The Rough Road Part 31

A spot of colour burned on Jeanne's pale cheek, and Doggie grew red under his tanned skin. He cursed Phineas below his breath, and exchanged a significant glance with Mo. Jeanne said, in her even voice:

"I hope all the Three Musketeers will come back safe."

Mo extended a grimy hand. "Well, good-bye, miss! McPhail here and I must be going."

She shook hands with both, wis.h.i.+ng them _bonne chance_, and they strolled away. Doggie lingered.

"You mustn't mind what McPhail says. He's only an old imbecile."

"You have two comrades who love you. That is the princ.i.p.al thing."

"I think they do, each in his way. As for Mo----"

"Mo?" She laughed. "He is delicious."

"Well----" said he reluctantly, after a pause, "good-bye, Jeanne."

"_Au revoir_--Dog-gie."

"If I shouldn't come back--I mean if we were billeted somewhere else--I should like to write to you."

"Well--Mademoiselle Bossiere, chez Madame Morin, Frelus. That is the address."

"And will you write too?"

Without waiting for a reply, he scribbled what was necessary on a sheet torn from a notebook and gave it to her. Their hands met.

"_Au revoir_, Jeanne."

"_Au revoir_, Dog-gie. But I shall see you again to-night."

"Where?"

"It is my secret. _Bonne chance._"

She smiled and turned to leave the kitchen. Doggie clattered into the yard.

"Been doin' a fine bit o' coartin', Doggie," said Private Appleyard from Taunton, who was sitting on a box near by and writing a letter on his knees.

"Not so much of your courting, Spud," replied Doggie cheerfully. "Who are you writing to? Your best girl?"

"I be writin' to my own lawful mizzus," replied Spud Appleyard.

"Then give her my love. Doggie Trevor's love," said Doggie, and marched away through the groups of men.

At the entrance to the barn he fell in with Phineas and Mo.

"Laddie," said the former, "although I meant it at the time as a testimony of my affection, I've been thinking that what I said to the young leddy may not have been over-tactful."

"It was taking it too much for granted," explained Mo, "that you and her were sort of keeping company."

"You're a pair of idiots," said Doggie, sitting down between them, and taking out his pink packet of Caporal. "Have a cigarette?"

"Not if I wos dying of----Look 'ere," said Mo, with the light on his face of the earnest seeker after Truth. "If a chap ain't got no food, he's dying of 'unger. If he ain't got no drink, he's dying of thirst.

What the 'ell is he dying of if he ain't got no tobakker?"

"Army Service Corps," said Phineas, pulling out his pipe.

It was dark when A Company marched away. Doggie had seen nothing more of Jeanne. He was just a little disappointed; for she had promised. He could not a.s.sociate her with light words. Yet perhaps she had kept her promise. She had said "_Je vous verrai._" She had not undertaken to exhibit herself to him. He derived comfort from the thought. There was, indeed, something delicate and subtle and enchanting in the notion. As on the previous day, the fine weather had changed with the night and a fine rain was falling. Doggie, an indistinguishable pack-laden ant in the middle of the four-abreast ribbon of similar pack-laden ants, tramped on in silence, thinking his own thoughts. A regiment going back to the trenches in the night is, from the point of view of the pomp and circ.u.mstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time poet. An experienced regiment has no lovely illusions. It knows what it is going to, and the knowledge makes it serious. It would much rather be in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the rain to four days and nights of eternal mud and stinking high-explosive sh.e.l.l. It sets its teeth and is a very stern, silent, ugly conglomeration of men.

"---- (_the adjective_) night," growled Doggie's right-hand neighbour.

"---- (_the adjective_)" Doggie responded mechanically.

But to Doggie it was less "----" (_adjective as before_) than usual.

Jeanne's denunciation of self-pity had struck deep. Compared with her calamities, half of which would have been the stock-in-trade of a Greek dramatist wherewith to wring tears from mankind for a couple of thousand years, what were his own piffling grievances? As for the "----" night, instead of a drizzle he would have welcomed a waterspout. Something that really mattered.... Let the heavens or the Hun rain molten lead. Something that would put him on an equality with Jeanne.... Jeanne, with her dark haunting eyes and mobile lips, and her slim young figure and her splendid courage. A girl apart from the girls he had known, apart from the women he had known, the women whom he had imagined--and he had not imagined many--his training had atrophied such imaginings of youth. Jeanne. Again her name conjured up visions of the Great Jeanne of Domremy. If only he could have seen her once again!

At the north end of the village the road took a sharp twist, skirting a bit of rising ground. There was just a glimmer of a warning light which streamed athwart the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that rang out clear:

"_Bonne chance!_"

He looked up swiftly. Caught the shadow of a shadow. But it was enough. It was Jeanne. She had kept her promise. The men responded incoherently, waving their hands, and Doggie's shout of "_Merci!_" was lost. But though he knew, with a wonderful throbbing knowledge, that Jeanne's cry was meant for him alone, he was thrilled by his comrades'

instant response to Jeanne's voice. Not a man but he knew that it was Jeanne. But no matter. The company paid homage to Jeanne. Jeanne who had come out in the rain and the wind and the dark, and had waited, waited, to redeem her promise. "_C'est mon secret._"

He ploughed on. Left, right! Thud, thud! Left, right! Jeanne, Jeanne!

CHAPTER XV

In the village of Frelus life went on as before. The same men, though a different regiment, filled its streets and its houses; for by what signs could the inhabitants distinguish one horde of English infantrymen from another? Once a Highland battalion had been billeted on them, and for the first day or so they derived some excitement from the novelty of the costume; the historic Franco-Scottish tradition still lingered, and they welcomed the old allies of France with especial kindliness; but they found that the habits and customs of the men in kilts were identical, in their French eyes, with those of the men in trousers. It is true the Scotch had bagpipes. The village turned out to listen to them in whole-eyed and whole-eared wonder. And the memory of the skirling music remained indelible. Otherwise there was little difference. And when a Midland regiment succeeded a South Coast regiment, where was the difference at all? They might be the same men.

Jeanne, standing by the kitchen door, watching the familiar scene in the courtyard, could scarcely believe there had been a change. Now and again she caught herself wondering why she could not pick out any one of her Three Musketeers. There were two or three soldiers, as usual, helping Toinette with her crocks at the well. There she was, herself, moving among them, as courteously treated as though she were a princess. Perhaps these men, whom she heard had come from manufacturing centres, were a trifle rougher in their manners than her late guests; but the intention of civility and rude chivalry was no less sincere. They came and asked for odds and ends very politely. To all intents and purposes they were the same set of men. Why was not Doggie among them? It seemed very strange.

After a while she made some sort of an acquaintance with a sergeant who had a few words of French and appeared anxious to improve his knowledge of the language. He explained that he had been a teacher in what corresponded to the French _Ecoles Normales_. He came from Birmingham, which he gave her to understand was a glorified Lille. She found him very earnest, very self-centred in his wors.h.i.+p of efficiency. As he had striven for his cla.s.s of boys, so now was he striving for his platoon of men. In a dogmatic way he expounded to her ideals severely practical. In their few casual conversations he interested her. The English, from the first terrible day of their a.s.sociation with her, had commanded her deep admiration. But until lately--in the most recent past--her s.e.x, her national aloofness and her ignorance of English, had restrained her from familiar talk with the British Army. But now she keenly desired to understand this strange, imperturbable, kindly race. She put many questions to the sergeant--always at the kitchen door, in full view of the courtyard, for she never thought of admitting him into the house--and his answers, even when he managed to make himself intelligible, puzzled her exceedingly. One of his remarks led her to ask for what he was fighting, beyond his apparently fixed idea of the efficiency of the men under his control. What was the spiritual idea at the back of him?

"The democratization of the world and the universal brotherhood of mankind."

"When the British Lion shall lie down with the German Lamb?"

He flashed a suspicious glance. Strenuous schoolmasters in primary schools have little time for the cultivation of a sense of humour.

"Something of the sort must be the ultimate result of the war."

"But in the meantime you have got to change the German wolf into the _pet.i.t mouton_. How are you going to do it?"