The Happy Foreigner Part 31

"Are you hurt?"

"Not at all. And you?"

"Not a bit."

Their cold relations did not seem one whit changed from what they had been in the inn. Nothing had intervened but a little reflection, a little effort, and a vigorous jerk. Why should they change? They stood side by side in the noisy violence of the storm, and one shouted to the other: "Can you get her out!" and the other answered, "No."

"I will walk on to the river."

"You would never find it."

The truth of this she saw as she looked round.

Alfred left her and descending into the d.y.k.e, went on his knees by the radiator and fumbled deep in the snow with his hand. A hissing arose as the heated water ran from the tap he had turned. He emptied the water from the generator; the tail light sank and went out.

"No one will run into her," he remarked. "No one will pa.s.s."

Aie--screamed the wind and created a pillar of white powder. f.a.n.n.y, losing her balance, one foot sank on the edge of a rut, and she went down on her hands; to the knees her silk-clad legs met the cold bite of the snow.

"You must come back with me," shouted Alfred in her ear.

That seemed true and necessary; she could not reach the river; she could not stay where she was. She followed him. At the next ditch he put out his hand and helped her across. They had no lamp. By the light of the snow she watched his blue-clad legs as they sank and rose; her own sinking and rising in the holes he left for her, the buffets of wind un-steadying her at every step. She followed him. And because she was as green as a green bough which bursts into leaf around a wound, the disturbing, the exciting menace of her discovery brightened her heart, set her mind whirling, and overgrew her dejection.

They gained the Chantilly wall, and experienced at once its protection.

The howling wind pa.s.sed overhead and left them in a lew; the dancing snowflakes steadied and dropped more like rain upon them; she moved up abreast of Alfred.

"I will take you back to the inn," he said. "They will have a room there."

"Julien will have left and gone to his lodging."

"Yes, at the other end of the town," answered Alfred, she fancied with grim satisfaction. ("Though it is as well," she thought; "there will be less scandal in the eyes of the innkeeper.")

"To-morrow morning, mademoiselle, I will fetch you at six with another car and its driver, Foss, a man whom I can trust. We will take you to the river, and on the return journey drag the car from the ditch. It should be easy; she has not heeled over on her side."

"That will be marvellous. I cannot tell you how I apologise."

This, she began to see, was serious; her debt to the enemy Alfred was growing hourly.

"No, no," he said, as though he saw the thing in the light of common justice. "You have come over to dine with Julien; we must get you back to the river."

"Nevertheless it's monstrous," she thought, "what he has to do for me."

But Alfred regarded it less as a friendly office towards Julien than as a duty, an order given by an officer. He was a sergeant, and four years of war had changed him from an irritable and independent friend to a dogged and careful subordinate. He did not like f.a.n.n.y any the more for the trouble she was giving him; but he did not hold her responsible for his discomforts. She must be got to the river and to the river he would get her.

Pray heaven she never crossed it again.

When they arrived on the pavement outside the inn, he said: "Knock, mademoiselle, and ask if there is a room. It would be better that I should not be seen. Explain that the snow prevented you from returning.

If there is a room do not come back to tell me, I shall watch you enter, and fetch you at six in the morning."

She thanked him again, and following his instructions, found herself presently in a small room under the eaves--pitied by the innkeeper's wife, given a hot brick wrapped in flannel by the innkeeper's daughter, warmed and cheered and, in a very short time, asleep. At half-past five she was called, dressed herself, and drank a cup of coffee; paying a fabulous bill which included two francs for the hot brick.

At six came Alfred, in another car, seated beside Foss, the new driver, a pale man with a grave face. They moved off in the grey dawn which brightened as they drove. Beyond the Chantilly wall the plain stretched, and on it the labouring wheel-marks of the night before were plainly marked. Alfred, beside the driver, let down a pane of gla.s.s to tell her that he had already been out with Foss and towed in the other car. She saw the ditch into which they had sunk, the scrambled marks upon the bank where she had been towed out. In ten minutes they were in the midst of the forest.

Now, Fate the bully, punis.h.i.+ng the unlucky, tripping up the hurried, stepped in again. This car, which had been seized in a hurry by cold and yawning men, was not as she should be.

"Is she oiled?" Foss had called to the real driver of the car.

"She is ... everything!" answered the man, in a hurry, going off to his coffee. She was not.

Just as the approaching sun began to clear the air, just as with a spring at her heart f.a.n.n.y felt that to be present at the opening of a fine day was worth all the trouble in the world, the engine began to knock. She saw Foss's head tilt a little sideways, like a keen dog who is listening. The knock increased. The engine laboured, a grinding set in; Foss pulled up at the side of the road and muttered to Alfred. He opened the bonnet, stared a second, then tried the starting handle. It would not move. f.a.n.n.y let down the pane of gla.s.s and watched them in silence. "Not a drop," said Foss's low voice. And later, "Oil, yes, but--find me the tin!"

"Do you mean there is no oil, no spare oil--" Alfred hunted vainly round the car, under the seats, in the tool box. There was no tin of oil.

"If I had some oil," said Foss, "and if I let her cool a little, I could manage--with a syringe."

They consulted together. Alfred nodded, and approached the window.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I am going on to the next village to get a tin of oil. There is a garage. Cars will be pa.s.sing soon; I must ask you to lie covered with the rug in the bottom of the car; your uniform is very visible. Foss will remain with you."

f.a.n.n.y lay down in the bottom of the car, fitting her legs among a couple of empty petrol tins; Foss covered her with the rug. A quarter of an hour went by, and above her she began to hear the voices of birds; below her the cold crept up. She had no idea how far the village might be, and it is possible that Alfred had had no idea either. A bicycle bell rang at her side; later she heard the noise of a car, which pa.s.sed her with a rush. Lying with her ear so close to the poor body of the motor she felt it to be but cold bones in a cemetery, dead, dead.

Outside in the road, Foss shaded his eyes and looked up the now sparkling road a hundred times. The motors increased; the morning traffic between Precy and Chantilly awoke; the cars were going in to the offices of the G.Q.G. Now and then Foss would come to the window of the car. "Don't move," he would say. The floor-boards were rattled by an icy wind that blew over the face of the snow and up under the car; the brown, silk legs lay p.r.o.ne and stiff between the petrol cans, lifeless now to the knee.

She was seized with fits of violent s.h.i.+vering. At one moment she had planned in her despair to call to Foss and tell him she would walk--but she had let the moment pa.s.s and now she put away the thought of walking on those lifeless feet. Besides, she would be seen--that well-known cap, bobbing back between the trees from Chantilly so early in the morning!

"Oh, Honour of the Section, I am guarding you like my life!" She tried to raise her head a little to ease her neck.

"Don't move," said Foss.

Feet pattered past her; motors swept by; bicycle bells rang.

"Foss," she said.

The soldier leant towards her and listened.

"Choose your own time, but you must let me sit up a moment. I am in pain."

"Then, now, mademoiselle!"

She sat up, flinging the rug back, dazzled by the splendour of the forest, the climbing sun, the heavy-burdened trees. Behind her was a cart coming up slowly; far ahead a cyclist swayed in the ruts of the road. As they approached her she pleaded: "They can't know me! Let me sit up--"

But Foss knew only one master, his sergeant.

"Better go down, mademoiselle."

She went down again under the black rug, close against the wind that lifted the floor-boards, wrapping her coat more tightly round her, folding her arms about her knees.

"It must be nearly eight. I have an hour more before they come in to breakfast. Ah, and when they do, will one of them go into my bedroom with my letters?"