When the survivors of Company B are old men, and are telling over
their good days, they will say to each other, "Oh, that week we
spent at Beaufort!" They will close their eyes and see a little
village on a low ridge, lost in the forest, overgrown with oak
and chestnut and black walnut... buried in autumn colour, the
streets drifted deep in autumn leaves, great branches interlacing
over the roofs of the houses, wells of cool water that tastes of
moss and tree roots. Up and down those streets they will see
figures passing; themselves, young and brown and clean-limbed;
and comrades, long dead, but still alive in that far-away
village. How they will wish they could tramp again, nights on
days in the mud and rain, to drag sore feet into their old
billets at Beaufort! To sink into those wide feather beds and
sleep the round of the clock while the old women washed and dried
their clothes for them; to eat rabbit stew and pommes frites in
the garden,--rabbit stew made with red wine and chestnuts. Oh,
the days that are no more!
As soon as Captain Maxey and the wounded men had been started on
their long journey to the rear, carried by the prisoners, the
whole company turned in and slept for twelve hours--all but
Sergeant Hicks, who sat in the house off the square, beside the
body of his chum.
The next day the Americans came to life as if they were new men,
just created in a new world. And the people of the town came to
life... excitement, change, something to look forward to at
last! A new flag, le drapeau étoilé, floated along with the
tricolour in the square. At sunset the soldiers stood in
formation behind it and sang "The Star Spangled Banner" with
uncovered heads. The old people watched them from the doorways.
The Americans were the first to bring "Madelon" to Beaufort. The
fact that the village had never heard this song, that the
children stood round begging for it, "Chantez-vous la Madelon!"
made the soldiers realize how far and how long out of the world
these villagers had been. The German occupation was like a
deafness which nothing pierced but their own arrogant martial
airs.
Before Claude was out of bed after his first long sleep, a runner
arrived from Colonel Scott, notifying him that he was in charge
of the Company until further orders. The German prisoners had
buried their own dead and dug graves for the Americans before
they were sent off to the rear. Claude and David were billeted at
the edge of the town, with the woman who had given Captain Maxey
his first information, when they marched in yesterday morning.
Their hostess told them, at their mid-day breakfast, that the old
dame who was shot in the square, and the little girl, were to be
buried this afternoon. Claude decided that the Americans might as
well have their funeral at the same time. He thought he would ask
the priest to say a prayer at the graves, and he and David set
off through the brilliant, rustling autumn sunshine to find the
Cure's house. It was next the church, with a high-walled garden
behind it. Over the bell-pull in the outer wall was a card on
which was written, "Tirez fort."
The priest himself came out to them, an old man who seemed weak
like his doorbell. He stood in his black cap, holding his hands
against his breast to keep them from shaking, and looked very old
indeed,--broken, hopeless, as if he were sick of this world and
done with it. Nowhere in France had Claude seen a face so sad as
his. Yes, he would say a prayer. It was better to have Christian
burial, and they were far from home, poor fellows! David asked
him whether the German rule had been very oppressive, but the old
man did not answer clearly, and his hands began to shake so
uncontrollably over his cassock that they went away to spare him
embarrassment.
"He seems a little gone in the head, don't you think?" Claude
remarked.
"I suppose the war has used him up. How can he celebrate mass
when his hands quiver so?" As they crossed the church steps,
David touched Claude's arm and pointed into the square. "Look,
every doughboy has a girl already! Some of them have trotted out
fatigue caps! I supposed they'd thrown them all away!"
Those who had no caps stood with their helmets under their arms,
in attitudes of exaggerated gallantry, talking to the women,--who
seemed all to have errands abroad. Some of them let the boys
carry their baskets. One soldier was giving a delighted little
girl a ride on his back.
After the funeral every man in the Company found some sympathetic
woman to talk to about his fallen comrades. All the garden
flowers and bead wreaths in Beaufort had been carried out and put
on the American graves. When the squad fired over them and the
bugle sounded, the girls and their mothers wept. Poor Willy Katz,
for instance, could never have had such a funeral in South Omaha.
The next night the soldiers began teaching the girls to dance the
"Pas Seul" and the "Fausse Trot." They had found an old violin in
the town; and Oscar, the Swede, scraped away on it. They danced
every evening. Claude saw that a good deal was going on, and he
lectured his men at parade. But he realized that he might as well
scold at the sparrows. Here was a village with several hundred
women, and only the grandmothers had husbands. All the men were
in the army; hadn't even been home on leave since the Germans
first took the place. The girls had been shut up for four years
with young men who incessantly coveted them, and whom they must
constantly outwit. The situation had been intolerable--and
prolonged. The Americans found themselves in the position of Adam
in the garden.
"Did you know, sir," said Bert Fuller breathlessly as he overtook
Claude in the street after parade, "that these lovely girls had
to go out in the fields and work, raising things for those dirty
pigs to eat? Yes, sir, had to work in the fields, under German
sentinels; marched out in the morning and back at night like
convicts! It's sure up to us to give them a good time now."
One couldn't walk out of an evening without meeting loitering
couples in the dusky streets and lanes. The boys had lost all
their bashfulness about trying to speak French. They declared
they could get along in France with three verbs, and all,
happily, in the first conjugation: manger, aimer, payer,--quite
enough! They called Beaufort "our town," and they were called
"our Americans." They were going to come back after the war, and
marry the girls, and put in waterworks!
"Chez-moi, sir!" Bill Gates called to Claude, saluting with a
bloody hand, as he stood skinning rabbits before the door of his
billet. "Bunny casualties are heavy in town this week!"
"You know, Wheeler," David remarked one morning as they were
shaving, "I think Maxey would come back here on one leg if he
knew about these excursions into the forest after mushrooms."
"Maybe."
"Aren't you going to put a stop to them?"
"Not I!" Claude jerked, setting the corners of his mouth grimly.
"If the girls, or their people, make complaint to me, I'll
interfere. Not otherwise. I've thought the matter over."
"Oh, the girls--" David laughed softly. "Well, it's something to
acquire a taste for mushrooms. They don't get them at home, do
they?"
When, after eight days, the Americans had orders to march, there
was mourning in every house. On their last night in town, the
officers received pressing invitations to the dance in the
square. Claude went for a few moments, and looked on. David was
dancing every dance, but Hicks was nowhere to be seen. The poor
fellow had been out of everything. Claude went over to the church
to see whether he might be moping in the graveyard.
There, as he walked about, Claude stopped to look at a grave that
stood off by itself, under a privet hedge, with withered leaves
and a little French flag on it. The old woman with whom they
stayed had told them the story of this grave.
The Cure's niece was buried there. She was the prettiest girl in
Beaufort, it seemed, and she had a love affair with a German
officer and disgraced the town. He was a young Bavarian,
quartered with this same old woman who told them the story, and
she said he was a nice boy, handsome and gentle, and used to sit
up half the night in the garden with his head in his
hands--homesick, lovesick. He was always after this Marie Louise;
never pressed her, but was always there, grew up out of the
ground under her feet, the old woman said. The girl hated
Germans, like all the rest, and flouted him. He was sent to the
front. Then he came back, sick and almost deaf, after one of the
slaughters at Verdun, and stayed a long while. That spring a
story got about that some woman met him at night in the German
graveyard. The Germans had taken the land behind the church for
their cemetery, and it joined the wall of the Cure's garden. When
the women went out into the fields to plant the crops, Marie
Louise used to slip away from the others and meet her Bavarian in
the forest. The girls were sure of it now; and they treated her
with disdain. But nobody was brave enough to say anything to the
Cure. One day, when she was with her Bavarian in the wood, she
snatched up his revolver from the ground and shot herself. She
was a Frenchwoman at heart, their hostess said.
"And the Bavarian?" Claude asked David later. The story had
become so complicated he could not follow it.
"He justified her, and promptly. He took the same pistol and shot
himself through the temples. His orderly, stationed at the edge
of the thicket to keep watch, heard the first shot and ran toward
them. He saw the officer take up the smoking pistol and turn it
on himself. But the Kommandant couldn't believe that one of his
officers had so much feeling. He held an enquête, dragged the
girl's mother and uncle into court, and tried to establish that
they were in conspiracy with her to seduce and murder a German
officer. The orderly was made to tell the whole story; how and
where they began to meet. Though he wasn't very delicate about
the details he divulged, he stuck to his statement that he saw
Lieutenant Muller shoot himself with his own hand, and the
Kommandant failed to prove his case. The old Cure had known
nothing of all this until he heard it aired in the military
court. Marie Louise had lived in his house since she was a child,
and was like his daughter. He had a stroke or something, and has
been like this ever since. The girl's friends forgave her, and
when she was buried off alone by the hedge, they began to take
flowers to her grave. The Kommandant put up an affiche on the
hedge, forbidding any one to decorate the grave. Apparently,
nothing during the German occupation stirred up more feeling than
poor Marie Louise."
It would stir anybody, Claude reflected. There was her lonely
little grave, the shadow of the privet hedge falling across it.
There, at the foot of the Cure's garden, was the German cemetery,
with heavy cement crosses,--some of them with long inscriptions;
lines from their poets, and couplets from old hymns. Lieutenant
Muller was there somewhere, probably. Strange, how their story
stood out in a world of suffering. That was a kind of misery he
hadn't happened to think of before; but the same thing must have
occurred again and again in the occupied territory. He would
never forget the Cure's hands, his dim, suffering eyes.
Claude recognized David crossing the pavement in front of the
church, and went back to meet him.
"Hello! I mistook you for Hicks at first. I thought he might be
out here." David sat down on the steps and lit a cigarette.
"So did I. I came out to look for him."
"Oh, I expect he's found some shoulder to cry on. Do you realize,
Claude, you and I are the only men in the Company who haven't got
engaged? Some of the married men have got engaged twice. It's a
good thing we're pulling out, or we'd have banns and a bunch of
christenings to look after." "All the same," murmured Claude, "I
like the women of this country, as far as I've seen them." While
they sat smoking in silence, his mind went back to the quiet
scene he had watched on the steps of that other church, on his
first night in France; the country girl in the moonlight, bending
over her sick soldier.
When they walked back across the square, over the crackling
leaves, the dance was breaking up. Oscar was playing "Home, Sweet
Home," for the last waltz.
"Le dernier baiser," said David. "Well, tomorrow we'll be gone,
and the chances are we won't come back this way."