The sudden revelation plunges us in an abyss of reflection. "And to
think how damned sick we were of the old cackler when he made such a
song about his treasure and dinned it into our ears!"
"We were right enough down there, you remember, when we were saying
'One never knows.' Didn't guess how near we were to being right,
either."
"All the same, there are some things you can be sure of," says
Farfadet, who as soon as Gauchin was mentioned had remained dreaming
and distant, as though a lovely face was smiling on him. "But as for
this," he added, "I'd never have believed it either! Shan't I find him
stuck up, the old ruin, when I go back there after the war!"
* * * * *
"They want a willing man to help the sappers with a job," says the big
adjutant.
"Not likely!" growl the men, without moving.
"It'll be of use in relieving the boys," the adjutant goes on.
With that the grumbling ceases, and several heads are raised. "Here!"
says Lamuse.
"Get into your harness, big 'un, and come with me." Lamuse buckles on
his knapsack, rolls up his blanket, and fetters his pouches. Since his
seizure of unlucky affection was allayed, he has become more melancholy
than before, and although a sort of fatality makes him continually
stouter, he has become engrossed and isolated, and rarely speaks.
In the evening something comes along the trench, rising and falling
according to the lumps and holes in the ground; a shape that seems in
the shadows to be swimming, that outspreads its arms sometimes, as
though appealing for help. It is Lamuse.
He is among us again, covered with mold and mud. He trembles and
streams with sweat, as one who is afraid. His lips stir, and he gasps,
before they can shape a word.
"Well, what is there?" we ask him vainly.
He collapses in a corner among us and prostrates himself. We offer him
wine, and he refuses it with a sign. Then he turns towards me and
beckons me with a movement of his head.
When I am by him he whispers to me, very low, and as if in church, "I
have seen Eudoxie again." He gasps for breath, his chest wheezes, and
with his eyeballs fast fixed upon a nightmare, he says, "She was
putrid."
"It was the place we'd lost," Lamuse went on, "and that the Colonials
took again with the bayonet ten days ago.
"First we made a hole for the sap, and I was in at it, since I was
scooping more than the others I found myself in front. The others were
widening and making solid behind. But behold I find a jumble of beams.
I'd lit on an old trench, caved in, 'vidently; half caved in--there was
some space and room. In the middle of those stumps of wood all mixed
together that I was lifting away one by one from in front of me, there
was something like a big sandbag in height, upright, and something on
the top of it hanging down.
"And behold a plank gives way, and the queer sack falls on me, with its
weight on top. I was pegged down, and the smell of a corpse filled my
throat--on the top of the bundle there was a head, and it was the hair
that I'd seen hanging down.
"You understand, one couldn't see very well; but I recognized the hair
'cause there isn't any other like it in the world, and then the rest of
the face, all stove in and moldy, the neck pulped, and all the lot dead
for a month perhaps. It was Eudoxie, I tell you.
"Yes, it was the woman I could never go near before, you know--that I
only saw a long way off and couldn't ever touch, same as diamonds. She
used to run about everywhere, you know. She used even to wander in the
lines. One day she must have stopped a bullet, and stayed there, dead
and lost, until the chance of this sap.
"You clinch the position? I was forced to hold her up with one arm as
well as I could, and work with the other. She was trying to fall on me
with all her weight. Old man, she wanted to kiss me, and I didn't
want--it was terrible. She seemed to be saying to me, 'You wanted to
kiss me, well then, come, come now!' She had on her--she had there,
fastened on, the remains of a bunch of flowers, and that was rotten,
too, and the posy stank in my nose like the corpse of some little beast.
"I had to take her in my arms, in both of them, and turn gently round
so that I could put her down on the other side. The place was so narrow
and pinched that as we turned, for a moment, I hugged her to my breast
and couldn't help it. With all my strength, old chap, as I should have
hugged her once on a time if she'd have let me.
"I've been half an hour cleaning myself from the touch of her and the
smell that she breathed on me in spite of me and in spite of herself.
Ah, lucky for me that I'm as done up as a wretched cart-horse!"
He turns over on his belly, clenches his fists, and slumbers, with his
face buried in the ground and his dubious dream of passion and
corruption.