm above the crape veil to clasp Troy's hand. "Do sit down, Mr. Belknap.—Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît," she said, not too unkindly, to the old woman; and added, to Troy: "There's no satisfying them." ”

“ Do you remember, dearest, your fifteenth birthday was on the very day that odious Archduke was assassinated? We had a picnic on the Morterasch."
"Oh, dear," cried Sophy Wicks, flinging her tennis-racket into the air with a swing that landed it in the middle of the empty court—"perhaps that's the reason he's never stopped talking about the war for a single minute since!" ”

“ So that even the Germans would see us and hear us, and perhaps learn from us too?—for you know we mustn't despair even of teaching the Germans!"
Troy, as he crept away, heard one young man, pink and shock-headed, murmur shyly to the Prophetess: "Hearing you say this has made it all so clear to me——" and an elderly Y.M.C.A. leader, adjusting his eye-glasses, added with nasal emphasis: "Yes, Miss Warlick has expressed in a very lovely way what we all feel: that America's mission is to contribute the human element to this war." ”

“ Ever since the age of six Troy Belknap of New York had embarked for Europe every June on the fastest steamer of one or another of the most expensive lines.
With his family he had descended at the dock from a large noiseless motor, had kissed his father good-bye, turned back to shake hands with the chauffeur (a particular friend) , and trotted up the gang-plank behind his mother's maid, while one welcoming steward captured Mrs. Belknap's bag, and another led away her miniature French bull-dog—also a particular friend of Troy's. ”

“ But he understood that America's young zeal might well be chilled by the first contact with this careless exuberance, so close to the lines where young men like himself were dying day by day in order that the curtain might ring up punctually on low-necked revues, and fat neutrals feast undisturbed on lobster and champagne. Only now and then he asked himself what had become of the Paris of the Marne, and what would happen if ever again——But that of course was nonsense....
Mr. Belknap left for Italy—and two days afterward Troy's ambulance was roused from semi-inaction and hurried to Beauvais. ”

“ Belknap; a little old aunt with bobbing curls; the round-faced Gantier girl, shy and rosy; an incredibly dried and smoked and aged grandfather, with Voltairian eyes and sly snuff-taking gestures; and his own friend, the eldest of the three brothers; he saw all these modest beaming people grouped about Mme. Gantier's coffee and Papa Gantier's best bottle of "Fine," he smelt the lime-blossoms and box, he heard the bees in the lavender, he looked out on the rich fields and woods and the blue hills bathed in summer light. And he read: "Not a house is standing. ”

“ The land lifted and dipped again, and he saw ahead of him the ridge once crowned by M. Gantier's village, and the wall of the terraced garden, with the horn-beam arbour putting forth its early green. Everything else was in ruins: pale weather-bleached ruins over which the rains and suns of three years had passed effacingly. The church, once so firm and four-square on the hill, was now a mere tracery against the clouds; the hospice roofless, the houses all gutted and bulging, with black smears of smoke on their inner walls. ”

“ Troy listened and shut his lips. It was really none of his business to tell these people where the sergeant had gone to; but he smiled a little when the doctor said: "Chances are a man like that hasn't got much use for decorations ..." and when the emotional nurse added: "Well, you must just devote the rest of your life to trying to find him."
Ah, yes, he would do that, Troy swore—he would do it on the battlefields of France. ”

“ It had become the fashion to have a collection of war-trophies from the battlefields. The boys' sisters were "adopting war-orphans" at long distance, and when Troy went home for the holidays he heard more and more talk of war-charities, and noticed that the funds collected were no longer raised by dancing and fancy-balls. People who used the war as an opportunity to have fun were beginning to be treated almost as coldly as the pacifists. ”

“ I was here just after the battle of the Marne, in September 'fourteen."
"That so? You must have been quite a kid," said Jacks with indifference, filling his pipe.
"Well—not quite," Troy rejoined sulkily; and they said no more.
At Epernay they stopped for lunch, and found the place swarming with troops. Troy's soul was bursting within him: he wanted to talk and remember and compare. But his companion was unimaginative, and perhaps a little jealous of his greater experience. "He doesn't want to show that he's new at the job," Troy decided. ”

“ He had deserted—deserted not only his job, and his ambulance, and Jacks, who might come back at any moment—it was a dead certainty to him now that Jacks would come back—but also (incredible perfidy!) the poor worn-out old couple and the wounded territorial who had crawled into the ambulance. He, Troy Belknap, United States Army Ambulance driver, and sworn servant of France, had deserted three sick and helpless people who, if things continued to go badly, would almost certainly fall into the hands of the Germans.... ”

“ Sampson, Troy," his mother said to him, surprised one day by an explosion of temper. "It is so natural she should be nervous at not being able to get staterooms; and she had just given me five hundred dollars for the American ambulance."
"Giving money's no use," the boy growled, obscurely irritated; and when Mrs. Belknap exclaimed, "Why, Troy, how callous—with all this suffering!" ”

“ Mrs. Belknap smiled indulgently on the pleasant scene: her judgement of Sophy Wicks was less severe than that of the young lady's contemporaries. What did it matter if a chit of eighteen, having taken up a foolish attitude, was too self-conscious to renounce it?
"Sophy will feel differently when she has nursed some of our own soldiers in a French base hospital," she said, addressing herself to the disapproving group.
The young girl raised her merry eyebrows. "Who'll stay and nurse Granny if I go to a French base hospital? Troy, will you?" she suggested. ”

“ The women were even more sure of their mission; and there were plenty of them, middle-aged as well as young, in uniform too, cocked-hatted, badged and gaitered—though most of them, apparently, were going to sit in the offices of Paris war-charities, and Troy had never noticed that Frenchwomen had donned khaki for that purpose.
"France must be purified," these young Columbias proclaimed. "Frenchmen must be taught to respect Women. We must protect our boys from contamination ... ”

“ It was too horrible to think of, and so, after a minute or two, he ceased to think of it—at least with the surface of his mind.
"If it's a court-martial it's a court-martial," he reflected; and began to stretch his ears again for the sound of men slipping up in the darkness through the bushes.... ”