The Rough Road Part 33

"The wounded man was not Doggie. Doggie went out with the party, but he did not come back. That's why I said no one knows where he is."

She stiffened. "He is lying out there. He is dead."

"Shendish and I and Corporal Wilson over there, who was with the party, got permission to go out and search. We searched all round where the repair had been going on. But we could not find him."

"_Merci!_ I ought not to have reproached you," she said steadily.

"_C'est un grand malheur._"

"You are right. Life for me is no longer of much value."

She looked at him in her penetrating way.

"I believe you," she said. "For the moment, _au revoir_. You must be worn out with fatigue."

She left him and walked through the straggling men, who made respectful way for her. All knew of her friendship with Doggie Trevor and all realized the nature of this interview. They liked Doggie because he was good-natured and plucky, and never complained and would play the whistle on march as long as breath enough remained in his body. As his uncle, the Dean, had said, breed told. In a curious, half-grudging way they recognized the fact. They laughed at his singular inefficiency in the mult.i.tudinous arts of the handy-man, proficiency in which is expected from the modern private, but they knew that he would go on till he dropped. And knowing that, they saved him from many a reprimand which his absurd efforts in the arts aforesaid would have brought upon him. And now that Doggie was gone, they deplored his loss. But so many had gone. So many had been deplored. Human nature is only capable of a certain amount of deploring while retaining its sanity. The men let the pale French girl, who was Doggie Trevor's friend, pa.s.s by in respectful silence--and that, for them, was their final tribute to Doggie Trevor.

Jeanne pa.s.sed into the kitchen. Toinette drew a sharp breath at the sight of her face.

"_Quoi? Il n'est pas la?_"

"No," said Jeanne. "He is wounded." It was impossible to explain to Toinette.

"Badly?"

"They don't know."

"_Oh, la, la!_" sighed Toinette. "That always happens. That is what I told you."

"We have no time to think of such things," said Jeanne.

The regimental cooks came up for the hot water, and soon the hungry, weary, nerve-racked men were served with the morning meal. And Jeanne stood in the courtyard in front of the kitchen door and helped with the filling of the tea-kettles, as though no little English soldier called "Dog-gie" had ever existed in the regiment.

The first pale shaft of sunlight fell upon the kitchen side of the courtyard, and in it Jeanne stood illuminated. It touched the shades of gold in her dark brown hair, and lit up her pale face and great unsmiling eyes. But her lips smiled valiantly.

"What do yer think, Mac," said Mo Shendish, squatting on the flagstones, "do you think she was really sweet on him?"

"Man," replied Phineas, similarly engaged, "all I know is that she has added him to her collection of ghosts. It's not an over-braw company for a la.s.sie to live with."

And then, soon afterwards, the trench-broken men stumbled into the barn to sleep, and all was quiet again, and Jeanne went about her daily tasks with the familiar hand of death once more closing icily around her heart.

CHAPTER XVI

The sick-room was very hot, and Aunt Morin very querulous. Jeanne opened a window, but Aunt Morin complained of currents of air. Did Jeanne want to kill her? So Jeanne closed the window. The internal malady from which Aunt Morin suffered, and from which it was unlikely that she would recover, caused her considerable pain from time to time; and on these occasions she grew fractious and hard to bear with.

The retired septuagenarian village doctor who had taken the modest practice of his son, now far away with the Army, advised an operation.

But Aunt Morin, with her peasant's prejudice, declined flatly. She knew what happened in those hospitals where they cut people up just for the pleasure of looking at their insides. She was not going to let a lot of butchers amuse themselves with her old carca.s.s. _Oh non!_ When it pleased the _bon Dieu_ to take her, she was ready: the _bon Dieu_ required no a.s.sistance from _ces messieurs_. And even if she had consented, how to take her to Paris, and once there, how to get the operation performed, with all the hospitals full and all the surgeons at the Front? The old doctor shrugged his shoulders and kept life in her as best he might.

To-day, in the close room, she told a long story of the doctor's neglect. The medicine he gave her was water and nothing else--water with nothing in it. And to ask people to pay for that! She would not pay. What would Jeanne advise?

"_Oui, ma tante_," said Jeanne.

"_Oui, ma tante?_ But you are not listening to what I say. At the least one can be polite."

"I am listening, _ma tante_."

"You should be grateful to those who lodge and nourish you."

"I am grateful, _ma tante_," said Jeanne patiently.

Aunt Morin complained of being robbed on all sides. The doctor, Toinette, Jeanne, the English soldiers--the last the worst of all.

Besides not paying sufficiently for what they had, they were so wasteful in the things they took for nothing. If they begged for a few f.a.ggots to make a fire, they walked away with the whole woodstack. She knew them. But all soldiers were the same. They thought that in time of war civilians had no rights. One of these days she would get up and come downstairs and see for herself the robbery that was going on.

The windows were tightly sealed. The sunlight hurting Aunt Morin's eyes, the outside shutters were half closed. The room felt like a stuffy, overheated, overcrowded sepulchre. An enormous oak press, part of her Breton dowry, took up most of the side of one wall. This, and a great handsome chest, a couple of tables, a stiff arm-chair, were all too big for the moderately sized apartment. Coloured prints of sacred subjects, tilted at violent angles, seemed eager to occupy as much air-s.p.a.ce as possible. And in the middle of the floor sprawled the vast oaken bed, with its heavy green brocade curtains falling tentwise from a great tarnished gilt crown in the ceiling.

Jeanne said nothing. What was the good? She shifted the invalid's hot pillow and gave her a drink of tisane, moving about the over-furnished, airless room in her calm and efficient way. Her face showed no sign of trouble, but an iron band clamped her forehead above her burning eyes. She could perform her nurse's duties, but it was beyond her power to concentrate her mind on the sick woman's unending litany of grievances. Far away beyond that darkened room, beyond that fretful voice, she saw vividly a hot waste, hideous with holes and rusted wire and shapes of horror; and in the middle of it lay huddled up a little khaki-clad figure with the sun blazing fiercely in his unblinking eyes. And his very body was beyond the reach of man, even of the most lion-hearted.

"_Mais qu'as-tu, ma fille?_" asked Aunt Morin. "You do not speak. When people are ill they need to be amused."

"I am sorry, _ma tante_, but I am not feeling very well to-day. It will pa.s.s."

"I hope so. Young people have no business not to feel well. Otherwise what is the good of youth?"

"It is true," Jeanne a.s.sented.

But what, she thought, was indeed the good of youth, in these terrible days of war? Her own was but a panorama of death.... And now one more figure, this time one of youth too, had joined it.

Toinette came in.

"Ma'amselle Jeanne, there are two English officers downstairs who wish to speak to you."

"What do they want?" Jeanne asked wearily.

"They do not say. They just ask for Ma'amselle Bossiere."

"They never leave one in peace, _ces gens-la_," grumbled Aunt Morin.

"If they want more concessions in price, do not let them frighten you.

Go to Monsieur le Maire to have it arranged with justice. These people would eat the skin off your back. Remember, Jeanne."

"_Bien, ma tante_," said Jeanne.

She went downstairs, conscious of gripping herself in order to discuss with the officers whatever business of billeting was in hand. For she had dealt with all such matters since her arrival in Frelus. She reached the front door and saw a dusty car with a military chauffeur at the wheel and two officers, standing on the pavement at the foot of the steps. One she recognized as the commander of the company to which her billeted men belonged. The other was a stranger, a lieutenant, with a different badge on his cap. They were talking and laughing together, like old friends newly met, which by one of the myriad coincidences of the war was really the case. On the appearance of Jeanne they drew themselves up and saluted politely.

"Mademoiselle Bossiere?"

"_Oui, monsieur._" Then, "Will you enter, messieurs?"