Edith Wharton

“ It was the fateful week, and every name in the bulletins—Amiens, Compiègne, Rheims, Meaux, Senlis—evoked in Troy Belknap's tortured imagination visions of ancient beauty and stability. He had done that bit of France alone with M. Gantier the year before, while Mrs. Belknap waited in Paris for belated clothes; and the thought of the great stretch of desolation spreading and spreading like a leprosy over a land so full of the poetry of the past, and so rich in a happy prosperous present, was added to the crueller vision of the tragic and magnificent armies that had failed to defend it. ”

“ This new standard of human dignity plunged Troy into the lowest depths of pessimism. And it bewildered him as much as it disgusted him, since it did away at a stroke with all that gave any interest to the fact of living. It killed romance, it killed poetry and adventure, it took all the meaning out of history and conduct and civilization. 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. ”

“ Troy raised his head an inch or two and looked about him. In the east, beyond the wheat, a pallor was creeping upward, drowning the last stars. Any one standing up would be distinctly visible against that pallor. With a sense of horror and reluctance and dismay he lifted the wounded man and stood up. As he did so he felt a small tap on his back, between the shoulders, as if some one had touched him from behind. He half turned to see who it was, and doubled up, slipping down with the wounded soldier in his arms. ”

“ People went about their business as usual, and it was obvious that the strained look on every face was not caused by the random fall of a few shells, but by the perpetual vision of that swaying and receding line on which all men's thoughts were fixed. It was sorrow, not fear, that Troy read in all those anxious eyes—sorrow over so much wasted effort, such high hopes thwarted, so many dear-bought miles of France once more under the German heel. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Troy was all the more surprised because he remembered the jolly calls of the young soldiers in the motor-trucks, and the songs and horse-play of the gangs of trench-diggers and hut-builders he had passed on the way. Was it that his compatriots did not know how to laugh when they were at leisure, or was it rather that, in the intervals of work, the awe of the unknown laid its hand on these untried hearts? ”

“ 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. You must set the example. ”

“ Belknap had to eat; and during the halts in the shining towns, where a succulent luncheon was served in a garden or a flowery courtyard, Troy had time (as he grew bigger) to slip away alone, and climb to the height where the cathedral stood, or at least to loiter and gaze in the narrow crooked streets, between gabled cross-beamed houses, each more picture-bookishly quaint than its neighbours. ”

“ Young women in trig uniforms, with fresh innocent faces, moved among the barrels and boxes, distributing stamps or books, chatting with the soldiers, and being generally homelike and sisterly. The men gave them back glances as honest, and almost as innocent, and an air of simple daylight friendliness pervaded the Avernian cave.
It was the first time that Troy had ever seen a large group of his compatriots so close to the fighting front, and in an hour of ease, and he was struck by the gravity of the young faces, and the low tones of their talk. ”

“ Both events called forth a great deal of agitated discussion, for if they focussed the popular feeling for war, they also gave the opponents of war in general a point of departure for their arguments. 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Instantly the cellar woke up. The soldiers' faces grew young again, they flattened themselves laughingly against the walls near the entrance, the door above was cautiously opened, and a girl in a long blue cloak appeared at the head of the stairs.
"Well, boys—you see I managed it!" she cried; and Troy recognized the piercing accents and azure gaze of Miss Hinda Warlick.
"She managed it!" the whole cellar roared as one man, drowning her answer in a cheer. ”

“ 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" ”

“ They came to the end of the trees, and guessed that the dark wavering wall ahead was the edge of a wheat-field. 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. I'm not the least afraid, so I suppose this is not a battle" . ”

“ Troy, from the height of his youthful indignation, regarded them all as heartless egoists, and fled away into the streets from the sound of their lamentations.
But in the streets was fresh food for misery; for every day the once empty vistas were filled with trains of farm-waggons, drawn by slow country horses, and heaped with furniture and household utensils; and beside the carts walked lines of haggard people, old men and women with vacant faces, mothers hugging hungry babies, and children limping after them with heavy bundles. The fugitives of the Marne were pouring into Paris. ”

“ 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."
Mr. Belknap was genuinely shocked. He had caught the war fever late in life, and late in the war, and his son's flippancy surprised and pained him.
"The theatre? We don't go to the theatre. . . ." He paused to light his cigar, and added, embarrassed: "Really, Troy, now there's so little doing here, don't you think you might be more useful in Italy?" ”

“ Troy ransacked the ambulance, found water, brandy, biscuits, condensed milk, and set up an impromptu canteen. But the people who had clustered about him were pushed forward by others crying: "Are you mad to stay here? The Germans are coming!"—and in a feeble panic they pressed on.
One old man, trembling with fatigue, and dragging a shaking brittle old woman, had spied the stretcher beds inside the ambulance, and without asking leave scrambled in and pulled his wife after him. ”

“ She took no notice of Troy, and he went back to the grave and laid the roses on it.
On the cross he had read: "September 12, 1914. Paul Gantier, —th Chasseurs à pied."
"Oh, poor fellows . . . poor fellows. Yes, that's right, Troy; put the roses on their graves," Mrs. Belknap assented approvingly, as she picked her way back to the motor. ”

“ Belknap would begin, looking down her long dinner-table between the orchids and the candelabra; and the pretty women and prosperous men would interrupt their talk, and listen for a moment, half absently, with spurts of easy indignation that faded out again as they heard the story oftener. ”

“ It would have looked unfriendly not to accompany him, so they pushed their way together through the cellar door surmounted by the sociable red triangle.
It was a big cellar, but brown uniforms and ruddy faces crowded it from wall to wall. In one corner the men were sitting on packing-boxes at a long table made of boards laid across barrels, the smoky light of little oil lamps reddening their cheeks and deepening the furrows in their white foreheads as they laboured over their correspondence. ”

“ Out in the wheat, when he had felt that tap on the shoulder, he had turned round quickly, thinking that a friend had touched him. At the same instant he had stumbled and fallen, and his eyes had grown dark; but through the darkness he still felt confusedly that a friend was near, if only he could lift his lids and look. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ He had simply thought what kind jolly people the Gantiers were, and what fun it was to be inside one of the quaint stone houses, with small window-panes looking on old box-gardens, that he was always being whisked past in the motor. ”

“ He observed the gesture made by the other volunteers and imitated it. It was too dark for the sergeant to distinguish one man from another, and without comment he let Troy fall into the line of men who were creeping up out of the hollow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fresh in his mind was a delicious July day at Rheims with his tutor, and the memory of every detail noted on the way, along the green windings of the Marne, by Meaux, Montmirail and Epernay. Now, traversing the same towns, he seemed to be looking into murdered faces, vacant and stony. ”

“ 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 . ”

“ He could have killed the cousins and uncles strutting about in uniform and saying: "Don't fret, old man—there's lots of time. The war is sure to last another four years." To say that, and laugh, how little they must know of what war meant!
It was an old custom in the Belknap family to ask Troy what he wanted for his birthday. ”

“ The little boy's happiness would have been complete if there had been more time to give to the beautiful things that flew past them: thatched villages with square-towered churches in hollows of the deep green country, or grey shining towns above rivers on which cathedrals seemed to be moored like ships ”

“ He said nothing of that to Jacks or any one, and now that the fever had dropped he was glad he had held his tongue. Some one told him that a sergeant of the chasseurs à pied had found him and brought him in to the nearest poste de secours, where Jacks, providentially, had run across him and carried him back to the base. They told him that his rescue had been wonderful, but that nobody knew what the sergeant's name was, or where he had gone to. . . . ("If ever a man ought to have had the Croix de Guerre—!" one of the nurses interjected emotionally.)
Troy listened and shut his lips. ”

“ 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 eyeglasses, 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." ”