The Rough Road Part 29

The next day was fuss and bustle, from the private soldier's point of view. They were marching back to the trenches that night, and a crack company must take over with flawless equipment and in flawless bodily health. In the afternoon Doggie had a breathing spell of leisure. He walked boldly into the kitchen.

"Madame," said he to Toinette, "I suppose you know that we are leaving to-night?"

The old woman sighed. "It is always like that. They come, they make friends, they go, and they never return."

"You mustn't make the little soldier weep, _grand'mere_," said Doggie.

"No. It is the _grand'meres_ who weep," replied Toinette.

"I'll come back all right," said he. "Where is Mademoiselle Jeanne?"

"She is upstairs, monsieur."

"If she had gone out, I should have been disappointed," smiled Doggie.

"You desire to see her, monsieur?"

"To thank her before I go for her kindness to me."

The old face wrinkled into a smile.

"It was not then for the _beaux yeux_ of the _grand'mere_ that you entered?"

"_Si, si!_ Of course it was," he protested. "But one, nevertheless, must be polite to mademoiselle."

"_Ae! ae!_" said the old woman, bustling out: "I'll call her."

Presently Jeanne came in alone, calm, cool, and in her plain black dress, looking like a sweet Fate. From the top of her dark brown hair to her trim, stout shoes, she gave the impression of being exquisitely ordered, bodily and spiritually.

"It was good of you to come," he cried, and they shook hands instinctively, scarcely realizing it was for the first time. But he was sensitive to the frank grip of her long and slender fingers.

"Toinette said you wished to see me."

"We are going to-night. I had to come and bid you _au revoir_!"

"Is the company returning?"

"So I hear the quartermaster says. Are you glad?"

"Yes, I am glad. One doesn't like to lose friends."

"You regard me as a friend, Jeanne?"

"_Pour sur_," she replied simply.

"Then you don't mind my calling you Jeanne?" said he.

"What does it matter? There are graver questions at stake in the world."

She crossed the kitchen and opened the yard door which Doggie had closed behind him. Meeting a query in his glance, she said:

"I like the fresh air, and I don't like secrecy."

She leaned against the edge of the table and Doggie, emboldened, seated himself on the corner by her side, and they looked out into the little flagged courtyard in which the men, some in grey shirt-sleeves, some in tunics, were lounging about among the little piles of accoutrements and packs. Here and there a man was shaving by the aid of a bit of mirror supported on a handcart. Jests and laughter were flung in the quiet afternoon air. A little group were feeding pigeons which, at the sight of crumbs, had swarmed iridescent from the tall _colombier_ in the far corner near the gabled barn. As Jeanne did not speak, at last Doggie bent forward and, looking into her eyes, found them moist with tears.

"What is the matter, Jeanne?" he asked in a low voice.

"The war, _mon ami_," she replied, turning her face towards him, "the haunting tragedy of the war. I don't know how to express what I mean.

If all those brave fellows there went about with serious faces, I should not be affected. _Mais, voyez-vous, leur gaiete fait peur._"

_Their laughter frightened her._ Doggie, with his quick responsiveness, understood. She had put into a phrase the haunting tragedy of the war. The eternal laughter of youth quenched in a gurgle of the throat.

He said admiringly: "You are a wonderful woman, Jeanne."

Her delicate shoulders moved, ever so little. "A woman? I suppose I am. The day before we fled from Cambrai it was my _jour de fete_. I was eighteen."

Doggie drew in his breath with a little gasp. He had thought she was older than he.

"I am twenty-seven," he said.

She looked at him calmly and critically. "Yes. Now I see. Until now I should have given you more. But the war ages people. Isn't it true?"

"I suppose so," said Doggie. Then he had a brilliant idea. "But when the war is over, we'll remain the same age for ever and ever."

"Do you think so?"

"I'm sure of it. We'll still both be in our twenties. Let us suppose the war puts ten years of experience and suffering, and what not, on to our lives. We'll only then be in our thirties--and nothing possibly can happen to make us grow any older. At seventy we shall still be thirty."

"You are consoling," she admitted. "But what if the war had added thirty years to one's life? What if I felt now an old woman of fifty?

But yes, it is quite true. I have the feelings and the disregard of convention of a woman of fifty. If there had been no war, do you think I could have gone among an English army--_sans gene_--like an old matron? Do you think a _jeune fille francaise bien elevee_ could have talked to you alone as I have done the past two days? Absurd. The explanation is the war."

Doggie laughed. "_Vive la guerre!_" said he.

"_Mais non!_ Be serious. We must come to an understanding."

In her preoccupation she forgot the rules laid down for the guidance of _jeunes filles bien elevees_, and unthinkingly perched herself full on the kitchen table on the corner of which Doggie sat in a one-legged way. Doggie gasped again. All her a.s.sumed age fell from her like a garment. Youth proclaimed itself in her att.i.tude and the supple lines of her figure. She was but a girl after all, a girl with a steadfast soul that had been tried in unutterable fires; but a girl appealing, desirable. He felt mighty protective.

"An understanding? All right," said he.

"I don't want you to go away and think ill of me--that I am one of those women--_les affranchies_ I think they call them--who think themselves above social laws. I am not. I am _bourgeoise_ to my finger-tips, and I reverence all the old maxims and prejudices in which I was born. But conditions are different. It is just like the priests who have been called into the ranks. To look at them from the outside, you would never dream they were priests--but their hearts and their souls are untouched."

She was so earnest, in her pathetic youthfulness, to put herself right with him, so unlike the English girls of his acquaintance, who would have taken this chance companionship as a matter of course, that his face lost the smile and became grave, and he met her sad eyes.

"That was very bravely said, Jeanne. To me you will be always the most wonderful woman I have ever known."

"What caused you to speak to me the first day?" she asked, after a pause.