The next morning early Jean de Réchamp came to my room. I was struck
at once by the change in him: he had lost his first glow, and seemed
nervous and hesitating. I knew what he had come for: to ask me to
postpone our departure for another twenty-four hours. By rights we
should have been off that morning; but there had been a sharp brush a
few kilometres away, and a couple of poor devils had been brought to
the château whom it would have been death to carry farther that day and
criminal not to hurry to a base hospital the next morning. “We’ve simply
_got_ to stay till to-morrow: you’re in luck,” I said laughing.
He laughed back, but with a frown that made me feel I had been a brute
to speak in that way of a respite due to such a cause.
“The men will pull through, you know--trust Mlle. Malo for that!” I
said.
His frown did not lift. He went to the window and drummed on the pane.
“Do you see that breach in the wall, down there behind the trees?
It’s the only scratch the place has got. And think of Lennont! It’s
incredible--simply incredible!”
“But it’s like that everywhere, isn’t it? Everything depends on the
officer in command.”
“Yes: that’s it, I suppose. I haven’t had time to get a consecutive
account of what happened: they’re all too excited. Mlle. Malo is the
only person who can tell me exactly how things went.” He swung about on
me. “Look here, it sounds absurd, what I’m asking; but try to get me an
hour alone with her, will you?”
I stared at the request, and he went on, still half-laughing: “You
see, they all hang on me; my father and mother, Simone, the curé, the
servants. The whole village is coming up presently: they want to stuff
their eyes full of me. It’s natural enough, after living here all these
long months cut off from everything. But the result is I haven’t said
two words to her yet.”
“Well, you shall,” I declared; and with an easier smile he turned to
hurry down to a mass of thanksgiving which the curé was to celebrate
in the private chapel. “My parents wanted it,” he explained; “and after
that the whole village will be upon us. But later--”
“Later I’ll effect a diversion; I swear I will,” I assured him.
*****
By daylight, decidedly, Mlle. Malo was less handsome than in the
evening. It was my first thought as she came toward me, that afternoon,
under the limes. Jean was still indoors, with his people, receiving
the village; I rather wondered she hadn’t stayed there with him.
Theoretically, her place was at his side; but I knew she was a young
woman who didn’t live by rule, and she had already struck me as having a
distaste for superfluous expenditures of feeling.
Yes, she was less effective by day. She looked older for one thing; her
face was pinched, and a little sallow and for the first time I noticed
that her cheek-bones were too high. Her eyes, too, had lost their velvet
depth: fine eyes still, but not unfathomable. But the smile with
which she greeted me was charming: it ran over her tired face like a
lamp-lighter kindling flames as he runs.
“I was looking for you,” she said. “Shall we have a little talk? The
reception is sure to last another hour: every one of the villagers is
going to tell just what happened to him or her when the Germans came.”
“And you’ve run away from the ceremony?”
“I’m a trifle tired of hearing the same adventures retold,” she said,
still smiling.
“But I thought there _were_ no adventures--that that was the wonder of
it?”
She shrugged. “It makes their stories a little dull, at any rate; we’ve
not a hero or a martyr to show.” She had strolled farther from the house
as we talked, leading me in the direction of a bare horse-chestnut walk
that led toward the park.
“Of course Jean’s got to listen to it all, poor boy; but I needn’t,” she
explained.
I didn’t know exactly what to answer and we walked on a little way in
silence; then she said: “If you’d carried him off this morning he would
have escaped all this fuss.” After a pause she added slowly: “On the
whole, it might have been as well.”
“To carry him off?”
“Yes.” She stopped and looked at me. “I wish you _would_.”
“Would?--Now?”
“Yes, now: as soon as you can. He’s really not strong yet--he’s drawn
and nervous.” (“So are you,” I thought.) “And the excitement is greater
than you can perhaps imagine--”