The Chocolate Cream Soldier

A narrow shave; but a miss is as good as a mile. Dear young lady, your servant until death. I wish for your sake I had joined the Bulgarian army instead of the Servian. I am not a native Servian.

No, you are one of the Austrians who set the Servians on to rob us of our national liberty, and who officer their army for them. We hate them!

Austrian! not I. Don’t hate me, dear young lady. I am only a Swiss, fighting merely as a professional soldier. I joined Servia because it was nearest to me. Be generous: you’ve beaten us hollow.

Have I not been generous?

Noble!—heroic! But I’m not saved yet. This particular rush will soon pass through; but the pursuit will go on all night by fits and starts. I must take my chance to get off during a quiet interval. You don’t mind my waiting just a minute or two, do you?

Oh, no: I am sorry you will have to go into danger again.

Won’t you sit—

Don’t frighten me like that. What is it?

Your pistol! It was staring that officer in the face all the time. What an escape!

Oh, is that all?

I am sorry I frightened you.

Pray take it to protect yourself against me.

No use, dear young lady: there’s nothing in it. It’s not loaded.

Load it by all means.

I’ve no ammunition. What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead; and I finished the last cake of that yesterday.

Chocolate! Do you stuff your pockets with sweets—like a schoolboy—even in the field?

Yes. Isn’t it contemptible?

Allow me. I am sorry I have eaten them all except these.

You’re an angel!

Creams! Delicious!

Bless you, dear lady. You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub. Thank you.

Ugh! Don’t do things so suddenly, gracious lady. Don’t revenge yourself because I frightened you just now.

Frighten me! Do you know, sir, that though I am only a woman, I think I am at heart as brave as you.

I should think so. You haven’t been under fire for three days as I have. I can stand two days without shewing it much; but no man can stand three days: I’m as nervous as a mouse.

Would you like to see me cry?

No.

If you would, all you have to do is to scold me just as if I were a little boy and you my nurse. If I were in camp now they’d play all sorts of tricks on me.

I’m sorry. I won’t scold you.

You must excuse me: our soldiers are not like that.

Oh, yes, they are. There are only two sorts of soldiers: old ones and young ones. I’ve served fourteen years: half of your fellows never smelt powder before. Why, how is it that you’ve just beaten us? Sheer ignorance of the art of war, nothing else.

I never saw anything so unprofessional.

Oh, was it unprofessional to beat you?

Well, come, is it professional to throw a regiment of cavalry on a battery of machine guns, with the dead certainty that if the guns go off not a horse or man will ever get within fifty yards of the fire? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it.

Did you see the great cavalry charge? Oh, tell me about it. Describe it to me.

You never saw a cavalry charge, did you?

How could I?

Ah, perhaps not—of course. Well, it’s a funny sight. It’s like slinging a handful of peas against a window pane: first one comes; then two or three close behind him; and then all the rest in a lump.

Yes, first One!—the bravest of the brave!

Hm! you should see the poor devil pulling at his horse.

Why should he pull at his horse?

It’s running away with him, of course: do you suppose the fellow wants to get there before the others and be killed? Then they all come. You can tell the young ones by their wildness and their slashing. The old ones come bunched up under the number one guard: they know that they are mere projectiles, and that it’s no use trying to fight. The wounds are mostly broken knees, from the horses cannoning together.

Ugh! But I don’t believe the first man is a coward. I believe he is a hero!

That’s what you’d have said if you’d seen the first man in the charge to-day.

Ah, I knew it! Tell me—tell me about him.

He did it like an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up as white as a sheet, and told us they’d sent us the wrong cartridges, and that we couldn’t fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed at the other side of our mouths.

I never felt so sick in my life, though I’ve been in one or two very tight places. And I hadn’t even a revolver cartridge—nothing but chocolate. We’d no bayonets—nothing. Of course, they just cut us to bits. And there was Don Quixote flourishing like a drum major, thinking he’d done the cleverest thing ever known, whereas he ought to be courtmartialled for it. Of all the fools ever let loose on a field of battle, that man must be the very maddest. He and his regiment simply committed suicide—only the pistol missed fire, that’s all.

Indeed! Would you know him again if you saw him?

Shall I ever forget him.

That is a photograph of the gentleman—the patriot and hero—to whom I am betrothed.

I’m really very sorry.

Was it fair to lead me on?

Yes: that’s him: not a doubt of it.

Why do you laugh?

I didn’t laugh, I assure you. At least I didn’t mean to. But when I think of him charging the windmills and thinking he was doing the finest thing—

Give me back the portrait, sir.

Of course. Certainly. I’m really very sorry.

Perhaps I’m quite wrong, you know: no doubt I am. Most likely he had got wind of the cartridge business somehow, and knew it was a safe job.

That is to say, he was a pretender and a coward! You did not dare say that before.

It’s no use, dear lady: I can’t make you see it from the professional point of view.

So much the better for you.

How?

You are my enemy; and you are at my mercy. What would I do if I were a professional soldier?

Ah, true, dear young lady: you’re always right. I know how good you have been to me: to my last hour I shall remember those three chocolate creams. It was unsoldierly; but it was angelic.

Thank you. And now I will do a soldierly thing. You cannot stay here after what you have just said about my future husband; but I will go out on the balcony and see whether it is safe for you to climb down into the street.

Down that waterpipe! Stop! Wait! I can’t! I daren’t! The very thought of it makes me giddy. I came up it fast enough with death behind me. But to face it now in cold blood!—

It’s no use: I give up: I’m beaten. Give the alarm.

Come, don’t be disheartened.

Oh, you are a very poor soldier—a chocolate cream soldier. Come, cheer up: it takes less courage to climb down than to face capture—remember that.

No, capture only means death; and death is sleep—oh, sleep, sleep, sleep, undisturbed sleep! Climbing down the pipe means doing something—exerting myself—thinking! Death ten times over first.

Are you so sleepy as that?

I’ve not had two hours’ undisturbed sleep since the war began. I’m on the staff: you don’t know what that means. I haven’t closed my eyes for thirty-six hours.

But what am I to do with you.

Of course I must do something.

You see, sleep or no sleep, hunger or no hunger, tired or not tired, you can always do a thing when you know it must be done. Well, that pipe must be got down—

—Do you hear that, you chocolate cream soldier?