One June morning Tod walked out of his hotel in Abbeville and took the
train for Eu. He had reached Abbeville the evening before, and had spent
an hour wandering round the familiar old town that had been so savagely
bombed during his month at Myonville. He was very much the young English
civilian, brown lounge suit, brown boots, fawn-coloured velour hat,
wash-leather gloves. His old military cane was the only soldierly thing
left to him, save, of course, all that soldierliness that he carried in
his heart and head. It was not the Tod Western of Shaston thrown back
into civilian clothes, but a man who had the _bel air_ and the eyes of a
master.
Tod sat in the train and watched the country go by. He was excited, a
little afraid, the boy lover utterly absorbed in the life of the moment.
No one expected him in Myonville, nor did he know what he would find
there, how they would welcome him, whether the day of days would not end
in some tragic anticlimax.
“Claire—why Claire married Jules Loubet six months ago.”
Tod tried to keep such words as these constantly in his ears.
He tested his French by chatting to an old farmer opposite him.
“Monsieur was in the war.”
Yes, Tod was in the war. He found his French flowing freely, but he kept
an eye on the landscape, and watched for the green valley and the cliff
of trees that meant Myonville and romance.
The great flat fields, the poplars, the straight roads, the little
white-walled houses stirred him most profoundly. He was back in France,
France that was so unforgettable, so full of poignant memories; and then
he sighted that old sugar factory among the beeches on the road to
Abbeville. Myonville was less than a mile away, and Tod began to fidget.
The train ran into Myonville through fields of wheat, beetroot and
crimson clover. There was the familiar level-crossing, with the red
brick Café de la Gare, and its skittle alley in the garden. The church
spire seemed to hold up a beckoning finger above the elms and beeches.
The train stopped. Tod raised his hat to the old Frenchman and got out.
Myonville had always been a quiet station, and it was so quiet on that
June morning that Tod felt the one notorious person on earth, a stranger
to be stared at. The station-master took the tickets, and Tod wished him
good morning. He had once had a slight altercation with the
station-master.
“Bonjour, monsieur.”
He gave Tod a surprised look and then re-examined Tod’s ticket.
“You don’t remember me,” said Tod.
“No, monsieur. The English are so much alike.”
It was an unpromising prelude.
Tod walked up the dusty road from the station to the little Place de
l’Eglise. Myonville looked exactly the same, only there were no English
soldiers in it. Women were chatting under the shade of the limes. Tod
saw the old curé toddling across the cobbles to the church, the
identical, rather snuffy and grey-chinned old gentleman. The same brown
dog was lying in the same doorway. The fat woman at the baker’s shop had
her hair in curling pins, and was arguing as usual, her hands on her
hips. From the doorway of the Papillon d’Or the young demoiselle who
used much “Fleur de Trèfle” and was Parisian in her atmosphere, looked
out questioningly at Tod with eyes that were black and big and alluring.
She had troubled the hearts of one or two of Tod’s subalterns. Tod
raised his hat to her and blushed.
“Tiens, it is Monsieur le Colonel!”
He passed on and found himself in that quiet and familiar street running
softly westwards in the sunlight towards the high shade of an avenue of
beeches. And suddenly Tod was afraid, for so much hung on the happenings
of the next few minutes. All the dreams of a year were walking with him
down that sunlit village street, and for a moment Tod’s courage turned
to water. Supposing she had left the place, or was married, or his
coming should prove of no meaning to Claire Vignard?
The street curved slightly, so that the Café de la Paix and the
schoolhouse next to it were hidden from Tod until he reached the big
pond where the peasants watered their horses. He noticed that there were
no children to be seen. It was the hour for them to be at school.
Walking very fast Tod rounded the curve, and saw the schoolhouse with
its iron railings and queer little belfry, and next to it the house of
the Lorellards all brown in the sunshine, just as he had seen it when he
had walked for the first time to his billet.
Both the sidewalk and the roadway were deserted, save for a figure in
light blue standing at its ease outside the Café de la Paix. This French
soldier seemed to belong there. Bareheaded, a pipe in his mouth, and his
hands in his pockets, he had the air of a man in possession, a man
standing on his own doorstep and surveying the world.
“Damn that chap!” said Tod.
He was absurdly interested in the figure of the Frenchman, absurdly
afraid of it. Did the man belong to that particular house, or was he a
mere chance loafer? He was standing squarely in front of the café
doorway, and he stared hard at Tod as the Englishman came up, nor did he
offer to move.
It was obvious that the Frenchman did belong to the house of the
Lorellards, and his thick-set blue figure closed the doorway.
“Bonjour, monsieur.”
Tod came to a standstill. The Frenchman looked surprised. He was young
and rather sallow, the laconic and inexpansive type of peasant.
He took his pipe out of his mouth, but he did not move from the
doorstep.
Tod tried a sniper’s venture.
“It is Monsieur André Lorellard—perhaps?”
The Frenchman looked still more surprised.
“That is so, monsieur.”
And Tod laughed.
“We never met, Monsieur André. Your mother and your father were so very
kind to me a year ago. You may have heard them speak of me, Colonel Tod
Western.”
The French boy’s impassive face changed instantly. He stood aside; he
put out a hand, and his rather hard blue eyes became laughing and
friendly.
“Monsieur—but what a surprise! I have heard of you so often.”
Tod gave André’s hand an almost savage grip.
“We were friends before we met. You are on leave?”
“I am home to be married, monsieur.”
“Felicitations,” said Tod, seriously scared.
“Perhaps you may have met my fiancée, monsieur?”
“It is possible.”
“Mademoiselle Yvonne Frangonard, of the Petite Folie Farm.”
Tod could have kissed Master André. That gentleman’s figure had become
one of cloudless blue.
“Yes, I think I remember Mademoiselle Frangonard. Are your parents at
home, André? I have come to see them.”
André smiled queerly at Tod. Then he went into the café and shouted
excitedly.
“Josephine! Josephine! Un ami!”
He turned again and laughed in a brotherly way at Tod.
“Wait, monsieur. Such a surprise for them all! They will be so
delighted!”
Josephine came into the long room, polishing a glass with a cloth. She
looked at André and then at Tod, seemed lost for a moment, and then
exclaimed as only a Frenchwoman can exclaim:
“Monsieur Tod!”
She came forward and kissed him. André had disappeared.
Tod sat on one of the deal tables, left foot swinging, smiling shyly at
Josephine.
“Yes, I have come back. I said I might come back, you know. And how are
Monsieur and Madame?”
“Very well, monsieur,” said Josephine, sitting on the table opposite
him.
“And you?”
She laughed.
“It is for monsieur to say.”
“Always charming—and my friend?”
“Perhaps.”
Josephine was waiting the question that mattered, the question that was
burning there in Tod’s eyes.
“And Claire?”
Josephine picked up her apron and examined a frayed edge.
“She is—at the school, monsieur.”
“And well?”
“And well.”
“And?”
“She is still Claire Vignard,” said Josephine, dropping her apron and
smoothing it with her hands.
Tod got off the table with a flushed and intense face.
“Josephine, I’m free; I’m free. Do you understand?”
She raised her dark eyes to his.
“Monsieur has——?”
“It was not my fault,” he said quickly. “I waited till it was all over
before coming here. I have all the necessary papers to prove——”
“Do you think I do not believe you?” she asked, almost sharply; “of
course I believe you. Monsieur does not tell lies.”
She glanced over his shoulder at the clock.
“Claire will be here in ten minutes.”
Tod was also looking at the clock.
“Do you think that I have anything of a chance, Josephine?”
The French girl smiled.
“It is a good thing, monsieur, that Claire is not religieuse. It will
not matter.”
Tod pondered those words, and Josephine slipped from off her table.
“I will go to the schoolhouse and meet Claire,” she said, “if monsieur
will wait in the kitchen.”
“Could I see her——?”
“No one will come into the kitchen for an hour. I will tell her there is
a friend—just a friend.”
Tod went and kissed Josephine.
“I can hardly believe it all,” he said.
He sat in the Lorellards’ kitchen, in the place that had always been
his, between the stove and the window. Claire’s wooden workbox stood as
usual on the window-sill, and Tod lifted the lid and looked at all its
neatness with the eyes of a lover. He remembered the way she had pricked
her finger on the morning when he told her that the battalion was
leaving Myonville. Through the window he could see the neat red bricks
of the yard, a washing tub tilted to dry against the wall of the
wash-house, the green tops of the orchard trees.
Suddenly Tod stood up. She had come in by the orchard gate and was
crossing the yard, the Claire of a year ago, in her daintily shabby
black dress, and her hair like a pale brown wreath touched with
sunlight. It was the same calm, frank-faced Claire, with her mouth and
her grey eyes, more serious, perhaps a little sad. She looked quite
innocent and unsuspecting, just a woman who had her work to do, a woman
who had come to speak with some casual friend.
A pair of clean shoes were standing against the wall. Claire picked them
up, entered the kitchen, and saw Tod.
She dropped the shoes on a chair, and stood looking at him with round
grey eyes.
“Monsieur—you!”
And Tod, the man, did not move, for he saw something that his dream had
never shown him. Claire was afraid.