IX

The following night, Claude was sent back to Division

Head-quarters at Q-- with information the Colonel did not care to

commit to paper. He set off at ten o'clock, with Sergeant Hicks

for escort. There had been two days of rain, and the

communication trenches were almost knee-deep in water. About half

a mile back of the front line, the two men crawled out of the

ditch and went on above ground. There was very little shelling

along the front that night. When a flare went up, they dropped

and lay on their faces, trying, at the same time, to get a squint

at what was ahead of them.

The ground was rough, and the darkness thick; it was past

midnight when they reached the east-and-west road--usually full

of traffic, and not entirely deserted even on a night like this.

Trains of horses were splashing through the mud, with shells on

their backs, empty supply wagons were coming back from the front.

Claude and Hicks paused by the ditch, hoping to get a ride. The

rain began to fall with such violence that they looked about for

shelter. Stumbling this way and that, they ran into a big

artillery piece, the wheels sunk over the hubs in a mud-hole.

"Who's there?" called a quick voice, unmistakably British.

"American infantrymen, two of us. Can we get onto one of your

trucks till this lets up?"

"Oh, certainly! We can make room for you in here, if you're not

too big. Speak quietly, or you'll waken the Major." Giggles and

smothered laughter; a flashlight winked for a moment and showed a

line of five trucks, the front and rear ones covered with

tarpaulin tents. The voices came from the shelter next the gun.

The men inside drew up their legs and made room for the

strangers; said they were sorry they hadn't anything dry to offer

them except a little rum. The intruders accepted this gratefully.

The Britishers were a giggly lot, and Claude thought, from their

voices, they must all be very young. They joked about their Major

as if he were their schoolmaster. There wasn't room enough on the

truck for anybody to lie down, so they sat with their knees under

their chins and exchanged gossip. The gun team belonged to an

independent battery that was sent about over the country,

"wherever needed." The rest of the battery had got through, gone

on to the east, but this big gun was always getting into trouble;

now something had gone wrong with her tractor and they couldn't

pull her out. They called her "Jenny," and said she was taken

with fainting fits now and then, and had to be humoured. It was

like going about with your grandmother, one of the invisible

Tommies said, "she is such a pompous old thing!" The Major was

asleep on the rear truck; he was going to get the V.C. for

sleeping. More giggles.

No, they hadn't any idea where they were going; of course, the

officers knew, but artillery officers never told anything. What

was this country like, anyhow? They were new to this part, had

just come down from Verdure.

Claude said he had a friend in the air service up there; did they

happen to know anything about Victor Morse?

Morse, the American ace? Hadn't he heard? Why, that got into the

London papers. Morse was shot down inside the Hun line three

weeks ago. It was a brilliant affair. He was chased by eight

Boche planes, brought down three of them, put the rest to flight,

and was making for base, when they turned and got him. His

machine came down in flames and he jumped, fell a thousand feet

or more.

"Then I suppose he never got his leave?" Claude asked.

They didn't know. He got a fine citation.

The men settled down to wait for the weather to improve or the

night to pass. Some of them fell into a doze, but Claude felt

wide awake. He was wondering about the flat in Chelsea; whether

the heavy-eyed beauty had been very sorry, or whether she was

playing "Roses of Picardy" for other young officers. He thought

mournfully that he would never go to London now. He had quite

counted on meeting Victor there some day, after the Kaiser had

been properly disposed of. He had really liked Victor. There was

something about that fellow... a sort of debauched baby, he

was, who went seeking his enemy in the clouds. What other age

could have produced such a figure? That was one of the things

about this war; it took a little fellow from a little town, gave

him an air and a swagger, a life like a movie-film,--and then a

death like the rebel angels.

A man like Gerhardt, for instance, had always lived in a more or

less rose-colored world; he belonged over here, really. How could

he know what hard moulds and crusts the big guns had broken open

on the other side of the sea? Who could ever make him understand

how far it was from the strawberry bed and the glass cage in the

bank, to the sky-roads over Verdure?

By three o'clock the rain had stopped. Claude and Hicks set off

again, accompanied by one of the gun team who was going back to

get help for their tractor. As it began to grow light, the two

Americans wondered more and more at the extremely youthful

appearance of their companion. When they stopped at a shell-hole

and washed the mud from their faces, the English boy, with his

helmet off and the weather stains removed, showed a countenance

of adolescent freshness, almost girlish; cheeks like pink apples,

yellow curls above his forehead, long, soft lashes.

"You haven't been over very long, have you?" Claude asked in a

fatherly tone, as they took the road again.

"I came out in 'sixteen. I was formerly in the infantry."

The Americans liked to hear him talk; he spoke very quickly, in a

high, piping voice.

"How did you come to change?"

"Oh, I belonged to one of the Pal Battalions, and we got cut to

pieces. When I came out of hospital, I thought I'd try another

branch of the service, seeing my pals were gone."

"Now, just what is a Pal Battalion?" drawled Hicks. He hated all

English words he didn't understand, though he didn't mind French

ones in the least.

"Fellows who signed up together from school," the lad piped.

Hicks glanced at Claude. They both thought this boy ought to be

in school for some time yet, and wondered what he looked like

when he first came over.

"And you got cut up, you say?" he asked sympathetically.

"Yes, on the Somme. We had rotten luck. We were sent over to take

a trench and couldn't. We didn't even get to the wire. The Hun

was so well prepared that time, we couldn't manage it. We went

over a thousand, and we came back seventeen."

"A hundred and seventeen?"

"No, seventeen."

Hicks whistled and again exchanged looks with Claude. They could

neither of them doubt him. There was something very unpleasant

about the idea of a thousand fresh-faced schoolboys being sent

out against the guns. "It must have been a fool order," he

commented. "Suppose there was some mistake at Headquarters?"

"Oh, no, Headquarters knew what it was about! We'd have taken it,

if we'd had any sort of luck. But the Hun happened to be full of

fight. His machine guns did for us."

"You were hit yourself?" Claude asked him.

"In the leg. He was popping away at me all the while, but I

wriggled back on my tummy. When I came out of the hospital my leg

wasn't strong, and there's less marching in the artillery.

"I should think you'd have had about enough."

"Oh, a fellow can't stay out after all his chums have been

killed! He'd think about it all the time, you know," the boy

replied in his clear treble.

Claude and Hicks got into Headquarters just as the cooks were

turning out to build their fires. One of the Corporals took them

to the officers' bath,--a shed with big tin tubs, and carried away

their uniforms to dry them in the kitchen. It would be an hour

before the officers would be about, he said, and in the meantime

he would manage to get clean shirts and socks for them.

"Say, Lieutenant," Hicks brought out as he was rubbing himself

down with a real bath towel, "I don't want to hear any more about

those Pal Battalions, do you? It gets my goat. So long as we were

going to get into this, we might have been a little more

previous. I hate to feel small." "Guess we'll have to take our

medicine," Claude said dryly, "There wasn't anywhere to duck, was

there? I felt like it. Nice little kid. I don't believe American

boys ever seem as young as that."

"Why, if you met him anywhere else, you'd be afraid of using bad

words before him, he's so pretty! What's the use of sending an

orphan asylum out to be slaughtered? I can't see it," grumbled

the fat sergeant. "Well, it's their business. I'm not going to

let it spoil my breakfast. Suppose we'll draw ham and eggs,

Lieutenant?"

X

After breakfast Claude reported to Headquarters and talked with

one of the staff Majors. He was told he would have to wait until

tomorrow to see Colonel James, who had been called to Paris for a

general conference. He had left in his car at four that morning,

in response to a telephone message.

"There's not much to do here, by way of amusement," said the

Major. "A movie show tonight, and you can get anything you want

at the estaminet,--the one on the square, opposite the English

tank, is the best. There are a couple of nice Frenchwomen in the

Red Cross barrack, up on the hill, in the old convent garden.

They try to look out for the civilian population, and we're on

good terms with them. We get their supplies through with our own,

and the quartermaster has orders to help them when they run

short. You might go up and call on them. They speak English

perfectly."

Claude asked whether he could walk in on them without any kind of

introduction.

"Oh, yes, they're used to us! I'll give you a card to Mlle.

Olive, though. She's a particular friend of mine. There you are:

'Mlle. Olive de Courcy, introducing, etc.' And, you understand,"

here he glanced up and looked Claude over from head to foot,

"she's a perfect lady."

Even with an introduction, Claude felt some hesitancy about

presenting himself to these ladies. Perhaps they didn't like

Americans; he was always afraid of meeting French people who

didn't. It was the same way with most of the fellows in his

battalion, he had found; they were terribly afraid of being

disliked. And the moment they felt they were disliked, they

hastened to behave as badly as possible, in order to deserve it;

then they didn't feel that they had been taken in--the worst

feeling a doughboy could possibly have!

Claude thought he would stroll about to look at the town a

little. It had been taken by the Germans in the autumn of 1914,

after their retreat from the Marne, and they had held it until

about a year ago, when it was retaken by the English and the

Chasseurs d'Alpins. They had been able to reduce it and to drive

the Germans out, only by battering it down with artillery; not

one building remained standing.

Ruin was ugly, and it was nothing more, Claude was thinking, as

he followed the paths that ran over piles of brick and plaster.

There was nothing picturesque about this, as there was in the war

pictures one saw at home. A cyclone or a fire might have done

just as good a job. The place was simply a great dump-heap; an

exaggeration of those which disgrace the outskirts of American

towns. It was the same thing over and over; mounds of burned

brick and broken stone, heaps of rusty, twisted iron, splintered

beams and rafters, stagnant pools, cellar holes full of muddy

water. An American soldier had stepped into one of those holes a

few nights before, and been drowned.

This had been a rich town of eighteen thousand inhabitants; now

the civilian population was about four hundred. There were people

there who had hung on all through the years of German occupation;

others who, as soon as they heard that the enemy was driven out,

came back from wherever they had found shelter. They were living

in cellars, or in little wooden barracks made from old timbers

and American goods boxes. As he walked along, Claude read

familiar names and addresses, painted on boards built into the

sides of these frail shelters: "From Emery Bird, Thayer Co.

Kansas City, Mo." "Daniels and Fisher, Denver, Colo." These

inscriptions cheered him so much that he began to feel like going

up and calling on the French ladies.

The sun had come out hot after three days of rain. The stagnant

pools and the weeds that grew in the ditches gave out a rank,

heavy smell. Wild flowers grew triumphantly over the piles of

rotting wood and rusty iron; cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace

and poppies; blue and white and red, as if the French colours

came up spontaneously out of the French soil, no matter what the

Germans did to it.

Claude paused before a little shanty built against a

half-demolished brick wall. A gilt cage hung in the doorway, with

a canary, singing beautifully. An old woman was working in the

garden patch, picking out bits of brick and plaster the rain had

washed up, digging with her fingers around the pale carrot-tops

and neat lettuce heads. Claude approached her, touched his

helmet, and asked her how one could find the way to the Red

Cross.

She wiped her hands on her apron and took him by the elbow. "Vous

savez le tank Anglais? Non? Marie, Marie!"

(He learned afterward that every one was directed to go this way

or that from a disabled British tank that had been left on the

site of the old town hall.)

A little girl ran out of the barrack, and her grandmother told

her to go at once and take the American to the Red Cross. Marie

put her hand in Claude's and led him off along one of the paths

that wound among the rubbish. She took him out of the way to show

him a church,--evidently one of the ruins of which they were

proudest,--where the blue sky was shining through the white

arches. The Virgin stood with empty arms over the central door; a

little foot sticking to her robe showed where the infant Jesus

had been shot away.

"Le bébé est cassé, mais il a protégé sa mère," Marie explained

with satisfaction. As they went on, she told Claude that she had

a soldier among the Americans who was her friend. "Il est bon, il

est gai, mon soldat," but he sometimes drank too much alcohol,

and that was a bad habit. Perhaps now, since his comrade had

stepped into a cellar hole Monday night while he was drunk, and

had been drowned, her "Sharlie" would be warned and would do

better. Marie was evidently a well brought up child. Her father,

she said, had been a schoolmaster. At the foot of the convent

hill, she turned to go home. Claude called her back and awkwardly

tried to give her some money, but she thrust her hands behind her

and said resolutely, "Non, merci. Je n'ai besoin de rien," and

then ran away down the path.

As he climbed toward the top of the hill he noticed that the

ground had been cleaned up a bit. The path was clear, the bricks

and hewn stones had been piled in neat heaps, the broken hedges

had been trimmed and the dead parts cut away. Emerging at last

into the garden, he stood still for wonder; even though it was in

ruins, it seemed so beautiful after the disorder of the world

below.

The gravel walks were clean and shining. A wall of very old

boxwoods stood green against a row of dead Lombardy poplars.

Along the shattered side of the main building, a pear tree,

trained on wires like a vine, still flourished,--full of little

red pears. Around the stone well was a shaven grass plot, and

everywhere there were little trees and shrubs, which had been too

low for the shells to hit,--or for the fire, which had seared the

poplars, to catch. The hill must have been wrapped in flames at

one time, and all the tall trees had been burned.

The barrack was built against the walls of the cloister,--three

arches of which remained, like a stone wing to the shed of

planks. On a ladder stood a one-armed young man, driving nails

very skillfully with his single hand. He seemed to be making a

frame projection from the sloping roof, to support an awning. He

carried his nails in his mouth. When he wanted one, he hung his

hammer to the belt of his trousers, took a nail from between his

teeth, stuck it into the wood, and then deftly rapped it on the

head. Claude watched him for a moment, then went to the foot of

the ladder and held out his two hands. "Laissez-moi," he

exclaimed.

The one aloft spat his nails out into his palm, looked down, and

laughed. He was about Claude's age, with very yellow hair and

moustache and blue eyes. A charming looking fellow.

"Willingly," he said. "This is no great affair, but I do it to

amuse myself, and it will be pleasant for the ladies." He

descended and gave his hammer to the visitor. Claude set to work

on the frame, while the other went under the stone arches and

brought back a roll of canvas,--part of an old tent, by the look

of it.

"Un héritage des Boches," he explained unrolling it upon the

grass. "I found it among their filth in the cellar, and had the

idea to make a pavilion for the ladies, as our trees are

destroyed." He stood up suddenly. "Perhaps you have come to see

the ladies?"

"Plus tard."

Very well, the boy said, they would get the pavilion done for a

surprise for Mlle. Olive when she returned. She was down in the

town now, visiting the sick people. He bent over his canvas

again, measuring and cutting with a pair of garden shears, moving

round the green plot on his knees, and all the time singing.

Claude wished he could understand the words of his song.

While they were working together, tying the cloth up to the

frame, Claude, from his elevation, saw a tall girl coming slowly

up the path by which he had ascended. She paused at the top, by

the boxwood hedge, as if she were very tired, and stood looking

at them. Presently she approached the ladder and said in slow,

careful English, "Good morning. Louis has found help, I see."

Claude came down from his perch.

"Are you Mlle. de Courcy? I am Claude Wheeler. I have a note of

introduction to you, if I can find it."

She took the card, but did not look at it. "That is not

necessary. Your uniform is enough. Why have you come?"

He looked at her in some confusion. "Well, really, I don't know!

I am just in from the front to see Colonel James, and he is in

Paris, so I must wait over a day. One of the staff suggested my

coming up here--I suppose because it is so nice!" he finished

ingenuously.

"Then you are a guest from the front, and you will have lunch

with Louis and me. Madame Barre is also gone for the day. Will you

see our house?" She led him through the low door into a living

room, unpainted, uncarpeted, light and airy. There were coloured

war posters on the clean board walls, brass shell cases full of

wild flowers and garden flowers, canvas camp-chairs, a shelf of

books, a table covered by a white silk shawl embroidered with big

butterflies. The sunlight on the floor, the bunches of fresh

flowers, the white window curtains stirring in the breeze,

reminded Claude of something, but he could not remember what.

"We have no guest room," said Mlle. de Courcy. "But you will come

to mine, and Louis will bring you hot water to wash."

In a wooden chamber at the end of the passage, Claude took off

his coat, and set to work to make himself as tidy as possible.

Hot water and scented soap were in themselves pleasant things.

The dresser was an old goods box, stood on end and covered with

white lawn. On it there was a row of ivory toilet things, with

combs and brushes, powder and cologne, and a pile of white

handkerchiefs fresh from the iron. He felt that he ought not to

look about him much, but the odor of cleanness, and the

indefinable air of personality, tempted him. In one corner, a

curtain on a rod made a clothes-closet; in another was a low iron

bed, like a soldier's, with a pale blue coverlid and white

pillows. He moved carefully and splashed discreetly. There was

nothing he could have damaged or broken, not even a rug on the

plank floor, and the pitcher and hand-basin were of iron; yet he

felt as if he were imperiling something fragile.

When he came out, the table in the living room was set for three.

The stout old dame who was placing the plates paid no attention

to him,--seemed, from her expression, to scorn him and all his

kind. He withdrew as far as possible out of her path and picked

up a book from the table, a volume of Heine's Reisebilder in

German.

Before lunch Mlle. de Courcy showed him the store room in the

rear, where the shelves were stocked with rows of coffee tins,

condensed milk, canned vegetables and meat, all with American

trade names he knew so well; names which seemed doubly familiar

and "reliable" here, so far from home. She told him the people in

the town could not have got through the winter without these

things. She had to deal them out sparingly, where the need was

greatest, but they made the difference between life and death.

Now that it was summer, the people lived by their gardens; but

old women still came to beg for a few ounces of coffee, and

mothers to get a can of milk for the babies.

Claude's face glowed with pleasure. Yes, his country had a long

arm. People forgot that; but here, he felt, was some one who did

not forget. When they sat down to lunch he learned that Mlle. de

Courcy and Madame Barre had been here almost a year now; they

came soon after the town was retaken, when the old inhabitants

began to drift back. The people brought with them only what they

could carry in their arms.

"They must love their country so much, don't you think, when they

endure such poverty to come back to it?" she said. "Even the old

ones do not often complain about their dear things--their linen,

and their china, and their beds. If they have the ground, and

hope, all that they can make again. This war has taught us all

how little the made things matter. Only the feeling matters."

Exactly so; hadn't he been trying to say this ever since he was

born? Hadn't he always known it, and hadn't it made life both

bitter and sweet for him? What a beautiful voice she had, this

Mlle. Olive, and how nobly it dealt with the English tongue. He

would like to say something, but out of so much... what? He

remained silent, therefore, sat nervously breaking up the black

war bread that lay beside his plate.

He saw her looking at his hand, felt in a flash that she regarded

it with favour, and instantly put it on his knee, under the

table.

"It is our trees that are worst," she went on sadly. "You have

seen our poor trees? It makes one ashamed for this beautiful part

of France. Our people are more sorry for them than to lose their

cattle and horses."

Mlle. de Courcy looked over-taxed by care and responsibility,

Claude thought, as he watched her. She seemed far from strong.

Slender, grey-eyed, dark-haired, with white transparent skin and a

too ardent colour in her lips and cheeks,--like the flame of a

feverish activity within. Her shoulders drooped, as if she were

always tired. She must be young, too, though there were threads

of grey in her hair,--brushed flat and knotted carelessly at the

back of her head.

After the coffee, Mlle. de Courcy went to work at her desk, and

Louis took Claude to show him the garden. The clearing and

trimming and planting were his own work, and he had done it all

with one arm. This autumn he would accomplish much more, for he

was stronger now, and he had the habitude of working

single-handed. He must manage to get the dead trees down; they

distressed Mademoiselle Olive. In front of the barrack stood four

old locusts; the tops were naked forks, burned coal-black, but

the lower branches had put out thick tufts of yellow-green

foliage, so vigorous that the life in the trunks must still be

sound. This fall, Louis said, he meant to get some strong

American boys to help him, and they would saw off the dead limbs

and trim the tops flat over the thick boles. How much it must

mean to a man to love his country like this, Claude thought; to

love its trees and flowers; to nurse it when it was sick, and

tend its hurts with one arm. Among the flowers, which had come

back self-sown or from old roots, Claude found a group of tall,

straggly plants with reddish stems and tiny white blossoms,--one

of the evening primrose family, the Gaura, that grew along the

clay banks of Lovely Creek, at home. He had never thought it very

pretty, but he was pleased to find it here. He had supposed it

was one of those nameless prairie flowers that grew on the

prairie and nowhere else.

When they went back to the barrack, Mlle. Olive was sitting in

one of the canvas chairs Louis had placed under the new pavilion.

"What a fine fellow he is!" Claude exclaimed, looking after him.

"Louis? Yes. He was my brother's orderly. When Emile came home on

leave he always brought Louis with him, and Louis became like one

of the family. The shell that killed my brother tore off his arm.

My mother and I went to visit him in the hospital, and he seemed

ashamed to be alive, poor boy, when my brother was dead. He put

his hand over his face and began to cry, and said, 'Oh, Madame,

il était toujours plus chic que moi!'"

Although Mlle. Olive spoke English well, Claude saw that she did

so only by keeping her mind intently upon it. The stiff sentences

she uttered were foreign to her nature; her face and eyes ran

ahead of her tongue and made one wait eagerly for what was

coming. He sat down in a sagging canvas chair, absently twisting

a sprig of Gaura he had pulled.

"You have found a flower?" She looked up.

"Yes. It grows at home, on my father's farm."

She dropped the faded shirt she was darning. "Oh, tell me about

your country! I have talked to so many, but it is difficult to

understand. Yes, tell me about that!"

Nebraska--What was it? How many days from the sea, what did it

look like? As he tried to describe it, she listened with

half-closed eyes. "Flat-covered with grain-muddy rivers. I think

it must be like Russia. But your father's farm; describe that to

me, minutely, and perhaps I can see the rest."

Claude took a stick and drew a square in the sand: there, to

begin with, was the house and farmyard; there was the big

pasture, with Lovely Creek flowing through it; there were the

wheatfields and cornfields, the timber claim; more wheat and

corn, more pastures. There it all was, diagrammed on the yellow

sand, with shadows gliding over it from the half-charred locust

trees. He would not have believed that he could tell a stranger

about it in such detail. It was partly due to his listener, no

doubt; she gave him unusual sympathy, and the glow of an unusual

mind. While she bent over his map, questioning him, a light dew

of perspiration gathered on her upper lip, and she breathed

faster from her effort to see and understand everything. He told

her about his mother and his father and Mahailey; what life was

like there in summer and winter and autumn--what it had been like

in that fateful summer when the Hun was moving always toward

Paris, and on those three days when the French were standing at

the Marne; how his mother and father waited for him to bring the

news at night, and how the very cornfields seemed to hold their

breath.

Mlle. Olive sank back wearily in her chair. Claude looked up and

saw tears sparkling in her brilliant eyes. "And I myself," she

murmured, "did not know of the Marne until days afterward, though

my father and brother were both there! I was far off in Brittany,

and the trains did not run. That is what is wonderful, that you

are here, telling me this! We, we were taught from childhood that

some day the Germans would come; we grew up under that threat.

But you were so safe, with all your wheat and corn. Nothing could

touch you, nothing!"

Claude dropped his eyes. "Yes," he muttered, blushing, "shame

could. It pretty nearly did. We are pretty late." He rose from

his chair as if he were going to fetch something.... But

where was he to get it from? He shook his head. "I am afraid," he

said mournfully, "there is nothing I can say to make you

understand how far away it all seemed, how almost visionary. It

didn't only seem miles away, it seemed centuries away."

"But you do come,--so many, and from so far! It is the last

miracle of this war. I was in Paris on the fourth day of July,

when your Marines, just from Belleau Wood, marched for your

national fete, and I said to myself as they came on, 'That is a

new man!' Such heads they had, so fine there, behind the ears.

Such discipline and purpose. Our people laughed and called to

them and threw them flowers, but they never turned to look...

eyes straight before. They passed like men of destiny." She threw

out her hands with a swift movement and dropped them in her lap.

The emotion of that day came back in her face. As Claude looked

at her burning cheeks, her burning eyes, he understood that the

strain of this war had given her a perception that was almost

like a gift of prophecy.

A woman came up the hill carrying a baby. Mlle. de Courcy went to

meet her and took her into the house. Claude sat down again,

almost lost to himself in the feeling of being completely

understood, of being no longer a stranger. In the far distance

the big guns were booming at intervals. Down in the garden Louis

was singing. Again he wished he knew the words of Louis' songs.

The airs were rather melancholy, but they were sung very

cheerfully. There was something open and warm about the boy's

voice, as there was about his face-something blond, too. It was

distinctly a bland voice, like summer wheatfields, ripe and

waving. Claude sat alone for half an hour or more, tasting a new

kind of happiness, a new kind of sadness. Ruin and new birth; the

shudder of ugly things in the past, the trembling image of

beautiful ones on the horizon; finding and losing; that was life,

he saw.

When his hostess came back, he moved her chair for her out of the

creeping sunlight. "I didn't know there were any French girls

like you," he said simply, as she sat down.

She smiled. "I do not think there are any French girls left.

There are children and women. I was twenty-one when the war came,

and I had never been anywhere without my mother or my brother or

sister. Within a year I went all over France alone; with

soldiers, with Senegalese, with anybody. Everything is different

with us." She lived at Versailles, she told him, where her father

had been an instructor in the Military School. He had died since

the beginning of the war. Her grandfather was killed in the war

of 1870. Hers was a family of soldiers, but not one of the men

would be left to see the day of victory.

She looked so tired that Claude knew he had no right to stay.

Long shadows were falling in the garden. It was hard to leave;

but an hour more or less wouldn't matter. Two people could hardly

give each other more if they were together for years, he thought.

"Will you tell me where I can come and see you, if we both get

through this war?" he asked as he rose.

He wrote it down in his notebook.

"I shall look for you," she said, giving him her hand.

There was nothing to do but to take his helmet and go. At the

edge of the hill, just before he plunged down the path, he

stopped and glanced back at the garden lying flattened in the

sun; the three stone arches, the dahlias and marigolds, the

glistening boxwood wall. He had left something on the hilltop

which he would never find again.

The next afternoon Claude and his sergeant set off for the front.

They had been told at Headquarters that they could shorten their

route by following the big road to the military cemetery, and

then turning to the left. It was not advisable to go the latter

half of the way before nightfall, so they took their time through

the belt of straggling crops and hayfields.

When they struck the road they came upon a big Highlander sitting

in the end of an empty supply wagon, smoking a pipe and rubbing

the dried mud out of his kilts. The horses were munching in their

nose-bags, and the driver had disappeared. The Americans hadn't

happened to meet with any Highlanders before, and were curious.

This one must be a good fighter, they thought; a brawny giant

with a bulldog jaw, and a face as red and knobby as his knees.

More because he admired the looks of the man than because he

needed information, Hicks went up and asked him if he had noticed

a military cemetery on the road back. The Kilt nodded.

"About how far back would you say it was?"

"I wouldn't say at all. I take no account of their kilometers,"

he replied dryly, rubbing away at his skirt as if he had it in a

washtub.

"Well, about how long will it take us to walk it?"

"That I couldn't say. A Scotsman would do it in an hour."

"I guess a Yankee can do it as quick as a Scotchman, can't be?"

Hicks asked jovially.

"That I couldn't say. You've been four years gettin' this far, I

know verra well."

Hicks blinked as if he had been hit. "Oh, if that's the way you

talk--"

"That's the way I do," said the other sourly.

Claude put out a warning hand. "Come on, Hicks. You'll get

nothing by it." They went up the road very much disconcerted.

Hicks kept thinking of things he might have said. When he was

angry, the Sergeant's forehead puffed up and became dark red,

like a young baby's. "What did you call me off for?" he

sputtered.

"I don't see where you'd have come out in an argument, and you

certainly couldn't have licked him."

They turned aside at the cemetery to wait until the sun went

down. It was unfenced, unsodded, and a wagon trail ran through

the middle, bisecting the square. On one side were the French

graves, with white crosses; on the other side the German graves,

with black crosses. Poppies and cornflower ran over them. The

Americans strolled about, reading the names. Here and there the

soldier's photograph was nailed upon his cross, left by some

comrade to perpetuate his memory a little longer.

The birds, that always came to life at dusk and dawn, began to

sing, flying home from somewhere. Claude and Hicks sat down

between the mounds and began to smoke while the sun dropped.

Lines of dead trees marked the red west. This was a dreary

stretch of country, even to boys brought up on the flat prairie.

They smoked in silence, meditating and waiting for night. On a

cross at their feet the inscription read merely: Soldat Inconnu,

Mort pour La France.

A very good epitaph, Claude was thinking. Most of the boys who

fell in this war were unknown, even to themselves. They were too

young. They died and took their secret with them,--what they were

and what they might have been. The name that stood was La France.

How much that name had come to mean to him, since he first saw a

shoulder of land bulk up in the dawn from the deck of the

Anchises. It was a pleasant name to say over in one's mind, where

one could make it as passionately nasal as one pleased and never

blush.

Hicks, too, had been lost in his reflections. Now he broke the

silence. "Somehow, Lieutenant, 'mort' seems deader than 'dead.'

It has a coffinish sound. And over there they're all 'tod,' and

it's all the same damned silly thing. Look at them set out here,

black and white, like a checkerboard. The next question is, who

put 'em here, and what's the good of it?"

"Search me," the other murmured absently.

Hicks rolled another cigarette and sat smoking it, his plump face

wrinkled with the gravity and labour of his cerebration. "Well,"

he brought out at last, "we'd better hike. This afterglow will

hang on for an hour,--always does, over here."

"I suppose we had." They rose to go. The white crosses were now

violet, and the black ones had altogether melted in the shadow.

Behind the dead trees in the west, a long smear of red still

burned. To the north, the guns were tuning up with a deep

thunder. "Somebody's getting peppered up there. Do owls always

hoot in graveyards?"

"Just what I was wondering, Lieutenant. It's a peaceful spot,

otherwise. Good-night, boys," said Hicks kindly, as they left the

graves behind them.

They were soon finding their way among shell holes, and jumping

trench-tops in the dark,-beginning to feel cheerful at getting

back to their chums and their own little group. Hicks broke out

and told Claude how he and Dell Able meant to go into business

together when they got home; were going to open a garage and

automobile-repair shop. Under their talk, in the minds of both,

that lonely spot lingered, and the legend: Soldat Inconnu, Mort

pour La France.