it was as if peza was a corpse walking on the bottom of the sea, and finding there fields of grain, groves, weeds, the faces of men, voices. war, a strange employment of the race, presented to him a scene crowded with familiar objects which wore the livery of their commonness, placidly, undauntedly. he was smitten with keen astonishment; a spread of green grass lit with the flames of poppies was too old for the company of this new ogre. if he had been devoting the full lens of his mind to this phase, he would have known he was amazed that the trees, the flowers, the grass, all tender and peaceful nature had not taken to heels at once upon the outbreak of battle. he venerated the immovable poppies.
the road seemed to lead into the apex of an angle formed by the two defensive lines of the greeks. there was a straggle of wounded men and of gunless and jaded men. these latter did not seem to be frightened. they remained very cool, walking with unhurried steps and busy in gossip. peza tried to define them. perhaps during the fight they had reached the limit of their mental storage, their capacity for excitement, for tragedy, and had then simply come away. peza remembered his visit to a certain place of pictures, where he had found himself amid heavenly skies and diabolic midnights—the sunshine beating red upon desert sands, nude bodies flung to the shore in the green moon-glow, ghastly and starving men clawing at a wall in darkness, a girl at her bath with screened rays falling upon her pearly shoulders, a dance, a funeral, a review, an execution, all the strength of argus-eyed art: and he had whirled and whirled amid this universe with cries of woe and joy, sin and beauty piercing his ears until he had been obliged to simply come away. he remembered that as he had emerged he had lit a cigarette with unction and advanced promptly to a café. a great hollow quiet seemed to be upon the earth.
this was a different case, but in his thoughts he conceded the same causes to many of these gunless wanderers. they too may have dreamed at lightning speed until the capacity for it was overwhelmed. as he watched them, he again saw himself walking toward the café, puffing upon his cigarette. as if to reinforce his theory, a soldier stopped him with an eager but polite inquiry for a match. he watched the man light his little roll of tobacco and paper and begin to smoke ravenously.
peza no longer was torn with sorrow at the sight of wounded men. evidently he found that pity had a numerical limit, and when this was passed the emotion became another thing. now, as he viewed them, he merely felt himself very lucky, and beseeched the continuance of his superior fortune. at the passing of these slouched and stained figures he now heard a reiteration of warning. a part of himself was appealing through the medium of these grim shapes. it was plucking at his sleeve and pointing, telling him to beware; and so it had come to pass that he cared for the implacable misery of these soldiers only as he would have cared for the harms of broken dolls. his whole vision was focussed upon his own chance.
the lieutenant suddenly halted. "look," he said. "i find that my duty is in another direction. i must go another way. but if you wish to fight you have only to go forward, and any officer of the fighting line will give you opportunity." he raised his cap ceremoniously; peza raised his new white helmet. the stranger to battles uttered thanks to his chaperon, the one who had presented him. they bowed punctiliously, staring at each other with civil eyes.
the lieutenant moved quietly away through a field. in an instant it flashed upon peza's mind that this desertion was perfidious. he had been subjected to a criminal discourtesy. the officer had fetched him into the middle of the thing, and then left him to wander helplessly toward death. at one time he was upon the point of shouting at the officer.
in the vale there was an effect as if one was then beneath the battle. it was going on above somewhere. alone, unguided, peza felt like a man groping in a cellar. he reflected too that one should always see the beginning of a fight. it was too difficult to thus approach it when the affair was in full swing. the trees hid all movements of troops from him, and he thought he might be walking out to the very spot which chance had provided for the reception of a fool. he asked eager questions of passing soldiers. some paid no heed to him; others shook their heads mournfully. they knew nothing save that war was hard work. if they talked at all it was in testimony of having fought well, savagely. they did not know if the army was going to advance, hold its ground, or retreat; they were weary.
a long pointed shell flashed through the air and struck near the base of a tree, with a fierce upheaval, compounded of earth and flames. looking back, peza could see the shattered tree quivering from head to foot. its whole being underwent a convulsive tremor which was an exhibition of pain, and, furthermore, deep amazement. as he advanced through the vale, the shells continued to hiss and hurtle in long low flights, and the bullets purred in the air. the missiles were flying into the breast of an astounded nature. the landscape, bewildered, agonized, was suffering a rain of infamous shots, and peza imagined a million eyes gazing at him with the gaze of startled antelopes.
there was a resolute crashing of musketry from the tall hill on the left, and from directly in front there was a mingled din of artillery and musketry firing. peza felt that his pride was playing a great trick in forcing him forward in this manner under conditions of strangeness, isolation, and ignorance. but he recalled the manner of the lieutenant, the smile on the hill-top among the flying peasants. peza blushed and pulled the peak of his helmet down on his forehead. he strode onward firmly. nevertheless he hated the lieutenant, and he resolved that on some future occasion he would take much trouble to arrange a stinging social revenge upon that grinning jackanapes. it did not occur to him until later that he was now going to battle mainly because at a previous time a certain man had smiled.
