The Rough Road Part 27

"Forgive me, mademoiselle."

"But you flash out on the point of honour."

Doggie laughed. "Which shows that I have the essential of the soldier."

Doggie's manner was not without charm. She relented.

"You know very well what I mean," she said rebukingly. "And you don't deserve that I should tell it to you. It was my intention to say that you have sacrificed many things to make yourself a simple soldier."

"Only a few idle habits," said Doggie.

"You joined, like the rest, as a volunteer."

"Of course."

"You abandoned everything to fight for your country?"

Under the spell of her dark eyes Doggie spoke according to Phineas after the going West of Taffy Jones, "I think, Mademoiselle Jeanne, it was rather to fight for my soul."

She resumed her sewing. "That's what I meant long ago," she remarked with the first draw of the needle. "No one could fight for his soul without pa.s.sing through suffering." She went on sewing. Doggie, shrinking from a reply that might have sounded fatuous, remained silent; but he realized a wonderful faculty of comprehension in Jeanne.

After awhile he said: "Where did you learn all your wisdom, Mademoiselle Jeanne?"

"At the convent, I suppose. My father gave me a good education."

"An English poet has said, 'Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers'"--Doggie had rather a fight to express the meaning exactly in French--"You don't gather wisdom in convents."

"It is true. Since then I have seen many things."

She stared across the room, not at Doggie, and he thought again of the ghosts.

"Tell me some of them, Mademoiselle Jeanne," he said in a low voice.

She shot a swift glance at him and met his honest brown eyes.

"I saw my father murdered in front of me," she said in a harsh voice.

"My G.o.d!" said Doggie.

"It was on the Retreat. We lived in Cambrai, my father and mother and I. He was a lawyer. When we heard the Germans were coming, my father, somewhat of an invalid, decided to fly. He had heard of what they had already done in Belgium. We tried to go by train. _Pas moyen._ We took to the road, with many others. We could not get a horse--we had postponed our flight till too late. Only a handcart, with a few necessaries and precious things. And we walked until we nearly died of heat and dust and grief. For our hearts were very heavy, monsieur. The roads, too, were full of the English in retreat. I shall not tell you what I saw of the wounded by the roadside. I sometimes see them now in my dreams. And we were helpless. We thought we would leave the main roads, and at last we got lost and found ourselves in a little wood.

We sat down to rest and to eat. It was cool and pleasant, and I laughed, to cheer my parents, for they knew how I loved to eat under the freshness of the trees." She shivered. "I hope I shall never have to eat a meal in a wood again. We had scarcely begun when a body of cavalry, with strange pointed helmets, rode along the path and, seeing us, halted. My mother, half dead with terror, cried out, '_Mon Dieu, ce sont des Uhlans!_' The leader, I suppose an officer, called out something in German. My father replied. I do not understand German, so I did not know and shall never know what they said. But my father protested in anger and stood in front of the horse making gestures.

And then the officer took out his revolver and shot him through the heart, and he fell dead. And the murderer turned his horse's head round and he laughed. He laughed, monsieur."

"d.a.m.n him!" said Doggie, in English. "d.a.m.n him!"

He gazed deep into Jeanne's dark tearless eyes. She continued in the same even voice:

"My mother became mad. She was a peasant, a Bretonne, where the blood is fierce, and she screamed and clung to the bridle of the horse. And he rode her down and the horse trampled on her. Then he pointed at me, who was supporting the body of my father, and three men dismounted.

But suddenly he heard something, gave an order, and the men mounted again, and they all rode away laughing and jeering, and the last man, in bad French, shouted at me a foul insult. And I was there, Monsieur Trevor, with my father dead and my mother stunned and bruised and bleeding."

Doggie, sensitive, quivered to the girl's tragedy: he said, with tense face:

"G.o.d give me strength to kill every German I see!"

She nodded slowly. "No German is a human being. If I were G.o.d, I would exterminate the accursed race like wolves."

"You are right," said Doggie. A short silence fell. He asked: "What happened then?"

"_Mon Dieu_, I almost forget. I was overwhelmed with grief and horror.

Some hours afterwards a small body of English infantry came--many of them had bloodstained bandages. An officer who spoke a little French questioned me. I told him what had happened. He spoke with another officer, and because I recognized the word 'Uhlans,' I knew they were anxious about the patrol. They asked me the way to some place--I forget where. But I was lost. They looked at a map. Meanwhile my mother had recovered consciousness. I gave her a little wine from the bottle we had opened for our repast. I happened to look at the officer and saw him pa.s.s his tongue over his cracked lips. All the men had thrown themselves down by the side of the road. I handed him the bottle and the little tin cup. To my surprise, he did not drink. He said: 'Mademoiselle, this is war, and we are all in very great peril.

My men are dying of thirst, and if you have any more of the wine, give it to them and they will do their utmost to conduct your mother and yourself to a place of safety.' Alas! there were only three bottles in our little basket of provisions. Naturally I gave it all--together with the food. He called a sergeant, who took the provisions and distributed them, while I was tending my mother. But I noticed that the two officers took neither bite nor sup. It was only afterwards, Monsieur Trevor, that I realized I had seen your great English gentlemen.... Then they dug a little grave, for my father.... It was soon finished ... the danger was grave ... and some soldiers took a rope and pulled the handcart, with my mother lying on top of our little possessions, and I walked with them, until the whole of my life was blotted out with fatigue. We got on to the Route Nationale again and mingled again with the Retreat. And in the night, as we were still marching, there was a halt. I went to my mother. She was cold, monsieur, cold and stiff. She was dead."

She paused tragically. After a few moments she continued:

"I fainted. I do not know what happened till I recovered consciousness at dawn. I found myself wrapped in one of our blankets, lying under the handcart. It was the market-square of a little town. And there were many--old men and women and children, refugees like me. I rose and found a paper--a leaf torn from a notebook--fixed to the handcart.

It was from the officer, bidding me farewell. Military necessity forced him to go on with his men--but he had kept his word, and brought me to a place of safety.... That is how I first met the English, Monsieur Trevor. They had carried me, I suppose, on the handcart, all night, they who were broken with weariness. I owe them my life and my reason."

"And your mother?"

"How should I know? _Elle est restee la-bas_," she replied simply.

She went on with her sewing. Doggie wondered how her hand could be so steady. There was a long silence. What words, save vain imprecations on the accursed race, were adequate? Presently her glance rested for a second or two on his sensitive face.

"Why do you not smoke, Monsieur Trevor?"

"May I?"

"Of course. It calms the nerves. I ought not to have saddened you with my griefs."

Doggie took out his pink packet and lit a cigarette.

"You are very understanding, Mademoiselle Jeanne. But it does a selfish man like me good to be saddened by a story like yours. I have not had much opportunity in my life of feeling for another's suffering. And since the war--I am _abruti_."

"You? Do you think if I had not found you just the reverse, I should have told you all this?"

"You have paid me a great compliment, Mademoiselle Jeanne." Then, after awhile, he asked, "From the market-square of the little town you found means to come here?"

"Alas, no!" she said, putting her work in her lap again. "I made my way, with my handcart--it was easy--to our original destination, a little farm belonging to the eldest brother of my father. The Farm of La Folette. He lived there alone, a widower, with his farm-servants.

He had no children. We thought we were safe. Alas! news came that the Germans were always advancing. We had time to fly. All the farm-hands fled, except Pere Grigou, who loved him. But my uncle was obstinate.

To a Frenchman, the soil he possesses is his flesh and his blood. He would die rather than leave it. And my uncle had the murder of my father and mother on his brain. He told Pere Grigou to take me away, but I stayed with him. It was Pere Grigou who forced us to hide. That lasted two days. There was a well in the farm, and one night Pere Grigou tied up my money and my mother's jewellery and my father's papers, _enfin_, all the precious things we had, in a packet of waterproof and sank it with a long string down the well, so that the Germans could not find it. It was foolish, but he insisted. One day my uncle and Pere Grigou went out of the little copse where we had been hiding, in order to reconnoitre, for he thought the Germans might be going away; and my uncle, who would not listen to me, took his gun.

Presently I heard a shot--and then another. You can guess what it meant. And soon Pere Grigou came, white and shaking with terror. '_Il en a tue un, et on l'a tue!_'"

"My G.o.d!" said Doggie again.

"It was terrible," she said. "But they were in their right."

"And then?"

"We lay hidden until it was dark--how they did not find us I don't know--and then we escaped across country. I thought of coming here to my Aunt Morin, which is not far from La Folette, but I reflected that soon the Boches would be here also. And we went on. We got to a high road--and once more I was among troops and refugees. I met some kind folks in a carriage, a Monsieur and Madame Tarride, and they took me in. And so I got to Paris, where I had the hospitality of a friend of the Convent who was married."