Two nights later Myonville was bombed. Some German airman, searching for
that monstrous dump, and somewhat at sea in his reckoning, dropped his
explosives on that great patch of blackness, Myonville and its trees.
There was much noise; some tense terror; but not a house was touched:
the German bombs fell in the gardens, and the orchards and the fields.
Tod was undressing when he heard the German plane overhead, and the
excited voices of people in the street. He put on his tunic, leant out
of the window and listened, seeing the orchard of the Lorellards all
black under the full moon. A door banged in the house. He heard
frightened footsteps on the stairs, and Josephine’s voice high pitched
and excited.
“Claire, Claire, come into the fields. Maman is waiting.”
“I shall stay here,” said a quiet voice.
Then a bomb crashed somewhere over by the church and Tod saw Josephine
and her mother rush across the yard. The girl turned at the orchard
gate.
“Claire, do not be so foolish!”
Tod returned.
“I will bring her, mam’selle,” he called; “go on with madame.”
He knew the door of Claire’s room, and he crossed the landing and
knocked.
“Are you dressed, mam’selle?”
“Yes,” she answered him.
“Then you will come out into the fields?”
“I am not afraid.”
“But—I—am afraid,” he said; “you will come out with me into the
fields?”
She seemed to hesitate; then she opened her door. Tod was standing there
with the moonlight on his face, and no man could have looked less
unafraid or more calm.
“Come,” he said, “it is wiser.”
She preceded him down the stairs, not hurrying, moving almost
reluctantly. He had dominated her for the moment, and his domination was
so sweet that it hurt.
They reached the orchard, with its mystery of moonlight and of shadows.
The grass was heavy with dew, and the trunks of the old trees looked
black as ebony.
“Why did you lie to me?” she said suddenly.
“I do not understand you.”
“You said you were afraid. You are not afraid.”
“I was not afraid for myself,” said Tod.
She looked at him sharply in the moonlight.
“Sometimes one does not care.”
And then she tried to smother the half-confessed cry of pain in those
words.
“I mean—that it is just chance, monsieur.”
But Tod’s face had the tense, white listening look of the soldier, of a
man grown cunning in the hell’s music of the war. They were close to the
orchard ditch, and Tod pulled the girl into it with a fierceness that
was too elemental to wait for words.
“Down, down on your face!”
It was like the plunge and crash of some meteorite. The ground shook;
the whole orchard was a sudden yellow glare; fragments of metal, sods,
shreds of splintered wood went seething through the apple bough and
through the hedge behind them. One heavy bit of steel whined low over
Tod’s head, and fell with a “phut” into the bank behind him.
He found himself holding Claire’s hand. She was trembling, and bending
low upon her knees.
“Thank God,” said Tod, lifting his face into the moonlight.
She drew her breath in deeply, and then suddenly withdrew her hand.
“I’m sorry if I was rough,” Tod said to her.
“It was necessary, monsieur. I understand now.”
“Perhaps you understand,” he said, “why I was afraid? Rather than
anything should happen to you——”
She stood up and astonished him with a sudden outburst of gaiety. Tod
had seen men laugh in a hysterical sort of way when they had escaped
some great danger, but the girl’s soft laughter was far more elusive and
subtle. It sounded very strange to him in that solemn orchard with the
German plane still droning overhead.
“And grandpère is still asleep. I am sure of it. We always say that he
will not hear the trumpet of the Angel Gabriel. I wish to see the great
hole in the ground.”
She went forward lightly between the orchard trees, a quick and graceful
little figure, sometimes in the moonlight, sometimes in the shadow. To
Tod she had become a tantalising and baffling creature, surprising him
with her silence or her laughter, her flashes of frankness or an
aloofness that left him puzzled and alone.
“Here, monsieur! Oh, the poor earth! the poor tree!”
He found her standing on the edge of a black pit, with all the wet grass
about her covered with sods and dirt. An old pear tree, splintered at
the base, had toppled sideways, and lay with its boughs trailing in the
crater like a dead thing with spread arms and tumbled hair. Claire was
standing like a child and looking down into the pit, a sudden solemnity
upon her and pity in her eyes.
“It was such a good tree,” she said, “and bore such sweet fruit.”
Tod looked at her with a great longing.
“Better the tree than you.”
She did not seem to hear him.
“André was so fond of this tree. We used to have a swing on that big
bough. And Uncle will be grieved. He loves all trees.”
Tod said nothing. He had seen so many dead men and so many dead trees.
They heard voices in the meadow beyond the orchard, the voices of women
and children and old men. Josephine’s voice was audible above all the
others.
“It fell in our orchard, I am sure. Oh, mon Dieu! supposing the house
had been struck!”
Claire turned suddenly and went in the direction of the voices.
“Josephine, ici, ici. We are safe. The old yellow pear tree has been
broken.”
They came pouring into the orchard with all the eagerness and the
sangfroid of the French, those wonderful peasants whom Tod had learnt to
respect from the bottom of his heart. Josephine ran and kissed Claire.
“Where is mon père?”
“Asleep, I believe.”
There was a chorus of laughter, exclamations. They gathered round the
black hole and the broken tree, observing everything with the simplicity
of children, immensely interested, sympathetic. A boy slid down into the
crater and began grubbing with his hands for souvenirs.
Tod had placed himself close to Claire.
“It is good luck,” he said; “you will never be so near to a bomb again.”
She smiled queerly, her two hands folded below her throat, her eyes
looking up at the moon. And then she slipped away, withdrawing herself
with an unobtrusive gentleness, and going to Josephine, who was looking
at the tree.
Something held Tod back. He did not follow her, for that little act of
hers had affected him profoundly. It was so symbolical, so delicate, yet
so strong.
Later they gathered in the kitchen, where old Lorellard had been found
quietly smoking his pipe.
“It is all over, is it?” he said.
“Mon père, the yellow pear tree is broken.”
“Well, it died for France,” quoth old Lorellard with a wink and a cock
of his chin.
Josephine, a flushed and tumultuous Josephine, had run to the cellar for
a bottle of red wine.
“It is a celebration, a great deliverance,” she said, “for the whole
family and Monsieur le Colonel.”
Tod bowed to her.
“France has taught me many things, mademoiselle, the great things that
matter.”
They drank the red wine, all save Claire, who refused to touch it, and
the old people went to bed. Tod and the two girls sat talking for half
an hour with the moonlight shining in upon the floor and glinting on the
buckles of Claire’s shoes. Her face was in the shadow, Josephine’s in
the light.
“Such danger is but child’s play to monsieur,” said the dark girl.
Tod seemed to be thinking.
“There are things that hurt one more than wounds,” he said.
And he heard Claire sigh.
Josephine lit the candles.
“It is safe now.”
She gave one to Tod and went up the stairs, Claire following her. Tod
came last. Josephine’s room was at the top of the stairs, but Claire and
Tod had to cross the big landing that was larger than any of the rooms.
Their two doors were opposite each other.
“Good night, Mademoiselle Claire,” said Tod, looking back.
And for one moment she turned her head and gave him the most wonderful
look in all the world, a shine of the eyes, a soft and splendid
tenderness, a flash of exaltation touched with despair.
Tod went into his room, walked up and down for half a minute, and then
knelt at the open window.
“God, bless her always and always,” he said, “and make me strong.”