The Rough Road Part 28

"And Pere Grigou?"

"He insisted on going back to bury my uncle. Nothing could move him.

He had not parted from him all his life. They were foster-brothers.

Where he is now, who knows?" She paused, looked again at her ghosts, and continued: "That is all, Monsieur Trevor. The Germans pa.s.sed through here and repa.s.sed on their retreat, and, as soon as it was safe, I came to help my aunt, who was _souffrante_, and had lost her son. Also because I could not live on charity on my friend, for, _voyez-vous_, I was without a sou--all my money having been hidden in the well by Pere Grigou."

Doggie leant his elbows on the table.

"And you have come through all that, Mademoiselle Jeanne, just as you are----?"

"How, just as I am?"

"So gentle and kind and comprehending?"

Her cheek flushed. "I am not the only Frenchwoman who has pa.s.sed through such things and kept herself proud. But the struggle has been very hard."

Doggie rose and clenched his fists and rubbed his head from front to back in his old indecisive way, and began to swear incoherently in English. She smiled sadly.

"_Ah, mon pauvre ami!_"

He wheeled round: "Why do you call me '_mon pauvre ami_'?"

"Because I see that you would like to help me and you can't."

"Jeanne," cried Doggie, bending half over the table which was between them.

She rose too, startled, on quick defensive. He said, in reply to her glance:

"Why shouldn't I call you Jeanne?"

"You haven't the right."

"What if I gain it?"

"How?"

"I don't know," said Doggie.

The door burst suddenly open and the anxious face of Mo Shendish appeared.

"'Ere, you silly cuckoo, don't yer know you're on guard to-night?

You've just got about thirty seconds."

"Good lord!" cried Doggie, "I forgot. _Bon soir, mademoiselle. Service militaire_," and he rushed out.

Mo lingered, with a grin, and jerked a backward thumb.

"If it weren't for old Mo, miss, I don't know what would happen to our friend Doggie. I got to look after him like a baby, I 'ave. He's on to relieve guard, and if old Mac--that's McPhail"--she nodded recognition of the name--"and I hadn't remembered, miss, he'd 'ave been in what yer might call a 'ole. Compree?"

"_Oui._ Yes," she said. "_Garde. Sentinelle._"

"Sentinel. Sentry. Right."

"He--was--late," she said, picking out her few English words from memory.

"Yuss," grinned Mo.

"He--guard--house?"

"Bless you, miss, you talk English as well as I do," cried the admiring Mo. "Yuss. When his turn comes, up and down in the street, by the gate." He saw her puzzled look. "Roo. Port," said he.

"_Ah! oui, je comprends_," smiled Jeanne. "_Merci, monsieur, et bon soir._"

"Good night, miss," said Mo.

Some time later he disturbed Phineas, by whose side he slept, from his initial preparation for slumber.

"Mac! Is there any book I could learn this blinking lingo from?"

"Try Ovid--'Art of Love,'" replied Phineas sleepily.

CHAPTER XIV

The spell of night sentry duty had always been Doggie's black hour. To most of the other military routine he had grown hardened or deadened.

In the depths of his heart he hated the life as much as ever. He had schooled himself to go through it with the dull fatalism of a convict.

It was no use railing at inexorable laws, irremediable conditions. The only alternative to the acceptance of his position was military punishment, which was far worse--to say nothing of the outrage to his pride. It was pride that kept the little ironical smile on his lips while his nerves were almost breaking with strain. The first time he came under fire he was physically sick--not from fear, for he stood it better than most, keeping an eye on his captain, whose function it was to show an unconcerned face--but from sheer nervous reaction against the hideous noise, the stench, the ghastly upheaval of the earth, the sight of mangled men. When the bombardment was over, if he had been alone, he would have sat down and cried. Never had he grown accustomed to the foulness of the trenches. The sounder his physical condition, the more did his delicately trained senses revolt. It was only when fierce animal cravings dulled these senses that he could throw himself down anywhere and sleep, that he could swallow anything in the way of food or drink. The rats nearly drove him crazy.... Yet, what had once been to him a torture, the indecent, nerve-rasping publicity of the soldier's life, had now become a compensation. It was not so much in companionship, like his friendly intercourse with Phineas and Mo, that he found an anodyne, but in the consciousness of being magnetically affected by the crowd of his fellows. They offered him protection against himself. Whatever pangs of self-pity he felt, whatever wan little pleadings for the bit of fine porcelain compelled to a rough usage which vessels of coa.r.s.er clay could disregard came lingeringly into his mind, he dared not express them to a living soul around. On the contrary, he set himself a.s.siduously to cultivate the earthenware habit of spirit; not to feel, not to think, only to endure. To a humorously incredulous Jeanne he proclaimed himself _abruti_. Finally, the ceaseless grind of the military machine left him little time to think.

But in the solitary sleepless hours of sentry duty there was nothing to do but think; nothing wherewith to while away the time but an orgy of introspection. First came the almost paralysing sense of responsibility. He must keep, not only awake, but alert to the slightest sound, the slightest movement. Lives of men depended on his vigilance. A man can't screw himself up to this beautifully emotional pitch for very long and be an efficient sentry. If he did, he would challenge mice and shoot at cloud-shadows and bring the deuce of a commotion about his ears. And this Doggie, who did not lack ordinary intelligence, realized. So he strove to think of other things. And the other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at the same time yearn for them with an agony of longing.

And he would force himself to think of Peggy and her unswerving loyalty. Of her weekly parcel of dainty food, which had arrived that morning. Of the joy of Phineas and the disappointment of the unsophisticated Mo over the _pate de foie gras_. But his mind wandered back to his Doggie self and its humiliations and its needs and its yearnings. He welcomed enemy flares and star-sh.e.l.ls and excursions and alarms. They kept him from thinking, enabled him to pa.s.s the time. But in the dead, lonely, silent dark, the hours were like centuries. He dreaded them.

To-night they fled like minutes. It was a pitch-black night, spitting fine rain. It was one of Doggie's private grievances that it invariably rained when he was on sentry duty. One of Heaven's little ways of strafing him for Doggieism. But to-night he did not heed it.

Often the pa.s.sage of transport had been a distraction for which he had longed and which, when it came, was warmly welcome. But to-night, during his spell, the roadway of the village was as still as death, and he loved the stillness and the blackness. Once he had welcomed familiar approaching steps. Now he resented them.

"Who goes there?"

"Rounds."

And the officer, recognized, flashing an electric torch, pa.s.sed on.

The diminuendo of his footsteps was agreeable to Doggie's ear. The rain dripped monotonously off his helmet on to his sodden shoulders, but Doggie did not mind. Now and then he strained an eye upwards to that part of the living-house that was above the gateway. Little streaks of light came downwards through the shutter slats. Now it required no great intellectual effort to surmise that the light proceeded, not from the bedroom of the invalid Madame Morin, who would naturally have the best bedroom situated in the comfortable main block of the house, but from that of somebody else. Madame Morin was therefore ruled out. So was Toinette--ridiculous to think of her keeping all night vigil. There remained only Jeanne.

It was supremely silly of him to march with super-martiality of tread up the pavement; but then, it is often the way of young men to do supremely silly things.