Tod knew next morning that the battalion was to leave Myonville within
twenty-four hours. A dispatch-rider brought him an early morning order
from brigade headquarters, and Tod’s orderly-room in Widow Dubois’ house
near the church began to function with great vigour. Tod was there
before breakfast, with both hands deep in a basketful of official
detail. A lorry arrived for the quartermaster and thundered off to
Abbeville to draw ordnance stores. The transport officer had horses to
collect. The battalion was to parade at nine, in battle order, for the
C.O.’s inspection.
Tod rushed his breakfast and was back in the orderly-room. He was grim,
brisk, a little feverish, conscious of a little woman with grey eyes
waiting for him beyond all that mass of mechanical detail, the one thing
in life that mattered. The war mattered, but it had become a habit, and
Myonville had broken the habit. The work irritated him, though it had to
be gone through with, and Tod pushed his way through as though he were
forcing his way through a wood.
Tod inspected the battalion, went round all the billets, spent another
hour in the orderly-room with his adjutant and felt himself nearer
Claire.
“We move at nine, James. It’s all quite simple. We are due at the
starting-point at nine-fifteen. Seymour can ride on for billets at St.
Riquier. We have an hour’s break on the road.”
“I’ll see to everything, sir.”
“I think I’ll go round and get some of my things together,” said Tod.
Then the office orderly rushed in.
“The general, sir, the Divisional general.”
“Damn him!” said Tod under his breath.
It took another hour to get rid of the Divisional general. Tod had a
reputation, and the great man was critical and inquisitive. He told Tod
that his horses were dirty, and then asked him to dinner.
“I’m awfully sorry, sir,” said Tod, “but I have arranged to spend my
last evening with some friends here.”
The general was sportive and no fool.
“That’s all right, Western; I quite understand.”
Tod saluted him with great affection and watched him ride round the
corner, and then started for his billet. The orderly-room sergeant
pursued Tod.
“Will you sign these letters, sir?”
“Get Captain James to do it, Murray. I don’t want to see any more of
these damned things to-day.”
Claire Vignard had just come in from the school. She was sitting sewing
by the kitchen window, with the familiar work-basket on the window-sill
beside her. She happened to be alone, for Josephine was busy in the
shop, and the old Lorellards were down in the fields.
She heard the door of the café open, and a man’s footsteps crossing the
outer room. It was Tod; she knew that quick step of his so well, and the
quiet way he had of closing the door.
“Back from school, mademoiselle.”
He came into the kitchen, and put his cap and stick on the table. She
could see that he was much moved, and pretending to be casual; but he
was flushed, and his eyes were restless. He walked to the window and
stood looking at the orchard, a tense figure, head drawn back, eyes at
gaze.
Suddenly he turned to her.
“Always working,” he said.
She did not raise her head.
“Yes, it is good to work.”
“I shall always think of you like that,” he said, “sitting by the window
sewing. We go to-morrow.”
“To another village, Monsieur Tod?”
Her voice was very steady.
“No, to the front. I’m glad it’s the front.”
He turned again to the window, heart-sick, but very determined.
Claire had gone white, and her eyes seemed blind for the moment. She
kept her head bowed and went on with her work.
“Ssst!”
Tod turned sharply.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, monsieur.”
He saw a drop of blood, very red in the sunlight, showing on the tip of
one of her fingers, but her hands moved steadily at their work, and
presently a red stain showed on the white linen.
Tod never forgot that little drop of blood on Claire’s finger. It
remained a vivid memory through the coming months.
“I am sorry it is the trenches,” she said, after that short silence.
“Where else could a soldier go?” he answered. “I am not afraid of the
trenches.”
“I cannot think of you as being afraid, monsieur. I can only wish you
bon chance.”
Tod was looking at the orchard trees, and in their greenness he saw
Myonville, the spring, all the beauty of that quiet month, and
perhaps—the heart of Claire Vignard.
“I have been very happy here,” he said slowly, almost like a man
praying; “it has taught me so much. I don’t know whether I shall ever
come back again; I should like to come back, some day. You have all been
so good to me.”
Claire’s head had dropped a little lower.
“It has been a pleasure to—us, monsieur.”
And Tod smiled, a far-away, wondering smile.
“Life is queer, isn’t it? Well, one does not forget. It’s for France and
you, anyway, if anything happens, I shan’t regret it.”
She gave him a brave flash of her grey eyes.
“I shall not forget, monsieur. It will be a good memory.”
“God bless you, ma petite,” said Tod, and went blundering up the steep
stairs to his room with the excuse that he had to look through his kit.
But he sat on the bed and stared at the wall.
“It’s all over,” he said to himself; “she’s—she’s——”
He could not say what Claire was, for his thoughts were a mere fumbling
tenderness; but Claire was staring at the little red mark on the white
linen, and wondering whether he knew.
Lieut.-Colonel Western spent his last evening with the Lorellards. They
took their chairs and a little table into the orchard, also five glasses
and a bottle of red wine. It was a sad evening, dying away into the soft
June dusk, and Tod and Josephine were the talkers. Old Lorellard puffed
at his pipe and appeared depressed; madame had been working in the sun
and was tired; Claire’s eyes were watching Tod as though she wished to
burn the memory of him into her mind. Tod was calm, very gay, smiling in
the face of his own sadness.
“I shall be fighting for all of you,” he said; “for madame and monsieur
and the little farm, for Mademoiselle Josephine and the shop, for
Mademoiselle Claire and the children.”
“I am not a religious man, monsieur,” said old Lorellard, “but I shall
think of you when I use my scythe and my hoe.”
“That’s as good as a prayer, my friend.”
“Good men do not need praying for,” said Claire Vignard suddenly; “it is
enough for us to remember them.”
“Thank you, mademoiselle,” said Tod.
The battalion was to move at nine, and Tod’s servant had orders to call
him at six, but Tod needed no calling. He could not sleep. He was
thinking of Claire, thinking of her all the night, and how absurd it
seemed that he might never see her again. He could not bring himself to
realise it, though the man in him knew that it was true. Old memories of
Spaniards Row came back to Tod. All that he suffered that night, the
silence and the helpless yearning of it made him think of the night when
his mother died. She had slipped away from him into the darkness, never
to return—but Tod’s mother had died; Claire was a living Claire.
And so wonderfully alive, so wholesome, so comely and desirable, such a
soft sweet thing to be embraced, that Tod could hardly believe that he
was losing her. It seemed so wrong, so damnably and ridiculously wrong,
almost as monstrous as the death of his mother had seemed to Tod—the
child.
When the dawn came he left that most comfortable of French beds in which
he had been unable to sleep, washed himself, put on his best tunic and
riding-breeches and his new field-boots, and went softly on to the
broad, white-floored landing. The house seemed silent and asleep, and
Tod slipped silently down the stairs, yet not so silently that he passed
unheard by someone else who had been unable to sleep. Claire, standing
at her window in her nightdress, saw Tod walk out towards the orchard.
He paused by the gate to light his pipe.
“Mon pauvre,” she said to herself, “for you too the dawn is a sad one
after a night of sadness. Will you call your pipe by my name, I wonder,
as French boys do? Why did you come to us—ah!—why did you come?”
She watched Tod disappear into the orchard, and then slipped back into
bed.
“I will not see him again,” she said. “I do not think that I could bear
it. I shall stay here till he has gone.”
Tod walked up and down the orchard for an hour. Perhaps—lover-like—he
had hopes of seeing Claire again and of speaking a few last words to
her, words that would remain after he had left, but it was not Claire
who came to him, but Josephine on her way to the woodstack to bring in
an armful of dry wood.
“Bonjour, monsieur. You are very early.”
Her dark eyes looked straight at Tod.
“I could not sleep,” he said, with brotherly frankness.
She paused by him, a woman who understood all that had happened to these
two people, but whose thoughts were with Claire.
“You have been too happy in Myonville, Monsieur Tod.”
“Happy!”
He felt that Josephine understood.
“But not now.”
“Mon ami,” she said, “you will go to your home when the war is over, and
you will forget.”
“I shall have no home,” he answered, “and I shall never forget. Some
day—perhaps——”
She looked at him pityingly with her dark eyes.
“It is serious with you; I know. It is very hard.”
Tod thought a moment.
“Josephine—I wonder if I might write to her?”
She answered him at once and very firmly.
“No, monsieur. It would not be fair.”
“Not even once?”
“If wounds are kept open——”
Tod looked her straight in the face.
“You are right, absolutely right,” he said, “it would not be fair.”
And Josephine kissed him.
“Claire will understand,” she said.