Three Soldiers Part 79

"Why, I think I forgot to brush my hair this morning," he said. "You see, I was so excited by the idea of coming to Chartres with you."

They laughed.

"But my mother taught me to play the piano when I was very small," he went on seriously. "She and I lived alone in an old house belonging to her family in Virginia. How different all that was from anything you have ever lived. It would not be possible in Europe to be as isolated as we were in Virginia.... Mother was very unhappy. She had led a dreadfully thwarted life... that unrelieved hopeless misery that only a woman can suffer. She used to tell me stories, and I used to make up little tunes about them, and about anything. The great success," he laughed, "was, I remember, to a dandelion.... I can remember so well the way Mother pursed up her lips as she leaned over the writing desk....

She was very tall, and as it was dark in our old sitting room, had to lean far over to see.... She used to spend hours making beautiful copies of tunes I made up. My mother is the only person who has ever really had any importance in my life.... But I lack technical training terribly."

"Do you think it is so important?" said Genevieve, leaning towards him to make herself heard above the clatter of the train.

"Perhaps it isn't. I don't know."

"I think it always comes sooner or later, if you feel intensely enough."

"But it is so frightful to feel all you want to express getting away beyond you. An idea comes into your head, and you feel it grow stronger and stronger and you can't grasp it; you have no means to express it.

It's like standing on a street corner and seeing a gorgeous procession go by without being able to join it, or like opening a bottle of beer and having it foam all over you without having a gla.s.s to pour it into."

Genevieve burst out laughing.

"But you can drink from the bottle, can't you?" she said, her eyes sparkling.

"I'm trying to," said Andrews.

"Here we are. There's the cathedral. No, it's hidden," cried Genevieve.

They got to their feet. As they left the station, Andrews said: "But after all, it's only freedom that matters. When I'm out of the army!..."

"Yes, I suppose you are right... for you that is. The artist should be free from any sort of entanglement."

"I don't see what difference there is between an artist and any other sort of workman," said Andrews savagely.

"No, but look."

From the square where they stood, above the green blur of a little park, they could see the cathedral, creamy yellow and rust color, with the sober tower and the gaudy tower, and the great rose window between, the whole pile standing nonchalantly, knee deep in the packed roofs of the town.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking at it without speaking.

In the afternoon they walked down the hill towards the river, that flowed through a quarter of tottering, peak-gabled houses and mills, from which came a sound of grinding wheels. Above them, towering over gardens full of pear trees in bloom, the apse of the cathedral bulged against the pale sky. On a narrow and very ancient bridge they stopped and looked at the water, full of a shimmer of blue and green and grey from the sky and from the vivid new leaves of the willow trees along the bank.

Their senses glutted with the beauty of the day and the intricate magnificence of the cathedral, languid with all they had seen and said, they were talking of the future with quiet voices.

"It's all in forming a habit of work," Andrews was saying. "You have to be a slave to get anything done. It's all a question of choosing your master, don't you think so?"

"Yes. I suppose all the men who have left their imprint on people's lives have been slaves in a sense," said Genevieve slowly. "Everyone has to give up a great deal of life to live anything deeply. But it's worth, it." She looked Andrews full in the eyes.

"Yes, I think it's worth it," said Andrews. "But you must help me. Now I am like a man who has come up out of a dark cellar. I'm almost too dazzled by the gorgeousness of everything. But at least I am out of the cellar."

"Look, a fish jumped," cried Genevieve. "I wonder if we could hire a boat anywhere.... Don't you think it'd be fun to go out in a boat?"

A voice broke in on Genevieve's answer: "Let's see your pa.s.s, will you?"

Andrews turned round. A soldier with a round brown face and red cheeks stood beside him on the bridge. Andrews looked at him fixedly. A little zigzag scar above his left eye showed white on his heavily tanned skin.

"Let's see your pa.s.s," the man said again; he had a high pitched, squeaky voice.

Andrews felt the blood thumping in his ears. "Are you an M. P.?"

"Yes."

"Well I'm in the Sorbonne Detachment."

"What the h.e.l.l's that?" said the M. P., laughing thinly.

"What does he say?" asked Genevieve, smiling.

"Nothing. I'll have to go see the officer and explain," said Andrews in a breathless voice. "You go back to your Aunt's and I'll come as soon as I've arranged it."

"No, I'll come with you."

"Please go back. It may be serious. I'll come as soon as I can," said Andrews harshly.

She walked up the hill with swift decisive steps, without turning round.

"Tough luck, buddy," said the M. P. "She's a good-looker. I'd like to have a half-hour with her myself."

"Look here. I'm in the Sorbonne School Detachment in Paris, and I came down here without a pa.s.s. Is there anything I can do about it?"

"They'll fix you up, don't worry," cried the M. P. shrilly. "You ain't a member of the General Staff in disguise, are ye? School Detachment! Gee, won't Bill Huggis laugh when he hears that? You pulled the best one yet, buddy.... But come along," he added in a confidential tone. "If you come quiet I won't put the handcuffs on ye."

"How do I know you're an M. P.?"

"You'll know soon enough."

They turned down a narrow street between grey stucco walls leprous with moss and water stains.

At a chair inside the window of a small wine shop a man with a red M. P.

badge sat smoking. He got up when he saw them pa.s.s and opened the door with one hand on his pistol holster.

"I got one bird, Bill," said the man, shoving Andrews roughly in the door.

"Good for you, Handsome; is he quiet?"

"Um." Handsome grunted.

"Sit down there. If you move you'll git a bullet in your guts."

The M. P. stuck out a square jaw; he had a sallow skin, puffy under the eyes that were grey and l.u.s.treless.

"He says he's in some G.o.ddam School Detachment. First time that's been pulled, ain't it?"