On Saturday afternoon a few days later, the mail from Paris brought me a short note from Captain Winstead to tell me that:

“Your friend Marfield found me at the office this afternoon and I gathered that he is hunting for you. I took the liberty of telling him you had already left Paris for parts unknown—although, of course, I knew you planned to leave to-morrow morning. He wanted to know where you were going from here, but I professed a colossal ignorance of your plans.... Just wanted to let you know about him, in case you should want to see him or get in touch with him. He didn’t say what was on his mind.”

Lord only knew what was on his mind. Knowing him, I knew that it was impossible to predict anything in regard to him. All I hoped was that he hadn’t been investigating my whereabouts at home, and that Leon hadn’t bumped into him.... Why did a man have to be like that? He could just as easily forget about me and mind his own business—but I knew he wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d either got me where he wanted me or forced me to a showdown, with all its embarrassments.

However, I was not worrying so much about him just now as I was about Leon. I mean, if I could find my brother and put him wise to what had happened, perhaps he could be on guard against Jay-Jay and do his part toward insuring my safety. Also, I wanted to straighten out the tangle in which my visit involved Lisa. I was determined to risk any consequence at all to make up for what trouble I’d caused her, and her husband had to be informed of the truth. It would help matters a lot if Leon were with me when I called there.... I hadn’t the least idea where to look for him, but I decided to go on a hunt which I hoped would result in finding him.

The mail from Tours brought a letter from Aunt Elinor and one from Vyvy. Aunt Elinor’s note was brief but she inclosed something else that was an entirely different matter: a letter from Captain Winstead which began with explaining his loss of my address and begging for my forgiveness and ended with veiled but sincere protestations of love. He said he wanted me to believe that that night in the garden “was not just another night and nothing more.” I was perfectly willing to believe him, after the way he’d talked to me about my sister—but I didn’t much care for the way he fell in love with all these pretty mademoiselles he met. This letter was apparently written just after he met me in Tours. I had to answer it toute de suite and send it to Auntie.... Poor Auntie: I guessed she was about distracted by this old war.

The most interesting part of Vyvy’s letter follows, because it is worth preserving and I saved it to give to Leon when I saw him:

“Your attitude, my dear Leon, is beyond me. I can only surmise as to what has happened to you and to the burning world-moving passion which you once professed so eloquently, but I am convinced at last that you have succumbed to the vulgar charms of some petite mademoiselle and that the love-loving creature has estranged you completely from me.

“Please tell me frankly if this is true. Your matter-of-fact ‘duty’ cards do not begin to appease the hunger of my heart, but rather would I go without their incredible meagerness and empty promise than feel continually, insistently, day after day, that you are—the real you that I loved—no longer wholly mine.... You must know what you mean to me: why do you act this way? I want to understand, so please explain and try to remember how much you once said you loved

I didn’t realize, until I read this, that I had not written to the poor girl for over a month. She had a right to be wild by this time. I could hear her calling Leon every bad name she knew, and she was not ignorant by any means. So I supposed I’d have to sit down and pen her a long and worshipful epistle, telling her all about it.

No, on second thought, I wouldn’t. I was sick of writing love letters to a girl. Why couldn’t Leon write his own love letters? I’d wait until I saw if he was still in Le Mans and if he was, he could just sit right down and do his stuff for the sake of his velvety Vyvy. And he could just keep on writing to her.... That’s one thing that would be off my mind.... Then I had a haircut: that was another thing off my mind. Pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything on it except my own business. God, but that would be a beautiful day for me!

Ben and I were promenading with Esky the following afternoon when we bumped smack into Leon, just about a block from Le Chien Rouge. If I had seen him first, I would have managed somehow to divert Ben’s attention so that I could see Leon without Ben’s knowing about it, but the way it happened, Ben noticed Esky was acting funny and when he looked across the street he saw something that made him roar out impulsively, “Hey, you!... You’re the guy that got me in the jug! Come over here!”

That was the first I knew of Leon’s proximity and I turned to see him stepping across the thoroughfare in compliance with Ben’s command.

Before I thought, I cried out, “Hello, Leon. Lord, but I’ve been wanting to see you!”

Ben turned about and faced me, but before I could say anything to him, Leon was with us, greeting me with a rather doubtful “Hello.” He kept eying my companion suspiciously, as if he expected to see him draw back for a lusty swing any minute. And I was trying to think fast: Ben had heard me call him by my own name, and some explanation would have to be given for that. Also, he’d wonder why I said I couldn’t imagine who this double of mine was. Yes, Mr. Ben was bound to get some explanations, but not just now.

“Ben,” I said, taking his arm and giving him a push, “do me a big favor and take a drink for yourself somewhere, will you?... I’ll explain everything to you later, but just now I’ve got to talk turkey to this man.” I waited until he agreed with a grunt and started away with Esky at his heels, then I called after him, “That’s a good sport, Big Boy.”

Then I turned to my brother. He just smiled at me and said, “I suppose you’re happy now, eh?”

“Say!” I exclaimed. “If you don’t want to be killed on the spot, don’t talk to me about being happy.... There have been times since I last saw you when I could have murdered you in cold blood! Where in the name of God have you been and why didn’t you get in touch with me?”

“Well—” he began, placatingly. “For a long time, I couldn’t see any advantage in writing to you. In the first place, it isn’t good for us to be seen together. In the second place, I don’t see how I can help you any. I tried every way possible to get across here without enlisting, but there wasn’t a prayer, so I finally got mad and enlisted and here I am.”

“But what do you expect me to do?” I demanded. “How am I going to get out of this man’s army?”

“I’ve doped it all out,” he replied easily. “If worse comes to worst, I’ll desert and take your place. You resume your proper attire, no one will be the wiser.”

“You’re as brilliant as ever, aren’t you?” I observed after a momentary digestion of this idea. “I suppose you aren’t aware that Jay-Jay Marfield is over here and is dogging me for a show-down already. Also, what would I do in dresses over here? How could I get a passport to get out of France when I couldn’t show any record of having legitimately entered the country?... Perhaps the scheme might work after the war is over, but that may be a couple of years yet—and I’m sure I can’t stand even one more year of it. I’ve got one service stripe already and I don’t crave for any more.”

“Well—we’ll have to dope out something,” he admitted. “However, for the time being, what’s on your mind?”

“Plenty!” I exclaimed. “For one thing I’m in a jamb with Lisa Mantour’s husband—you know, Lisa, at St. Malo? Her husband runs this cafÉ on the next corner, Le Chien Rouge, and he threatened to shoot me for coming to see his wife. Lisa wouldn’t tell him that I’m a girl because she’s afraid he’ll talk when he’s drunk, and I guess he’s been raising Cain with her on my account. So now I’m going to tell him the truth and in order that he’ll believe it more readily, you’ve got to come along and face him, too.”

“I don’t want to face that man again!” he declared stubbornly. “I wandered in there about two months ago and he lit on me with a bung-stopper. I didn’t know he had a wife, much less that she was Lisa, and I didn’t know what he was jabbering about until that big fellow there came along and flew into the scrap—and then I ducked.”

“Yes, I know about that. He thought it was me—in fact, he’s had his doubts about it up until just recently. Now he knows it wasn’t me, but I’ve got to explain us to him some way.”

“Tell him we’re twin brothers,” he suggested.

“I guess I’ll have to,” I agreed. “But I told him before that I couldn’t imagine who you were. And calling you ‘Leon’—that will call for an explanation, too. But I’ll settle him. He can wait. The important thing is to get old Pierre fixed up. How about it?”

He started to smile as he replied, “But his place isn’t open to-day and I’m going on leave to Paris in the morning. I don’t see how we can make it now.”

“When you coming back?”

“Ten days—but my outfit will be moving out of here then, if not sooner. We’re going up to take over a hospital near Toul.”

“Then we’re going to see Lisa and Pierre before you go. What time you going in the morning?”

“Too early to get down here first.”

“Then come on.... We’ll find them somewhere.” And I took his arm and marched him up the street to the corner where Le Chien Rouge is located. I tried the front door and found it locked and barred, but around the corner there was another door which I assumed led to their living quarters and on which I knocked loudly and long.

Finally the door was opened a crack and Lisa looked out. When she saw who it was, she threw the door open and welcomed us both with open arms and many kisses, and to Leon she said, “I would not beleeve she was not you onteel she prove it!”

Leon laughed in embarrassment, but just at that moment I spied Ben and Esky coming around the corner, so I pushed Leon in and called to Ben that I’d be with him in a few minutes.

Inside I quickly told Lisa that she had to explain everything to her husband. “It makes no difference about his talking. We must risk that.”

“Do not fret, chÈre!” she argued. “It is but words that open his mouth. I weel feex him.”

We argued back and forth until she finally consented, and I suggested that she call her husband so that we could prove everything to him at once.

“But he is not here,” declared Lisa.

“Then to-night?” I asked. She nodded. “Can you meet me here at eight, Leon?” He reluctantly agreed to come.

“He will be here sure at that hour,” Lisa told us as we departed.

Leon walked past Ben’s glaring eyes without a blink of recognition, but I came along a moment later and promptly began explaining the mystery to him. “You see, Ben,” I told him, “I’ve got to trust you to keep this to yourself—I know you will, because it means a devil of a lot to me.... The truth is that the fellow you just saw is my twin brother. His name is Leonard, but we always called each other either Leon or Leonard—you know, just a kid trick we never got over.... I didn’t say anything about him before because I didn’t know he was in France. You see, he got into a scrape back home and disappeared; now he’s serving under a different name. That’s why we can’t be together much, because we look so much alike that anyone would notice the difference in names and be suspicious.... You see how it is, Ben. I suspected, when you told me about that fight, that it was my brother, but I could not quite bring myself to tell you the secret then. However, now it’s all right and I know you’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you?”

He was grinning good-naturedly. “Aw, hell, yes!” he replied. “I knew there was somethin’ cockeyed goin’ on, but I wouldn’t ’a’ said nothing about it, anyway.”... So that was that.

We wandered around then and finally had dinner and wine in a little place that stayed open on Sunday, but you had to enter by the back door. I paid for the grub and the wine. Indeed I bought plenty of wine and let Ben drink his fill, for I was anxious to get rid of him before eight o’clock. I suppose I could have asked him to chase along alone, but I didn’t, and the result was that he came back to Le Chien Rouge with me, although he was feeling so sleepy that I doubt if he knew exactly where he was at first.

Leon didn’t appear on the dot, so we had to hang around the corner for some few minutes. Ben sat down on the doorstep and Esky went prowling around looking for something to interest him—or maybe he recognized the place because of the bar rag that was thrown at him when we were there last.... Just as Leon appeared, Ben grabbed my leg and said, “Leony, that bald-headed pirate in there is givin’ Esky a chunk o’ meat.” I looked down, and there was Ben, leaning against the side of the doorway, peering into the darkened barroom through a crack beneath the shutters.

“I guess he knows it’s all right now,” I said, thinking at once that Lisa had explained to her husband and that now he was trying to make up with the pup. “You wait here for me, Ben,” I told him, as I went around the corner with Leon.

Lisa welcomed us happily and exclaimed, “I have just tell him and he do not beleeve it!” Then she turned and called, “Pierre! Venez ici!”

The old man came, saw, and was convinced. “Which is ze jeune fille?” he asked, grinning cheerfully.

He looked me over for a moment and muttered, “TrÉs bien ... trÉs bien ... I t’ought you make cooked-up lie before zis.” He admitted that he believed us now, but still he did not seem to be entirely happy over the discovery of his error. He left us with Lisa and I heard him moving around, first in the barroom and then outdoors, as if he were looking for something.

We had been there perhaps ten minutes when Ben appeared in the door, asking stupidly if we had seen the pup. “He ain’t outside,” he declared, as if that were news. “He ain’t outside.”

I whistled and called and finally Esky appeared from within, lapping his jaws from the feast he had just had. Old Pierre tried to get him to come to him, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with him, just got behind Ben’s legs and looked at Pierre sort of queerly, so much as to say, “I’ll eat your meat, but I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

Ben took him out. A moment later we bade good-by to the Lenotiers and joined Ben at the corner. As it was early yet, I suggested that we take a walk to the park and give Ben a chance to get some air. So we walked away and found a bench, whereon Ben flopped down and promptly began to doze off, with the result that Leon and I had an opportunity to talk about ourselves to a certain extent.

I gathered a lot from what Leon told me and now I could better understand the change that had come over him: for he certainly was a different man altogether. It seems that the mood in which he went to Booneville passed away as soon as his arm began to heal, and he had nothing to do but think about how rotten he was. The solitude—of whose virtues and beauties he had sung so often—closed about him depressingly and even the sounds of his own voice came back at him with echoes and reËchoes from the hills. He had never been sociable nor friendly, and the natives of Booneville cast suspicious glances at him upon the infrequent occasions of his visits to the post office. He discovered that the torments of loneliness, of strange-noised nights and uneventful days, were far worse than any of the fancied or real horrors of war. I guess he made up his mind then that the army was a better place for him than Booneville, and I don’t think he cared a great deal whether he succeeded in getting across to rescue me: his idea was simply to go out and do something that would revive his self-respect and prove to himself that he was no weakling or coward.

It may be that he feared my being detected, in which case he would have been found and sent up for desertion, no doubt. He may have figured that he was safer in the army than he would be out of it—should anything happen to me. And after he was in again, he found it was just as easy to make the best of army life as it was to make the worst of it. He was thrown into a company that showed in its personnel an exceptional cross section of American citizenry, and he stuck out his chin, determined to take what was given him, made no effort to shirk his duties, however unpleasant they happened to be. He discovered that the noncoms thought him a clever and promising man, and his comrades called him a good fellow. It must have seemed awfully easy to him now that he didn’t fight against it.

He served his soldier’s apprenticeship over again, with all the unpleasantness of kitchen police, garbage detail, latrine duty, grounds police; took the unpolite commands of the drill and training field with actual zest; learned to wash his clothes and sew on buttons and do any number of other things which he once thought were utterly, unspeakably, impossible for a person of his Æsthetic plane. And he filled out in the chest, so that he looked as big across the front as I did.

I told him about Vyvy’s letters and showed him the one I just received. He laughed as he read it and said, “The nearest thing to a mademoiselle I’ve touched is a dirty smelly old G.I. can.”

I looked at him in surprise. That sounded like a dirty crack to me—and dirty cracks were the last thing I would expect from my brother.... There was no question about his being a changed man.

Well, I guess he had learned a lot, and it had done him a world of good. He found that the army was not made up entirely of fools, cowards, roughnecks and knaves, and that there was something to the business besides quarreling, getting drunk, swearing inordinately, indulging indiscriminately in sexual pursuits, plotting against superiors, hand-shaking and pulling political strings, and going A.W.O.L.

He said his outfit contained men of all types and kinds. Men from colleges who could discuss literature and the fine arts as well as the arts of war. Men who looked upon the adventure at hand with an optimistic philosophy that reassured all who knew them. Men from the slums who swore and cursed disgustingly but would give the shirts from their backs if you happened to need them more than they. Men who told dirty stories and sang rotten songs about unmentionable obscenities one minute, and the next conversed in language that would do justice to a Ladies’ Aid meeting. Men who read books and wrote many letters, who showed you pictures of their best girls at home and told you stories about their families and their friends and their former occupations. Men who could work in muck and mud all day, and were able at night to talk intelligently and sincerely of the finer things of life. He even had some buddies who liked poetry as much as he did, but they had adapted themselves to the rimeless rhythm of the life about them.

He had found that the noncoms were not all bullies to their subordinates and kotowing toadies to their superiors. Some were like this, but more often they were hard-working, serious-minded fellows, eager to carry on, get the ugly business finished as soon as possible, and return home.

To men and officers alike this war was the great adventure. Its discomforts and sufferings and dangers were just things to be taken as part of the day’s work. A man put up with anything to be able to say some day, “I was there.”

He had found, as I had found, that all this business of being at war was not a mess of corruption, beastliness and brutality. There were other features to this life than those that are so cried about and proclaimed. It was a glorious adventure! I don’t mean to pollyanna the grimy business, this drab and dreary affair in which men walked blindly into almost certain death or injury—what I mean is that there unquestionably was a fine, an ideal, a truly noble side to the thing. Like beautiful flowers growing out of a bed of filth and rot. Like the lovely poppies that they say grew on the graves filled with the rotting bodies of men in the battlefields.... That isn’t exactly what I mean, but the idea is there, and I was glad to learn that Leon had come to feel toward it all much as I was feeling. It seemed to me that through coming to an understanding of and sympathy for other men, Leon had himself become a man. I doubted if Vyvy could realize the change, even if he wrote to her, but she had nevertheless been the real maker of this man whose name she didn’t know.

I told Leon he could write his own love letters now, but he said “The man who censors my mail would wonder what the idea was if I signed my real name, and Vyvy would be wondering if I signed my alias.... You’d better keep on as you are.”

“I don’t want to,” I told him. “I can’t do justice to the subject and Vyvy is entitled to hear from you herself.... I’ll tell you: you put your name and rank and everything at the top of the first page, don’t you?”

“Surely.”

“Well, you write to Auntie and inclose a letter to Vyvy. I’ll write to Auntie and tell her to cut the top from the first page of your letter, then forward the rest to Vyvy. My mail isn’t inspected half the time and no one would think anything anyway.”

“Nope,” he insisted. “Vyvy’d wonder why the letter didn’t come direct.”

“Well—then—you can write to me without having your letters censored. Send your letters to Vyvy via me. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, I guess. I’ll do it.”

So now that was off my hands and my head felt a little easier on all scores, for I told Leon all about the Captain and Jay-Jay and the Madame and everything and he was prepared for whatever might happen now. I almost told him to look up the Madame—but I just couldn’t do it: it didn’t seem decent to fix up a loving party for your own brother.... He would write to me from Paris, and we’d meet again as soon as possible.

Ben and I didn’t get back to our barracks till ten and it was twelve before we turned in. Esky was sick. We didn’t know what was the matter with him, so didn’t know what to do for him. Probably be all right by morning, but I hated to see him sick. He looked and acted too pitiful: I couldn’t sleep all night if he was going to be prowling around and sticking his nose into my ear every few minutes. But that was just what he did when he felt funny.

Ben was asleep. Esky stuck his nose into his ear and Ben must have been dreaming, for he mumbled something about “you know my weak spot, honey.” Maybe he thought it was that Captain of W.A.A.C.’s.

Monday was a terrible day. The General worked me like a nigger. Esky was sick and Ben said he’d been poisoned by that meat Pierre gave him yesterday. When I told the General about it, he told Ben to take the pup and cart him out to a veterinary in the car. Pretty special for a dog to ride to a veterinary in a General’s car. Ben came back to report that the vet didn’t know whether he could pull him through or not, said he was probably poisoned, that he might go blind.... I felt too terrible to think about it. We got some medicine and Ben and I took turns all night getting up to give it to him. The poor pup! He just lay around and looked miserable and threw up everything he ate and a lot of blood, too.

The next day it looked as if Esky couldn’t possibly get well again. He didn’t walk around at all—just lay there on his side and breathed so awfully hard that it made me want to cry just to watch him. When I patted his head he opened his eyes lazily and gave his tail a couple of feeble wags.

In the night he kept coming to my bunk and sticking his nose up to me. He’d always been taken care of before this and I suppose he couldn’t understand why I didn’t help him when he felt so awful. It was terrible to have a dumb animal depend upon you like that—and you not knowing anything to do to help him.

The medicine was getting the poison out of him, but it had weakened him so that he was nothing but bones already. I was patting his head that afternoon and I just couldn’t keep from crying when I realized that he would probably die. I was crying and sniffling like a little kid when Ben came in and saw me there acting like that. He didn’t feel very well himself, but of course he wouldn’t cry about anything. But I couldn’t stop, and everything he said made me cry harder and harder, because I kept recalling things Esky had done in his short life and everything like that just made me think my heart would break open any minute.

Ben said, “Aw, hell, Leony, don’t do that!” He put his arm around my shoulder and patted my back roughly, trying to make me feel better, and when I kept on crying, he said, “If I didn’t know what a good pup he is, I’d swear you was a woman by the way ya act.... Come on, now, Leony.... Cut it out!”

I finally regained control of myself but I must have looked pretty miserable, for Ben suddenly got up and went out without saying anything. I thought he had gone because he couldn’t stand any more of my foolish crying.

But that was not the whole reason. He came back about an hour later and said he’d been to see the veterinary again. “An’ I told him what was in that meat an’ he gave me this stuff.” He lifted Esky’s head and almost emptied the bottle down his throat.

“How’d you know what was in that meat?” I asked him, suddenly realizing that he must be keeping something back.

“Oh—I found out,” he evaded.

“How?”

“Well—I went down to The Red Dog and wrapped my fist around the old man’s neck an’ wouldn’t let go until he confessed.”

“Oh, God, Ben—you didn’t!” I exclaimed, thinking at once of the possible trouble that might come, if Pierre got mad.

“Yes, I did,” he insisted. “And I gave him a punch in the jaw for good measure, the dirty b——!”

Well, Esky was still alive, but he hadn’t showed any signs of improvement.... I was just sick all over.... Probably Esky would die and Pierre would be mad and tell on us, and everything would be ruined.... And poor Ben couldn’t understand why I was sorry he punched Pierre’s head.

At last the vet said Esky was going to pull through, with any luck at all, and Ben and the General, and even Chilblaines, were all happy as kids. So was I.

But I stopped at Lisa’s in the evening and Pierre lit into me for all his troubles. He had a black eye and he was mad through at all of us.... Lisa said she wished we hadn’t told him the truth yet, and I suppose it would have been better if we had stayed away from the place altogether.

Well, everything seemed to go wrong at once.... I was working like a nigger. My head ached from taking dictation and my fingers ached from punching the typewriter. But thank heavens, we were about done here.... We’d move over to OrlÉans in an other day or so.

And then back to Paris—to Captain Winstead—to Jay-Jay—to God knows what else.

At OrlÉans a letter came from Leon. The contents tell the story as well as I could:

“Why didn’t you give me the low-down on this wild woman of Paris? I wasn’t at all prepared for the shock. She is too beautiful for words: but the language she uses!

“I was walking along in front of the Louvre yesterday when a cab stopped beside me and a woman commanded me to get in. Not having anything better to do, I hastened to comply, but as soon as I got in, she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me as I have never been kissed before. And she kept at me to explain why I hadn’t let her know I was in Paris again. She kept calling me ‘youngster’ and ‘my little home companion’ and ‘baby face,’ but I didn’t mind that as long as she did the other things she did. Why, if Vyvy ever imagined that I had been with a woman that beautiful and that love-loving, she’d never speak to me again.

“I didn’t know what to tell her, so I just didn’t say anything, but kept her busy doing other and more interesting things than talking. I assure you, we had a delightful ride, across the river and up to a studio building.

“But as we entered the building, three men who apparently were officers of the Parisian police, stepped out from their concealment behind the ornamental doorway and seized my beautiful companion very unceremoniously and none too gently.

“She was furious and highly insulted, but one of the men said something to her about ‘Keith’ and ‘Berta’ and then she turned on me. She started to swear in German and the officers laughed at her, so she turned her tongue upon them.

“The officers apparently thought I was the one who had brought about her arrest, for they grabbed me in turn and kissed me hither and yon while deluging me with congratulations on all sorts of impossible achievements. I backed away in confusion, and the last I heard of or from the lady came as they led her up the steps to go to her apartment. Then she turned and actually smiled at me and said, ‘When the heart ignores the head, youngster—I admit you deceived me.’

“‘I’m sorry—,’ I said, because I couldn’t help it. I hated to see her go like that.

“But the point is: what in the name of heavens have you been doing to get a woman like that?”

And I’m sure I couldn’t answer that question, for I didn’t know myself. It just came about, that’s all.... And so the Madame, the charming, beautiful Ada Gedouin, had gone. I couldn’t say that I was glad—I just couldn’t.