Three Soldiers Part 72

"How good it smells!" said Jeanne.

"It's the spring."

"I want to lie on the gra.s.s and eat violets.... Oh, how good you were to bring me out like this, Jean. You must know lots of fine ladies you could have brought out, because you are so well educated. How is it you are only an ordinary soldier?"

"Good G.o.d! I wouldn't be an officer."

"Why? It must be rather nice to be an officer."

"Does Etienne want to be an officer?"

"But he's a socialist, that's different."

"Well, I suppose I must be a socialist too, but let's talk of something else."

Andrews moved over to the other side of the platform. They were pa.s.sing little villas with gardens on the road where yellow and pale-purple crocuses bloomed. Now and then there was a scent of violets in the moist air. The sun had disappeared under soft purplish-grey clouds. There was occasionally a rainy chill in the wind.

Andrews suddenly thought of Genevieve Rod. Curious how vividly he remembered her face, her wide, open eyes and her way of smiling without moving her firm lips. A feeling of annoyance went through him. How silly of him to go off rudely like that! And he became very anxious to talk to her again; things he wanted to say to her came to his mind.

"Well, are you asleep?" said Jeanne tugging at his arm. "Here we are."

Andrews flushed furiously.

"Oh, how nice it is here, how nice it is here!" Jeanne was saying.

"Why, it is eleven o'clock," said Andrews.

"We must see the palace before lunch," cried Jeanne, and she started running up a lane of linden trees, where the fat buds were just bursting into little crinkling fans of green. New gra.s.s was sprouting in the wet ditches on either side. Andrews ran after her, his feet pounding hard in the moist gravel road. When he caught up to her he threw his arms round her recklessly and kissed her panting mouth. She broke away from him and strode demurely arranging her hat.

"Monster," she said, "I trimmed this hat specially to come out with you and you do your best to wreck it."

"Poor little hat," said Andrews, "but it is so beautiful today, and you are very lovely, Jeanne."

"The great Napoleon must have said that to the Empress Josephine and you know what he did to her," said Jeanne almost solemnly.

"But she must have been awfully bored with him long before."

"No," said Jeanne, "that's how women are."

They went through big iron gates into the palace grounds.

Later they sat at a table in the garden of a little restaurant. The sun, very pale, had just showed itself, making the knives and forks and the white wine in their gla.s.ses gleam faintly. Lunch had not come yet. They sat looking at each other silently. Andrews felt weary and melancholy.

He could think of nothing to say. Jeanne was playing with some tiny white daisies with pink tips to their petals, arranging them in circles and crosses on the tablecloth.

"Aren't they slow?" said Andrews.

"But it's nice here, isn't it?" Jeanne smiled brilliantly. "But how glum he looks now." She threw some daisies at him. Then, after a pause, she added mockingly: "It's hunger, my dear. Good Lord, how dependent men are on food!"

Andrews drank down his wine at a gulp. He felt that if he could only make an effort he could lift off the stifling melancholy that was settling down on him like a weight that kept growing heavier.

A man in khaki, with his face and neck scarlet, staggered into the garden dragging beside him a mud-encrusted bicycle. He sank into an iron chair, letting the bicycle fall with a clatter at his feet.

"Hi, hi," he called in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

A waiter appeared and contemplated him suspiciously. The man in khaki had hair as red as his face, which was glistening with sweat. His s.h.i.+rt was torn, and he had no coat. His breeches and puttees were invisible for mud.

"Gimme a beer," croaked the man in khaki.

The waiter shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

"Il demande une biere," said Andrews.

"Mais Monsieur...."

"I'll pay. Get it for him."

The waiter disappeared.

"Thankee, Yank," roared the man in khaki.

The waiter brought a tall narrow yellow gla.s.s. The man in khaki took it from his hand, drank it down at a draught and handed back the empty gla.s.s. Then he spat, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, got with difficulty to his feet and shambled towards Andrews's table.

"Oi presoom the loidy and you don't mind, Yank, if Oi parley wi' yez a bit. Do yez?"

"No, come along; where did you come from?"

The man in khaki dragged an iron chair behind him to a spot near the table. Before sitting down he bobbed his head in the direction of Jeanne with an air of solemnity tugging at the same time at a lock of his red hair. After some fumbling he got a red-bordered handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face with it, leaving a long black smudge of machine oil on his forehead.

"Oi'm a bearer of important secret messages, Yank," he said, leaning back in the little iron chair. "Oi'm a despatch-rider."

"You look all in."

"Not a bit of it. Oi just had a little hold up, that's all, in a woodland lane. Some b.u.g.g.e.rs tried to do me in."

"What d'you mean?"

"Oi guess they had a little information... that's all. Oi'm carryin'

important messages from our headquarters in Rouen to your president. Oi was goin' through a b.l.o.o.d.y thicket past this side. Oi don't know how you p.r.o.nounce the b.l.o.o.d.y town.... Oi was on my bike making about thoity for the road was all a-murk when Oi saw four b.u.g.g.e.rs standing acrost the road... lookter me suspiciouslike, so Oi jus' jammed the juice into the boike and made for the middle 'un. He dodged all right. Then they started shootin' and a b.l.o.o.d.y bullet b.u.g.g.e.red the boike.... It was bein'

born with a caul that saved me.... Oi picked myself up outer the ditch an lost 'em in the woods. Then Oi got to another b.l.o.o.d.y town and commandeered this old sweatin' machine.... How many kills is there to Paris, Yank?"

"Fifteen or sixteen, I think."

"What's he saying, Jean?"

"Some men tried to stop him on the road. He's a despatch-rider."

"Isn't he ugly? Is he English?"