The Rough Road
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“An understanding? All right,” said he.
“I don’t want you to go away and think ill of me – that I am one of those women —les affranchies I think they call them – who think themselves above social laws. I am not. I am bourgeoise to my finger-tips, and I reverence all the old maxims and prejudices in which I was born. But conditions are different. It is just like the priests who have been called into the ranks. To look at them from the outside, you would never dream they were priests – but their hearts and their souls are untouched.”
She was so earnest, in her pathetic youthfulness, to put herself right with him, so unlike the English girls of his acquaintance, who would have taken this chance companionship as a matter of course, that his face lost the smile and became grave, and he met her sad eyes.
“That was very bravely said, Jeanne. To me you will be always the most wonderful woman I have ever known.”
“What caused you to speak to me the first day?” she asked, after a pause.
“I explained to you – to apologize for staring rudely into your house.”
“It was not because you said to yourself, ‘Here is a pretty girl looking at me. I’ll go and talk to her’?”
Doggie threw his leg over the corner of the table and stood on indignant feet.
“Jeanne! How could you – ?” he cried.
She leaned back, her open palms on the table. The rare light came into her eyes.
“That’s what I wanted to know. Now we understand each other, Monsieur Trevor.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me Monsieur Trevor,” said he.
“What else can I call you? I know no other name.”
Now he had in his pocket a letter from Peggy, received that morning, beginning “My dearest Marmaduke.” Peggy seemed far away, and the name still farther. He was deliberating whether he should say “Appelez-moi James” or “Appelez-moi Jacques,” and inclining to the latter as being more picturesque and intimate, when she went on:
“Tenez, what is it your comrades call you? ‘Doggie’?”
“Say that again.”
“Dog-gie.”
He had never dreamed that the hated appellation could sound so adorable. Well – no one except his officers called him by any other name, and it came with a visible charm from her lips. It brought about the most fascinating flash of the tips of her white teeth. He laughed.
“A la guerre comme à la guerre. If you call me that, you belong to the regiment. And I promise you, it is a fine regiment.”
“Eh bien, Monsieur Dog-gie – ”
“There’s no monsieur about it,” he declared, very happily. “Tommies are not messieurs.”
“I know one who is,” said Jeanne.
So they talked in a young and foolish way, and Jeanne for a while forgot the tragedies that had gone and the tragedies that might come; and Doggie forgot both the peacock and ivory room and the fetid hole into which he would have to creep when the night’s march was over. They talked of simple things. Of Toinette, who had been with Aunt Morin ever since she could remember.
“You have won her heart with your snuff.”
“She has won mine with her discretion.”
“Oh-h!” said Jeanne, shocked.
And so on and so forth, as they sat side by side on the kitchen table, swinging their feet. After a while they drifted to graver questions.
“What will happen to you, Jeanne, if your aunt dies?”
“Mon Dieu!” said Jeanne —
“But you will inherit the property, and the business?”
By no means. Aunt Morin had still a son, who was already very old. He must be forty-six. He had expatriated himself many years ago and was in Madagascar. The son who was killed was her Benjamin, the child of her old age. But all her little fortune would go to the colonial Gaspard, whom Jeanne had never seen.
But the Farm of La Folette?
“It has been taken and retaken by Germans and French and English, mon pauvre ami, until there is no farm left. You ought to understand that.”
It was a thing that Doggie most perfectly understood: a patch of hideous wilderness, of poisoned, shell-scarred, ditch-defiled, barren, loathsome earth.
And her other relations? Only an uncle, her father’s youngest brother, a curé in Douai in enemy occupation. She had not heard of him since the flight from Cambrai.
“But what is going to become of you?”
“So long as one keeps a brave heart what, does it matter? I am strong. I have a good enough education. I can earn my living. Oh, don’t make any mistake. I have no pity for myself. Those who waste efforts in pitying themselves are not of the stuff to make France victorious.”
“I am afraid I have done a lot of self-pitying, Jeanne.”
“Don’t do it any more,” she said gently.
“I won’t,” said he.
“If you keep to the soul you have gained, you can’t,” said Jeanne.
”Toujours la sagesse.”
“You are laughing at me.”
“God forbid,” said Doggie.
Phineas and Mo came strolling towards the kitchen door.
“My two friends, to pay their visit of adieu,” said he.
Jeanne slid from the table and welcomed the newcomers in her calm, dignified way. Once more Doggie found himself regarding her as his senior in age and wisdom and conduct of life. The pathetic girlishness which she had revealed to him had gone. The age-investing ghosts had returned.
Mo grinned, interjected a British Army French word now and then, and manifested delight when Jeanne understood. Phineas talked laboriously, endeavouring to expound his responsibility for Doggie’s welfare. He had been his tutor. He used the word “tuteur.”
“That’s a guardian, you silly ass,” cried Doggie. “He means ‘instituteur.’ Go on. Or, rather, don’t go on. The lady isn’t interested.”
“Mais si,” said Jeanne, catching at the last English word. “It interests me greatly.”
“Merci, mademoiselle,” said Phineas grandly. “I only wish to explain to you that while I live you need have no fear for Doggie. I will protect him with my body from shells and promise to bring him safe back to you. And so will Monsieur Shendish.”
“What’s that?” asked Mo.
Phineas translated.
“Oui, oui, oui!” said Mo, nodding vigorously.
A spot of colour burned on Jeanne’s pale cheek, and Doggie grew red under his tanned skin. He cursed Phineas below his breath, and exchanged a significant glance with Mo. Jeanne said, in her even voice:
“I hope all the Three Musketeers will come back safe.”
Mo extended a grimy hand. “Well, good-bye, miss! McPhail here and I must be going.”
She shook hands with both, wishing them bonne chance, and they strolled away. Doggie lingered.
“You mustn’t mind what McPhail says. He’s only an old imbecile.”
“You have two comrades who love you. That is the principal thing.”
“I think they do, each in his way. As for Mo – ”
“Mo?” She laughed. “He is delicious.”
“Well – ” said he reluctantly, after a pause, “good-bye, Jeanne.”
“Au revoir– Dog-gie.”
“If I shouldn’t come back – I mean if we were billeted somewhere else – I should like to write to you.”
“Well – Mademoiselle Bossière, chez Madame Morin, Frélus. That is the address.”
“And will you write too?”
Without waiting for a reply, he scribbled what was necessary on a sheet torn from a notebook and gave it to her. Their hands met.
“Au revoir, Jeanne.”
“Au revoir, Dog-gie. But I shall see you again to-night.”
“Where?”
“It is my secret. Bonne chance.”
She smiled and turned to leave the kitchen. Doggie clattered into the yard.
“Been doin’ a fine bit o’ coartin’, Doggie,” said Private Appleyard from Taunton, who was sitting on a box near by and writing a letter on his knees.
“Not so much of your courting, Spud,” replied Doggie cheerfully. “Who are you writing to? Your best girl?”
“I be writin’ to my own lawful mizzus,” replied Spud Appleyard.
“Then give her my love. Doggie Trevor’s love,” said Doggie, and marched away through the groups of men.
At the entrance to the barn he fell in with Phineas and Mo.
“Laddie,” said the former, “although I meant it at the time as a testimony of my affection, I’ve been thinking that what I said to the young leddy may not have been over-tactful.”
“It was taking it too much for granted,” explained Mo, “that you and her were sort of keeping company.”
“You’re a pair of idiots,” said Doggie, sitting down between them, and taking out his pink packet of Caporal. “Have a cigarette?”
“Not if I wos dying of – Look ’ere,” said Mo, with the light on his face of the earnest seeker after Truth. “If a chap ain’t got no food, he’s dying of ’unger. If he ain’t got no drink, he’s dying of thirst. What the ’ell is he dying of if he ain’t got no tobakker?”
“Army Service Corps,” said Phineas, pulling out his pipe.
It was dark when A Company marched away. Doggie had seen nothing more of Jeanne. He was just a little disappointed; for she had promised. He could not associate her with light words. Yet perhaps she had kept her promise. She had said “Je vous verrai.” She had not undertaken to exhibit herself to him. He derived comfort from the thought. There was, indeed, something delicate and subtle and enchanting in the notion. As on the previous day, the fine weather had changed with the night and a fine rain was falling. Doggie, an indistinguishable pack-laden ant in the middle of the four-abreast ribbon of similar pack-laden ants, tramped on in silence, thinking his own thoughts. A regiment going back to the trenches in the night is, from the point of view of the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, a very lugubrious procession. The sight of it would have hurt an old-time poet. An experienced regiment has no lovely illusions. It knows what it is going to, and the knowledge makes it serious. It would much rather be in bed or on snug straw than plodding through the rain to four days and nights of eternal mud and stinking high-explosive shell. It sets its teeth and is a very stern, silent, ugly conglomeration of men.
“ – (the adjective) night,” growled Doggie’s right-hand neighbour.
“ – (the adjective)” Doggie responded mechanically.
But to Doggie it was less “ – ” (adjective as before) than usual. Jeanne’s denunciation of self-pity had struck deep. Compared with her calamities, half of which would have been the stock-in-trade of a Greek dramatist wherewith to wring tears from mankind for a couple of thousand years, what were his own piffling grievances? As for the “ – ” night, instead of a drizzle he would have welcomed a waterspout. Something that really mattered… Let the heavens or the Hun rain molten lead. Something that would put him on an equality with Jeanne… Jeanne, with her dark haunting eyes and mobile lips, and her slim young figure and her splendid courage. A girl apart from the girls he had known, apart from the women he had known, the women whom he had imagined – and he had not imagined many – his training had atrophied such imaginings of youth. Jeanne. Again her name conjured up visions of the Great Jeanne of Domrémy. If only he could have seen her once again!
At the north end of the village the road took a sharp twist, skirting a bit of rising ground. There was just a glimmer of a warning light which streamed athwart the turning ribbon of laden ants. And as Doggie wheeled through the dim ray he heard a voice that rang out clear:
“Bonne chance!”
He looked up swiftly. Caught the shadow of a shadow. But it was enough. It was Jeanne. She had kept her promise. The men responded incoherently, waving their hands, and Doggie’s shout of “Merci!” was lost. But though he knew, with a wonderful throbbing knowledge, that Jeanne’s cry was meant for him alone, he was thrilled by his comrades’ instant response to Jeanne’s voice. Not a man but he knew that it was Jeanne. But no matter. The company paid homage to Jeanne. Jeanne who had come out in the rain and the wind and the dark, and had waited, waited, to redeem her promise. “C’est mon secret.”
He ploughed on. Left, right! Thud, thud! Left, right! Jeanne, Jeanne!
CHAPTER XV
In the village of Frélus life went on as before. The same men, though a different regiment, filled its streets and its houses; for by what signs could the inhabitants distinguish one horde of English infantrymen from another? Once a Highland battalion had been billeted on them, and for the first day or so they derived some excitement from the novelty of the costume; the historic Franco-Scottish tradition still lingered, and they welcomed the old allies of France with especial kindliness; but they found that the habits and customs of the men in kilts were identical, in their French eyes, with those of the men in trousers. It is true the Scotch had bagpipes. The village turned out to listen to them in whole-eyed and whole-eared wonder. And the memory of the skirling music remained indelible. Otherwise there was little difference. And when a Midland regiment succeeded a South Coast regiment, where was the difference at all? They might be the same men.
Jeanne, standing by the kitchen door, watching the familiar scene in the courtyard, could scarcely believe there had been a change. Now and again she caught herself wondering why she could not pick out any one of her Three Musketeers. There were two or three soldiers, as usual, helping Toinette with her crocks at the well. There she was, herself, moving among them, as courteously treated as though she were a princess. Perhaps these men, whom she heard had come from manufacturing centres, were a trifle rougher in their manners than her late guests; but the intention of civility and rude chivalry was no less sincere. They came and asked for odds and ends very politely. To all intents and purposes they were the same set of men. Why was not Doggie among them? It seemed very strange.
After a while she made some sort of an acquaintance with a sergeant who had a few words of French and appeared anxious to improve his knowledge of the language. He explained that he had been a teacher in what corresponded to the French Ecoles Normales. He came from Birmingham, which he gave her to understand was a glorified Lille. She found him very earnest, very self-centred in his worship of efficiency. As he had striven for his class of boys, so now was he striving for his platoon of men. In a dogmatic way he expounded to her ideals severely practical. In their few casual conversations he interested her. The English, from the first terrible day of their association with her, had commanded her deep admiration. But until lately – in the most recent past – her sex, her national aloofness and her ignorance of English, had restrained her from familiar talk with the British Army. But now she keenly desired to understand this strange, imperturbable, kindly race. She put many questions to the sergeant – always at the kitchen door, in full view of the courtyard, for she never thought of admitting him into the house – and his answers, even when he managed to make himself intelligible, puzzled her exceedingly. One of his remarks led her to ask for what he was fighting, beyond his apparently fixed idea of the efficiency of the men under his control. What was the spiritual idea at the back of him?
“The democratization of the world and the universal brotherhood of mankind.”
“When the British Lion shall lie down with the German Lamb?”
He flashed a suspicious glance. Strenuous schoolmasters in primary schools have little time for the cultivation of a sense of humour.
“Something of the sort must be the ultimate result of the war.”
“But in the meantime you have got to change the German wolf into the petit mouton. How are you going to do it?”
“By British efficiency. By proving to him that we are superior to him in every way. We’ll teach him that it doesn’t pay to be a wolf.”
“And do you think he will like being transformed into a lamb, while you remain a lion?”
“I don’t suppose so, but we’ll give him his chance to try to become a lion too.”
Jeanne shook her head. “No, monsieur, wolf he is and wolf he will remain. A wolf with venomous teeth. The civilized world must see that the teeth are always drawn.”
“I’m speaking of fifty years hence,” said the sergeant.
“And I of three hundred years hence.”
“You’re mistaken, mademoiselle.”
Jeanne shook her head. “No. I’m not mistaken. Tell me. Why do you want to become brother to the Boche?”
“I’m not going to be his brother till the war’s over,” said the sergeant stolidly. “At present I am devoting all my faculties to killing as many of him as I can.”
She smiled. “Sufficient for the day is the good thereof. Go on killing them, monsieur. The more you kill the fewer there will be for your children and your grandchildren to lie down with.”
She left him and tried to puzzle out his philosophy. For the ordinary French philosophy of the war is very simple. They have no high-falutin, altruistic ideas of improving the Boche. They don’t care a tinker’s curse what happens to the unholy brood beyond the Rhine, so long as they are beaten, humiliated, subjected: so long as there is no chance of their ever deflowering again with their brutality the sacred soil of France. The French mind cannot conceive the idea of this beautiful brotherhood; but, on the contrary, rejects it as something loathsome, something bordering on spiritual defilement…
No; Jeanne could not accept the theory that we were waging war for the ultimate chastening and beatification of Germany. She preferred Doggie’s reason for fighting. For his soul. There was something which she could grip. And having gripped it, it was something around which her imagination could weave a web of noble fancy. After all, when she came to think of it, every one of the Allies must be fighting for his soul. For his soul’s sake had not her father died? Although she knew no word of German, it was obvious that the Uhlan officer had murdered him because he had refused to betray his country. And her uncle. To fight for his soul, had he not gone out with his heroic but futile sporting gun? And this pragmatical sergeant? What else had led him from his schoolroom to the battlefield? Why couldn’t he be honest about it, like Doggie?
She missed Doggie. He ought to be there, as she had often seen him unobserved, talking with his friends or going about his military duties, or playing the flageolet with the magical touch of the musician. She knew far more of Doggie than he was aware of … And at night she prayed for the little English soldier who was facing Death.
She had much time to think of him during the hours when she sat by the bedside of Aunt Morin, who talked incessantly of François-Marie who was killed on the Argonne, and Gaspard who, as a territorial, was no doubt defending Madagascar from invasion. And it was pleasant to think of him, because he was a new distraction from tragical memories. He seemed to lay the ghosts … He was different from all the Englishmen she had met. The young officers who had helped her in her flight, had very much the same charm of breeding, very much the same intonation of voice; instinctively she knew him to be of the same social caste; but they, and the officers whom she saw about the street and in the courtyard, when duty called them there, had the military air of command. And this her little English soldier had not. Of course, he was only a private, and privates are trained to obedience. She knew that perfectly well. But why was he not commanding instead of obeying? There was a reason for it. She had seen it in his eyes. She wished she had made him talk more about himself. Perhaps she had been unsympathetic and selfish. He assumed, she reflected, a certain crânerie with his fellows – and crânerie is “swagger” bereft of vulgarity – we have no word to connote its conception in a French mind – and she admired it; but her swift intuition pierced the assumption. She divined a world of hesitancies behind the Musketeer swing of the shoulders. He was so gentle, so sensitive, so quick to understand. And yet so proud. And yet again so unconfessedly dependent. Her woman’s protective instinct responded to a mute appeal.
“But, Ma’amselle Jeanne, you are wet through, you are perished with cold. What folly have you been committing?” Toinette scolded, when she returned after wishing Doggie the last “bonne chance.”
“The folly of putting my Frenchwoman’s heart (mon cœur de Française) into the hands of a brave little soldier to fight with him in the trenches.”
“Mon Dieu, ma’amselle, you had better go straight to bed, and I will bring you a bon tilleul, which will calm your nerves and produce a good perspiration.”
So Toinette put Jeanne to bed and administered the infallible infusion of lime leaves, and Jeanne was never the worse for her adventure. But the next day she wondered a little why she had undertaken it. She had a vague idea that it paid a little debt of sympathy.
An evening or two afterwards Jeanne was sewing in the kitchen when Toinette, sitting in the arm-chair by the extinct fire, fished out of her pocket the little olive-wood box with the pansies and forget-me-nots on the lid, and took a long pinch of snuff. She did it with somewhat of an air which caused Jeanne to smile.
“Dites donc, Toinette, you are insupportable with your snuff-box. One would say a marquise of the old school.”
“Ah, Ma’amselle Jeanne,” said the old woman, “you must not laugh at me. I was just thinking that, if anything happened to the petit monsieur, I couldn’t have the heart to go on putting his snuff up my old nose.”
“Nothing will happen to him,” said Jeanne.
The old woman sighed and re-engulfed the snuff-box. “Who knows? From one minute to another who knows whether the little ones who are dear to us are alive or dead?”
“And this petit monsieur is dear to you, Toinette?” Jeanne asked, in her even voice, without looking up from her sewing.
“Since he resembles my petiot.”
“He will come back,” said Jeanne.
“I hope so,” said the old woman mournfully.
In spite of manifold duties, Jeanne found the days curiously long. She slept badly. The tramp of the sentry below her window over the archway brought her no sense of comfort, as it had done for months before the coming of Doggie. All the less did it produce the queer little thrill of happiness which was hers when, looking down through the shutter slats she had identified in the darkness, on a change of guard, the little English soldier to whom she had spoken so intimately. And when he had challenged the rounds, she had recognized his voice… If she had obeyed an imbecile and unmaidenly impulse, she would have drawn open the shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a million or so of his fellow-countrymen.
She found herself counting the days to Doggie’s return.
“At last, it is to-morrow!” she said to Toinette.
“What is it to-morrow?” asked the old woman.
“The return of our regiment,” replied Jeanne.
“That is good. We have a regiment now,” said Toinette ironically.
The Midland company marched away – as so many had marched away before; but Jeanne did not go to the little embankment at the turn of the road to wish anyone good luck. She stood at the house door, as she had always done, to watch them pass in the darkness; for there is always something in the sight of men going into battle which gives you a lump in the throat. For Jeanne it had almost grown into a religious practice.
The sergeant had told her that the new-comers would arrive at dawn. She slept a little; awoke with a start as day began to break; dressed swiftly, and went downstairs to wait. And then her ear caught the rumble and the tramp of the approaching battalion. Presently transport rolled by, and squads of men, haggard in the grey light, bending double under their packs, staggered along to their billets. And then came a rusty crew, among whom she recognized McPhail’s tall gaunt figure. She stood by the gateway, bareheaded, in her black dress and blue apron, defying the sharp morning air, and watched them pass through. She saw Mo Shendish, his eyes on the heels of the man in front. She recognized nearly all. But the man she looked for was not there.