While Zaidos, aided by Velo, continued his heart-rending task among the dead and wounded on that bloody field, now applying the tourniquet to some emptying artery, now administering, drop by drop, the stimulant needed to hold life in some poor fellow, hurrying back with others on their stretcher, or giving way to the fearless and pitiful priests who moved among the dying—while all these things happened, it would be well to pause and reflect on the wise preparation which had made it possible for Zaidos to do well his allotted task.
As a Boy Scout, and in the extra work of school, he had taken a keen interest in the Red Cross work. Zaidos was the sort of a fellow who takes a keen pleasure in doing things well. He stood well in his classes always, not for the benefit of school marks, but because he thought that if he studied at all, he might as well be thorough about it and try to get at what the “book Johnny,” as the boys called the textbook writers, really was driving at. It was the same with athletics. He had jumped higher and run faster than anyone else in school, not so much because he was quick and light and agile, but because, having found out that he could run and jump and put up a good boost for the team at other sports, he practiced every spare moment he could find. Zaidos was always trying to see if he could break his own records. He got a lot of fun out of it. It was like a good game of solitaire. He was not dependent on some other fellow. The other fellow was incidental, a sort of side issue and like a good pace-maker. Of course you had to beat him, but the sport was in coming in ahead of your own time.
It was for this that Zaidos had always worked. It had kept him from feeling the petty jealousies and envy which retard the progress of so many of the fellows. Racing with himself, in Red Cross drills, or running, racing, riding or studying, his rival was always present, always ready and willing to take another “try” at something. It was like having a punching bag in his room. Every time he passed it he took a whack or two, and developed his muscles accordingly.
So, in this unexpected and supreme test of his life, Zaidos found himself fit. As the work went on and on, endlessly as it seemed, Zaidos found that his brain commenced to work independently of his hands. The unbelievable wounds of war no longer shocked his deadened nerves. His hands worked more and more accurately and rapidly, but on the inside of his brain was a sort of screen on which flashed the moving picture of his life.
They started from his little boyhood, when he first crossed the ocean up to the time of the last crossing, at the sad summons which had taken him to his dying father. No real moving picture, thought Zaidos, had ever been screened with so many thrills and exciting incidents as the real life-film through which he saw himself rapidly moving. Here and there on the bloody field he puzzled it out for himself, finding that the plot was complete, and that Velo, his cousin, must be the villain.
Zaidos was still ignorant of the fact that Velo had stolen the papers, but that Velo hated him and would be glad enough to get him out of the way grew clearer and clearer, in spite of the apparent friendliness with which he had treated him up to the present time. But now, hour by hour, Zaidos was conscious of a sort of sour look of hatred which seemed to grow plainer and plainer in Velo’s sharp face. Zaidos had an uncomfortable feeling that he must keep a watchful eye on Velo. It was nothing but an instinct, but even so, he felt it, and feeling it, was ashamed.
So the time wore on.
Bending over a soldier with a gaping, bloody hole in his side, Zaidos turned to the hospital corps pouch spread open beside him, and felt for a roll of gauze bandage. One little roll remained.
“Get back to the hospital and get another outfit of gauze and tape,” he ordered Velo.
Velo stood up and straightened his back. He looked down at Zaidos, then his gaze traveled to the unconscious soldier.
“What do you bother with him for?” he said heartlessly. “It’s no use. I’m going to quit. What’s the use of working myself to death?”
“Going to desert?” asked Zaidos coldly. He was holding the hurt soldier in a position where he could treat the wound quickly.
“I suppose so,” said Velo. “This isn’t my fight!”
“Look here,” said Zaidos, “I don’t care what you do. If you desert and are caught at it, and are shot, it is no affair of mine. I wash my hands of you. But for the sake of your own manhood get me that bandage while I take care of this man. Don’t be such a cad, Velo! Get me the things I need, and then let’s talk this thing out later. But don’t do anything to disgrace the family. After all, you know, if anything happens to me, why, you are the head of the house.”
Zaidos glanced suddenly up at his cousin, and surprised in his face a look that once and for all swept away all the kindly doubts he had cherished. Velo’s countenance was so full of cold speculation and deadly hatred that Zaidos started. Then he pulled himself together, and looked Velo in the eye.
“Get the bandages!” he said coldly and Velo, as though controlled by some superior force, turned to do as he was told.
As he hurried across the rough, blood-stained field, he too saw pictures in his mind. He saw the contrasting fates, either of which he thought might be his. The obscure life of a poor relation, dependent on a relative’s kindness, and the life of luxury if all that relative had should come to him. A better boy could have planned to build up a career for himself, but Velo could not or would not. He was like a thief who would rather steal the dollar which he could go to work and earn honestly.
Velo had become desperate in the last few days. As he hurried on, he was seized with a sudden determination to end everything. He went into the First Aid shelter and secured the bandages from the supply table and went back, a dreadful resolve taking form as he went. He found Zaidos still bending over the wounded soldier.
“Well, you hurried, didn’t you?” he said, looking up with a nod of thanks as Velo handed him the bandages. He went on rapidly, securing the gaping wound so that they could shift the torn body to the stretcher.
“It’s funny,” he said as he worked, “that we don’t run across the doctors oftener out here. Of course they are all at work just as hard as we are, and a good deal harder, poor fellows, but it does seem as though every time we get hold of a case that is a good deal too hard for us to tackle, why, then there isn’t a soul in sight to help. I’m so afraid of doing something that will make somebody heal wrong, or limp or something.”
“Be a good way to take revenge on somebody,” said Velo.
“Why you—” Zaidos could not finish. “How the deuce do you ever think up such stuff? For goodness’ sake, don’t say it to me! You make me sick!” He bent over his patient again, and Velo looked idly about.
At his feet lay a revolver. He picked it up. It was loaded. Idly he tried the trigger. It worked. He looked at Zaidos. How he hated him! They seemed all alone on that field of dead and dying. The tide had swept away and left them there with their work.
There was a sudden red mist over Velo’s sight.... Kneeling in the light of the big flashlight, Zaidos loomed up, a clear, clean cut figure with the velvet blackness of the night behind him. Velo brushed his hand before his eyes. Zaidos was putting the last pin in the neat dressing he had applied to the wound. There was a thread of hope for the man. Zaidos smiled. Velo knew he would get up—
The revolver sounded like a cannon. Zaidos, unhurt, got to his feet. He pressed a hand to his side. Velo watched him with fascinated eyes. Zaidos looked down. There was a cut across the service blouse between his sleeve and body, right under his left arm.
Zaidos stared first at Velo, then at the revolver still in his hand.
“How did that happen?” he demanded in a low, tense voice.
Velo swallowed and cleared his throat.
“The thing went off,” he said huskily.
“Well, it came near doing for me,” said Zaidos, still staring suspiciously at Velo. “You let me have that revolver! You are too funny with things to suit me.”
Velo, still pale, smiled a wry, twisted smile.
“I’m sorry,” he lied. “I don’t see how it happened. It must be out of order.”
“Give it to me!” said Zaidos, “and take the front of this stretcher. I’ve got to look out for accidents, it seems. I never saw anything so careless in my life. You have just got to be careful, Velo! I won’t stand for it! This isn’t the first time I’ve nearly come to harm through your carelessness, if you want to call it that. I tell you I won’t stand for it! Mind, I don’t make any accusations; and I don’t claim you are to blame for a lot of things that have happened to me lately, but if things don’t stop, why, you are going to be sorry! There won’t be any revolvers going off, and your bed won’t go down, and your medicine won’t get exchanged for poison, like it sometimes happens. I shall just take you out back of the next wire entanglement, and I will give you a good beating up, Velo. I remember I used to have to do it when we were about four years old. It used to do you a lot of good, and I suppose all these years since you have had no one to keep you where you belonged. I won’t do this, you understand, unless you get careless with guns and things again. You hear, Velo?”
Velo made no reply.
The two boys carefully bearing the stretcher tramped along in silence.
“You hear, Velo?” said Zaidos again. “Honestly, the more I think of it, the madder I get!”
“You stop your nonsense!” said Velo suddenly over his shoulder. His voice took on a whine. “What makes you act so, Zaidos? I’m your cousin, and I should think you would be ashamed of the things you say to me, just as if I haven’t stuck right beside you every minute, and as if I had not done everything in the world that I possibly could do to help you. You don’t treat me well, Zaidos!”
“I do, too,” said Zaidos, stung by this injustice. “I should think I did; but how do you treat me?”
They reached the entrance to the First Aid Station and gave their unconscious burden into the hands waiting to receive him. The doctor scanned the wound.
“Well, boys,” he said, “you have saved this man all right.” He turned the bright light on the still, white face. “My heavens!” he exclaimed.
“Who is it?” asked the nurse.
Velo looked at the face, and spoke before the doctor could reply.
“I know him,” he said. “His name is John Smith.”
The doctor was working rapidly with restoratives.
“John Smith?” he repeated. “This is the Prince of Teck’s oldest son, and his brother was killed an hour ago. We must keep this fellow alive,” he went on, doggedly. “First time I met him he was just an hour old. He won’t go out of this world yet if I can help it!”
The boys went outside and for a moment sat down on the ground to rest.
“What do you suppose made him do that?” said Velo musingly.
“Do what?” asked Zaidos.
“Why,” said Velo, “I asked what his name was one night and he said John Smith. I think that old doctor is making a mistake.”
“What does it matter?” said Zaidos. “He would make just the same effort to save the plain John Smiths as he would to save the princes of the world.”
“Pooh!” said Velo, sneering. “I guess not! Why should he? He knows a thing or two and you will find it out some day. Why, nobody does anything for anybody unless they get paid for it somehow or other!”
“Oh, say,” said Zaidos, getting up and striking one clenched fist violently into the other, “I wouldn’t have your little bit of a soul for anything on earth! I wouldn’t have your mean, little bit of a suspicious, ungenerous mind! I hate to remind a fellow like you of anything so fine, but how about my father? What pay, pay, mind you, did he ever get for taking care of you? What did he ever get for starting that colony of sick people up on the mountain back of his hunting lodge, with a doctor right there, and a nurse or two paid by father? Do you suppose it made him feel good to see them tottering all over the preserve where he could no longer shoot, for fear of hitting some of the poor wretches?”
“No,” agreed Velo, “he didn’t get a thing out of all that, and I always thought that colony for the sick was the silliest thing I ever heard of. I’ll tell you right now when I get hold of things—” he caught himself up quickly. “I mean, of course, when you get hold of things, if you do as I would do, you will send those people packing back to their slums as fast as they can go. As far as his doing for me, why, I’m one of the family and he sort of had to. It is a duty. Besides, do you suppose it was very much fun sticking around that house, quiet as the grave, nothing going on, no one coming to see your father but old, grey-headed men and women forever fixing up charities?”
“That’s all right,” said Zaidos. “Do you know what I am going to do as soon as I get out of this? I’m going to cut right back to America and study as hard as I can. Then as soon as the war is over, I will come back here and straighten everything up. I will of course keep the title. You can’t give that away, and I wouldn’t want to. I’m proud of my name. It is an honorable one and it has been kept clean by the men before me; but I mean to give Greece everything I can turn into money. Then I’ll take enough to start me, go back to America again, and cut out a career for myself. I’m going to be a doctor and as good a doctor as ever lived if study will do it. That’s the monument I mean to give my father and my mother.”
He gave a jerk of the head toward Velo, who sat upright before him.
“How does that strike you, old top?” he asked and climbed down into the First Aid pit.
Left alone, Velo sat thinking. Then he rolled over on his face and beat the earth with his fists. Once more the films flew along, in the moving picture of his mind. He saw the wealth of the Zaidos house—gold, gold! a stream of gold flowing and flowing away from him! He saw the bright lights, the dancing, drinking, all the carousels he had so often dreamed of, slipping out of his grasp. What possible hope could a fellow like himself have of keeping on the right side of anyone like Zaidos? He smiled when he thought what Zaidos would say if he could know or guess what Velo’s life had been. What would he do if he ever found out how he had treated Zaidos’ long suffering father! And Velo did not try to deceive himself. He knew perfectly well that back there in Saloniki, there were people who would jump at a chance to get even with him, and who would give Zaidos an account of meanness and wrong-doing that would cause him to kick Velo out of the house.
Velo began to hate himself for the uncertainty in putting off what to him was a disagreeable necessity. Once more he went over the situation. It seemed as though he had gone over it a dozen times, a million times. It all ended at the blank wall which was Zaidos. Zaidos must be removed.
Now it is a well-known fact that we are what our thoughts make us. Our minds are like our houses, our homes. We do not have to entertain unwelcome guests. We do not have to invite them there. It may be that we feel obliged to treat everyone whom we meet at our games or in school or at work with common politeness. No matter how we despise a man, we can’t very well go up to him in the street and say, “Here, I don’t like your style,” and proceed to knock him out with a good right-hander. Naturally it won’t do. But we need not give the bounder the freedom of our homes. So with our thoughts. It is only when we bring them in and grow intimate with them, and make them part of ourselves that they begin to harm us.
Velo, too evil and too lazy to close the door of his mind on common thoughts and low desires, had grown more and more like his unworthy guests. And now instead of kicking the whole mob into the outer darkness, he lay there, face down, listening to their evil whispers.
“Get rid of Zaidos,” they said over and over. “Get rid of him. Who will know? Don’t you hate him? You ought to! Just because he is the one who really owns everything, is that any reason why you should get out and work for an honest living? You don’t want to bother with an honest living. You want to live soft and lie easy. Get rid of Zaidos! Now is your chance! It is your only chance. You know how he makes friends everywhere. He is straight as a string. He does not lie. He wouldn’t do a mean action. Fellows like us are afraid of that sort. Get rid of him. Now—now!”
So the whispering in Velo’s mind went on, and he listened and listened, and presently he sat up. On his face was written what is written on every man’s face when he gives the keys of his soul over to Evil.
Zaidos came climbing out.
“Well, the doctor is going to save your friend Smith,” he said cheerfully. “Good work, too! One of the nicest fellows I ever knew, that Smith. Too bad about his little brother. I never saw two fellows so crazy over each other. It seems they are the last of the family. Doctor says this fellow will never be able to fight again, but he will get perfectly well in time. I don’t believe it myself. I don’t believe any of the men wounded so will ever get all over it, but we can hope so, anyhow. You see I feel as though I knew this man Smith real well because he knows a schoolmate of mine, Nickell-Wheelerson his name is. He was just a plain boy when we were at school, but he came over with me, and now he’s a lord. Poor old Nick, how he will hate it!”
Velo put a hand on his breast where the papers were hidden. Zaidos stooped and tightened the strap of his puttee. Velo watched him sneeringly. Zaidos was so maddeningly unconcerned. The urge of Evil became like a heavy hand knocking on his heart. He almost feared Zaidos would hear it. “Now—now—now!” it went.
“Come on, Zaidos,” he said, standing up. “I suppose we have an all-night task before us.”
Zaidos yawned. “I thought so, too,” he said; “but it seems they are looking for a bad day tomorrow and we have been relieved from duty for the night. A new shift goes into the field in ten minutes, and we go back to one of the farm-houses to rest until ten to-morrow. Come on, let’s start.”