The Rough Road Part 23

Doggie had been out a long time. He had seen many places, much fighting and endured manifold miseries. After one of the spells in the trenches, the worst he had experienced, A Company was marched into new billets some miles behind the lines, in the once prosperous village of Frelus. They had slouched along dead tired, drooping under their packs, sodden with mud and sleeplessness, silent, with not a note of a song among them--but at the entrance to the village, quickened by a word or two of exhortation from officers and sergeants, they pulled themselves together and marched in, heads up, forward, in faultless step. The C.O. was jealous of the honour of his men. He a.s.sumed that his predecessors in the village had been a "rotten lot," and was determined to show the inhabitants of Frelus what a crack English regiment was really like. Frelus was an unimportant, unheard-of village; but the opinion of a thousand Freluses made up France's opinion of the British Army. Doggie, although half stupefied with fatigue, responded to the sentiment, like the rest. He was conscious of making part of a gallant show. It was only when they halted and stood easy that he lost count of things. The wide main street of the village swam characterless before his eyes. He followed, not directions, but directed men, with a sheep-like instinct, and found himself stumbling through an archway down a narrow path. He had a dim consciousness of lurching sideways and confusedly apologizing to a woman who supported him back to equilibrium. Then the next thing he saw was a barn full of fresh straw, and when somebody pointed to a vacant strip, he fell down, with many others, and went to sleep.

The reveille sounded a minute afterwards, though a whole night had pa.s.sed; and there was the blessed clean water to wash in--he had long since ceased to be fastidious in his ablutions--and there was breakfast, sizzling bacon and bread and jam. And there in front of the kitchen, aiding with the hot water for the tea, moved a slim girl, with dark, and as Doggie thought, tragic eyes.

Kit inspection, feet inspection, all the duties of the day and dinner were over. Most of the men returned to their billets to sleep. Some, including Doggie, wandered about the village, taking the air, and visiting the little modest cafes and talking with indifferent success, so far as the interchange of articulate ideas was concerned, with shy children. McPhail and Mo Shendish being among the sleepers, Doggie mooned about by himself in his usual self-effacing way. There was little to interest him in the long straggling village. He had pa.s.sed through a hundred such. Low whitewashed houses, interspersed with perky balconied buildings given over to little shops on the ground floor, with here and there a discreet iron gate shutting off the doctor's or the attorney's villa, and bearing the oval plate indicating the name and pursuit of the tenant; here and there, too, long whitewashed walls enclosing a dairy or a timber-yard stretched on each side of the great high road, and the village gradually dwindled away at each end into the gently undulating country. There were just a by-lane or two, one leading up to the little grey church and presbytery and another to the little cemetery with its trim paths and black and white wooden crosses and wirework pious offerings. At open doors the British soldiers lounged at ease, and in the dim interiors behind them the forms of the women of the house, blue-ap.r.o.ned, moved to and fro. The early afternoon was warm, a westerly breeze deadened the sound of the distant bombardment to an unheeded drone, and a holy peace settled over the place.

Doggie, clean, refreshed, comfortably drowsy, having explored the village, returned to his billet, and looking at it from the opposite side of the way, for the first time realized its nature. The lane, into which he had stumbled the night before, ran under an archway supporting some kind of overhead chamber, and separated the dwelling-house from a warehouse wall on which vast letters proclaimed the fact that Veuve Morin et Fils carried on therein the business of hay and corn dealers. Hence, Doggie reflected, the fresh, deep straw on which he and his fortunate comrades had wallowed. The double gate under the archway was held back by iron stanchions. The two-storied house looked fairly large and comfortable. The front door stood wide open, giving the view of a neat, stiff little hall or living-room. An article of furniture caught his idle eye. He crossed the road in order to have a nearer view. It was a huge polished mahogany cask standing about three feet high and bound with shining bra.s.s bands, such as he remembered having seen once in Brittany. He advanced still closer, and suddenly the slim, dark girl appeared and stood in the doorway, and looked frankly and somewhat rebukingly into his inquisitive eyes.

Doggie flushed as one caught in an unmannerly act. A crying fault of the British Army is that it prescribes for the rank and file no form of polite recognition of the existence of civilians. It is contrary to Army Orders to salute or to take off their caps. They can only jerk their heads and grin, an inelegant proceeding, which places them at a disadvantage with the fair s.e.x. Doggie, therefore, sketched a vague salutation half-way between a salute and a bow, and began a profuse apology. Mademoiselle must pardon his curiosity, but as a lover of old things he had been struck by the beautiful _tonneau_.

An amused light came into her sombre eyes and a smile flickered round her lips. Doggie noted instantly how pale she was, and how tiny, faint little lines persisted at the corners of those lips in spite of the smile.

"There is no reason for excuses, monsieur," she said. "The door was open to the view of everybody."

"_Pourtant_," said Doggie, "_c'etait un peu mal eleve_."

She laughed. "Pardon. But it's droll. First to find an English soldier apologizing for looking into a house, and then to find him talking French like a _poilu_."

Doggie said, with a little touch of national jealousy and a reversion to Durdlebury punctilio: "I hope, mademoiselle, you have always found the English soldier conduct himself like a gentleman."

"_Mais oui, mais oui!_" she cried, "they are all charming. _Ils sont doux comme des moutons._ But this is a question of delicacy--somewhat exaggerated."

"It's good of you, mademoiselle, to forgive me," said Doggie.

By all the rules of polite intercourse, either Doggie should have made his bow and exit, or the maiden, exercising her prerogative, should have given him the opportunity of a graceful withdrawal. But they remained where they were, the girl framed by the doorway, the lithe little figure in khaki and lichen-coloured helmet looking up at her from the foot of the two front steps.

At last he said in some embarra.s.sment: "That's a very beautiful cask of yours."

She wavered for a few seconds. Then she said:

"You can enter, monsieur, and examine it, if you like."

Mademoiselle was very amiable, said Doggie. Mademoiselle moved aside and Doggie entered, taking off his helmet and holding it under his arm like an opera-hat. There was nothing much to see in the little vestibule-parlour: a stiff ta.s.selled chair or two, a great old linen-press taking up most of one side of a wall, a cheap table covered with a chenille tablecloth, and the resplendent old cask, about which he lingered. He mentioned Brittany. Her tragic face lighted up again. Monsieur was right. Her aunt, Madame Morin, was Breton, and had brought the cask with her as part of her dowry, together with the press and other furniture. Doggie alluded to the vastly lettered inscription, "Veuve Morin et Fils." Madame Morin was, in a sense, his hostess. And the sons?

"One is in Madagascar, and the other--alas, monsieur!"

And Doggie knew what that "alas!" meant.

"The Argonne," she said.

"And madame your aunt?"

She shrugged her thin though shapely shoulders. "It nearly killed her.

She is old and an invalid. She has been in bed for the last three weeks."

"Then what becomes of the business?"

"It is I, monsieur, who am the business. And I know nothing about it."

She sighed. Then with her blue ap.r.o.n--otherwise she was dressed in unrelieved black--she rubbed an imaginary speck from the bra.s.s banding of the cask. "This, I suppose you know, was for the best brandy, monsieur."

"And now?" he asked.

"A memory. A sentiment. A thing of beauty."

In a feminine way, which he understood, she herded him to the door, by way of dismissal. Durdlebury helped him. A tiny French village has as many slanderous tongues as an English cathedral city. He was preparing to take polite leave, when she looked swiftly at him and made the faintest gesture of a detaining hand.

"Now I remember. It was you who nearly fell into me last night, when you were entering through the gate."

The dim recollection came back--the firm woman's arm round him for the few tottering seconds.

"It seems I am always bound to be impolite, for I don't think I thanked you," smiled Doggie.

"You were at the end of your tether." Then very gently, "_Pauvre garcon!_"

"The _sales Boches_ had kept us awake for four nights," said Doggie.

"That was why."

"And you are rested now?"

He laughed. "Almost."

They were at the door. He looked out and drew back. A knot of men were gathered by the gate of the yard. Apparently she had seen them too, for a flush rose to her pale cheeks.

"Mademoiselle," said Doggie, "I should like to creep back to the barn and sleep. If I pa.s.s my comrades they'll want to detain me."

"That would be a pity," she said demurely. "Come this way, monsieur."

She led him through a room and a pa.s.sage to the kitchen. They shared a pleasurable sense of adventure and secrecy. At the kitchen door she paused and spoke to an old woman chopping up vegetables.

"Toinette, let monsieur pa.s.s." To Doggie she said: "Au revoir, monsieur!" and disappeared.

The old woman looked at him at first with disfavour. She did not hold with Tommies needlessly tramping over the clean flags of her kitchen.

But Doggie's polite apology for disturbing her and a youthful grace of manner--he still held his tin hat under his arm--caused her features to relax.

"You are English?"

With a smile, he indicated his uniform. "Why, yes, madame."

"How comes it, then, that you speak French?"

"Because I have always loved your beautiful France, madame."

"France--_ah! la pauvre France_!" She sighed, drew a wisp of what had been a cornet of snuff from her pocket, opened it, dipped in a tentative finger and thumb and, finding it empty, gazed at it with disappointment, sighed again and, with the methodical hopelessness of age, folded it up into the neatest of little squares and thrust it back in her pocket. Then she went on with her vegetables.

Doggie took his leave and emerged into the yard.