"There is a short cut across that meadow," said the young girl,
raising a rounded, sun-tinted arm, bare to the shoulder.
"You are very kind," said I, looking at her steadily.
"And, after that, you will come to a thicket of white birches."
"Thank you, mademoiselle."
"And after that," she said, idly following with her blue eyes the
contour of her own lovely arm, "you must turn to the left, and there
you will cross a hill. You can see it from where we stand--"
She glanced at me over her outstretched arm. "You are not listening,"
she said.
I shifted a troubled gaze to the meadow which stretched out all
glittering with moist grasses and tufts of rain-drenched wild
flowers.
The girl's arm slowly fell to her side, she looked up at me again, I
felt her eyes on me for a moment, then she turned her head toward the
meadow.
A deadened report shook the summer air--the sound of a cannon fired
very far away, perhaps on the citadel of Strasbourg. It was so
distant, so indistinct, that here in this peaceful country it lingered
only as a vibration; the humming of the clover bees was louder.
Without turning my head I said: "It is difficult to believe that
there is war anywhere in the world--is it not, mademoiselle?"
"Not if one knows the world," she said, indifferently.
"Do you know it, my child?"
"Sufficiently," she said.
She had opened again the book which she had been reading when I first
noticed her. From my saddle I saw that it was Molière. I examined her,
in detail, from the tips of her small wooden shoes to the scarlet
velvet-banded skirt, then slowly upward, noting the laced bodice of
velvet, the bright hair under the butterfly coiffe of Alsace, the
delicate outline of nose and brow and throat. The ensemble was
theatrical.
"Why do you tend turkeys?" I asked.
"Because it pleases me," she replied, raising her eyebrows in faint
displeasure.
"For that same reason you read Monsieur Molière?" I suggested.
"Doubtless, monsieur."
"Who are you?"
"Is a passport required in France?" she replied, languidly.
"Are you what you pretend to be, an Alsatian turkey tender?"
"Parbleu! There are my turkeys, monsieur."
"Of course, and there is your peasant dress and there are your wooden
shoes, and there also, mademoiselle, are your soft hands and your
accented speech and your plays of Molière."
"You are very wise for a hussar," she said.
"Perhaps," said I, "but I have asked you a question which remains
parried."
She balanced the hazel rod across her shoulders with a faintly
malicious smile.
"One might almost believe that you are not a hussar, but an officer
of the Imperial Police," she said.
[Illustration: "'ACROSS THAT MEADOW,' SAID THE YOUNG GIRL"]
"If you think that," said I, "you should answer my question the
sooner--unless you come from La Trappe. Do you?"
"Sometimes."
"Oh! And what do you do at the Château de la Trappe?"
"I tend poultry--sometimes," she replied.
"And at other times?"
"I do other things, monsieur."
"What things?"
"What things? Mon Dieu, I read a little, as you perceive, monsieur."
"Who are you?" I demanded.
"Oh, a mere nobody in such learned company," she said, shaking her
head with a mock humility that annoyed me intensely.
"Very well," said I, conscious every moment of her pleasure in my
discomfiture; "under the circumstances I am going to ask you to
accept my escort to La Trappe; for I think you are Mademoiselle Elven,
recently of the Odéon theatre."
At this her eyes widened and the smile on her face became less
genuine. "Indeed, I shall not go with you," she said.
"I'm afraid I'll have to insist," said I.
She still balanced her hazel rod across her shoulders, a smile curving
her mouth.
"Monsieur," she said, "do you ride through the world pressing every
peasant girl you meet with such ardent entreaties? Truly, your fashion
of wooing is not slow, but everybody knows that hussars are headlong
gentlemen--'Nothing is sacred from a hussar,'" she hummed,
deliberately, in a parody which made me writhe in my saddle.
"Mademoiselle," said I, taking off my forage-cap, "your ridicule is
not the most disagreeable incident that I expect to meet with to-day.
I am attempting to do my duty, and I must ask you to do yours."
"By taking a walk with you, beau monsieur?"
"I'm afraid so."
"And if I refuse?"
"Then," said I, amiably, "I shall be obliged to set you on my
horse." And I dismounted and went toward her.
"Set me on--on that horse?" she repeated, with a disturbed smile.
"Will you come on foot, then?"
"No, I will not!" she said, with a click of her teeth.