VI

The next morning Claude awoke with such a sense of physical

well-being as he had not had for a long time. The sun was

shining brightly on the white plaster walls and on the red tiles

of the floor. Green jalousies, half-drawn, shaded the upper part

of the two windows. Through their slats, he could see the forking

branches of an old locust tree that grew by the gate. A flock of

pigeons flew over it, dipping and mounting with a sharp twinkle

of silver wings. It was good to lie again in a house that was

cared for by women. He must have felt that even in his sleep,

for when he opened his eyes he was thinking about Mahailey and

breakfast and summer mornings on the farm. The early stillness

was sweet, and the feeling of dry, clean linen against his body.

There was a smell of lavender about his warm pillow. He lay

still for fear of waking Lieutenant Gerhardt. This was the sort

of peace one wanted to enjoy alone. When he rose cautiously on

his elbow and looked at the other bed, it was empty. His

companion must have dressed and slipped out when day first broke.

Somebody else who liked to enjoy things alone; that looked

hopeful. But now that he had the place to himself, he decided to

get up. While he was dressing he could see old M. Joubert down in

the garden, watering the plants and vines, raking the sand fresh

and smooth, clipping off dead leaves and withered flowers and

throwing them into a wheelbarrow. These people had lost both

their sons in the war, he had been told, and now they were taking

care of the property for their grandchildren,--two daughters of

the elder son. Claude saw Gerhardt come into the garden, and sit

down at the table under the trees, where they had their dinner

last night. He hurried down to join him. Gerhardt made room for

him on the bench.

"Do you always sleep like that? It's an accomplishment. I made

enough noise when I dressed,--kept dropping things, but it never

reached you."

Madame Joubert came out of the kitchen in a purple flowered

morning gown, her hair in curl-papers under a lace cap. She

brought the coffee herself, and they sat down at the unpainted

table without a cloth, and drank it out of big crockery bowls.

They had fresh milk with it,--the first Claude had tasted in a

long while, and sugar which Gerhardt produced from his pocket.

The old cook had her coffee sitting in the kitchen door, and on

the step, at her feet, sat the strange, pale little girl.

Madame Joubert amiably addressed herself to Claude; she knew that

Americans were accustomed to a different sort of morning repast,

and if he wished to bring bacon from the camp, she would gladly

cook it for him. She had even made pancakes for officers who

stayed there before. She seemed pleased, however, to learn that

Claude had had enough of these things for awhile. She called

David by his first name, pronouncing it the French way, and when

Claude said he hoped she would do as much for him, she said, Oh,

yes, that his was a very good French name, "mais un peu, un peu...

romanesque," at which he blushed, not quite knowing whether

she were making fun of him or not.

"It is rather so in English, isn't it?" David asked.

"Well, it's a sissy name, if you mean that."

"Yes, it is, a little," David admitted candidly. The day's work

on the parade ground was hard, and Captain Maxey's men were soft,

felt the heat,--didn't size up well with the Kansas boys who had

been hardened by service. The Colonel wasn't pleased with B

Company and detailed them to build new barracks and extend the

sanitation system. Claude got out and worked with the men.

Gerhardt followed his example, but it was easy to see that he

had never handled lumber or tin-roofing before. A kind of rivalry

seemed to have sprung up between him and Claude, neither of them

knew why.

Claude could see that the sergeants and corporals were a little

uncertain about Gerhardt. His laconic speech, never embroidered

by the picturesque slang they relished, his gravity, and his

rare, incredulous smile, alike puzzled them. Was the new officer

a dude? Sergeant Hicks asked of his chum, Dell Able. No, he

wasn't a dude. Was he a swellhead? No, not at all; but he wasn't

a good mixer. He was "an Easterner"; what more he was would

develop later. Claude sensed something unusual about him. He

suspected that Gerhardt knew a good many things as well as he

knew French, and that he tried to conceal it, as people sometimes

do when they feel they are not among their equals; this idea

nettled him. It was Claude who seized the opportunity to be

patronizing, when Gerhardt betrayed that he was utterly unable to

select lumber by given measurements.

The next afternoon, work on the new barracks was called off

because of rain. Sergeant Hicks set about getting up a boxing

match, but when he went to invite the lieutenants, they had both

disappeared. Claude was tramping toward the village, determined

to get into the big wood that had tempted him ever since his

arrival.

The highroad became the village street, and then, at the edge of

the wood, became a country road again. A little farther on, where

the shade grew denser, it split up into three wagon trails, two

of them faint and little used. One of these Claude followed. The

rain had dwindled to a steady patter, but the tall brakes growing

up in the path splashed him to the middle, and his feet sank in

spongy, mossy earth. The light about him, the very air, was

green. The trunks of the trees were overgrown with a soft green

moss, like mould. He was wondering whether this forest was not

always a damp, gloomy place, when suddenly the sun broke through

and shattered the whole wood with gold. He had never seen

anything like the quivering emerald of the moss, the silky green

of the dripping beech tops. Everything woke up; rabbits ran across

the path, birds began to sing, and all at once the brakes were

full of whirring insects.

The winding path turned again, and came out abruptly on a

hillside, above an open glade piled with grey boulders. On the

opposite rise of ground stood a grove of pines, with bare, red

stems. The light, around and under them, was red like a rosy

sunset. Nearly all the stems divided about half-way up into two

great arms, which came together again at the top, like the

pictures of old Grecian lyres.

Down in the grassy glade, among the piles of flint boulders,

little white birches shook out their shining leaves in the

lightly moving air. All about the rocks were patches of purple

heath; it ran up into the crevices between them like fire. On one

of these bald rocks sat Lieutenant Gerhardt, hatless, in an

attitude of fatigue or of deep dejection, his hands clasped about

his knees, his bronze hair ruddy in the sun. After watching him

for a few minutes, Claude descended the slope, swishing the tall

ferns.

"Will I be in the way?" he asked as he stopped at the foot of the

rocks.

"Oh, no!" said the other, moving a little and unclasping his

hand.

Claude sat down on a boulder. "Is this heather?" he asked. "I

thought I recognized it, from 'Kidnapped.' This part of the world

is not as new to you as it is to me."

"No. I lived in Paris for several years when I was a student."

"What were you studying?"

"The violin."

"You are a musician?" Claude looked at him wonderingly.

"I was," replied the other with a disdainful smile, languidly

stretching out his legs in the heather.

"That seems too bad," Claude remarked gravely.

"What does?"

"Why, to take fellows with a special talent. There are enough of

us who haven't any."

Gerhardt rolled over on his back and put his hands under his

head. "Oh, this affair is too big for exceptions; it's universal.

If you happened to be born twenty-six years ago, you couldn't

escape. If this war didn't kill you in one way, it would in

another." He told Claude he had trained at Camp Dix, and had come

over eight months ago in a regimental band, but he hated the work

he had to do and got transferred to the infantry.

When they retraced their steps, the wood was full of green

twilight. Their relations had changed somewhat during the last

half hour, and they strolled in confidential silence up the

home-like street to the door of their own garden.

Since the rain was over, Madame Joubert had laid the cloth on the

plank table under the cherry tree, as on the previous evenings.

Monsieur was bringing the chairs, and the little girl was

carrying out a pile of heavy plates. She rested them against her

stomach and leaned back as she walked, to balance them. She wore

shoes, but no stockings, and her faded cotton dress switched

about her brown legs. She was a little Belgian refugee who had

been sent there with her mother. The mother was dead now, and the

child would not even go to visit her grave. She could not be

coaxed from the court-yard into the quiet street. If the

neighbour children came into the garden on an errand, she hid

herself. She would have no playmates but the cat; and now she had

the kittens in the tool house.

Dinner was very cheerful that evening. M. Joubert was pleased

that the storm had not lasted long enough to hurt the wheat. The

garden was fresh and bright after the rain. The cherry tree shook

down bright drops on the tablecloth when the breeze stirred. The

mother cat dozed on the red cushion in Madame Joubert's sewing

chair, and the pigeons fluttered down to snap up earthworms that

wriggled in the wet sand. The shadow of the house fell over the

dinner-table, but the tree-tops stood up in full sunlight, and

the yellow sun poured on the earth wall and the cream-coloured

roses. Their petals, ruffled by the rain, gave out a wet, spicy

smell.

M. Joubert must have been ten years older than his wife. There

was a great contentment in his manner and a pleasant sparkle in

his eye. He liked the young officers. Gerhardt had been there

more than two weeks, and somewhat relieved the stillness that

had settled over the house since the second son died in hospital.

The Jouberts had dropped out of things. They had done all they

could do, given all they had, and now they had nothing to look

forward to,--except the event to which all France looked forward.

The father was talking to Gerhardt about the great sea-port the

Americans were making of Bordeaux; he said he meant to go there

after the war, to see it all for himself.

Madame Joubert was pleased to hear that they had been walking in

the wood. And was the heather in bloom? She wished they had

brought her some. Next time they went, perhaps. She used to walk

there often. Her eyes seemed to come nearer to them, Claude

thought, when she spoke of it, and she evidently cared a great

deal more about what was blooming in the wood than about what the

Americans were doing on the Garonne. He wished he could talk to

her as Gerhardt did. He admired the way she roused herself and

tried to interest them, speaking her difficult language with such

spirit and precision. It was a language that couldn't be mumbled;

that had to be spoken with energy and fire, or not spoken at all.

Merely speaking that exacting tongue would help to rally a broken

spirit, he thought.

The little maid who served them moved about noiselessly. Her dull

eyes never seemed to look; yet she saw when it was time to bring

the heavy soup tureen, and when it was time to take it away.

Madame Joubert had found that Claude liked his potatoes with his

meat--when there was meat--and not in a course by themselves. She

had each time to tell the little girl to go and fetch them. This

the child did with manifest reluctance,--sullenly, as if she were

being forced to do something wrong. She was a very strange little

creature, altogether. As the two soldiers left the table and

started for the camp, Claude reached down into the tool house and

took up one of the kittens, holding it out in the light to see it

blink its eyes. The little girl, just coming out of the kitchen,

uttered a shrill scream, a really terrible scream, and squatted

down, covering her face with her hands. Madame Joubert came out

to chide her.

"What is the matter with that child?" Claude asked as they

hurried out of the gate. "Do you suppose she was hurt, or abused

in some way?"

"Terrorized. She often screams like that at night. Haven't you

heard her? They have to go and wake her, to stop it. She doesn't

speak any French; only Walloon. And she can't or won't learn, so

they can't tell what goes on in her poor little head."

In the two weeks of intensive training that followed, Claude

marvelled at Gerhardt's spirit and endurance. The muscular strain

of mimic trench operations was more of a tax on him than on any

of the other officers. He was as tall as Claude, but he weighed

only a hundred and forty-six pounds, and he had not been roughly

bred like most of the others. When his fellow officers learned

that he was a violinist by profession, that he could have had a

soft job as interpreter or as an organizer of camp

entertainments, they no longer resented his reserve or his

occasional superciliousness. They respected a man who could have

wriggled out and didn't.