"Colonel Dellahousse," explained the lieutenant, smiling very much, "does not believe that you can love what you know."
The Russian nodded. "Love is based on a fabulous belief. An illusory image which fills the eyes of people who are unused to each other. This poor lady will soon be used to everything."
f.a.n.n.y, who felt momentarily alarmed, suddenly remembered Julien.
"When do we go back?" she asked absently.
The sympathetic eyes of the lieutenant seemed to understand even that, and he smiled again.
They left next day, after the midday meal.
Before lunch she met a soldier, who stopped her in one of the branching corridors.
"You are going," he said. "I have a little thing to ask."
She waited.
"Mademoiselle, it would not incommode you, it is such a little thing.
Think! We have not seen a woman here so long."
Still she waited; and he muttered, already abashed:
"One kiss would not hurt you, mademoiselle."
"Let me pa.s.s...." she stammered to this member of the great "monastery."
He wavered and stood aside, and she went on up the corridor vaguely ashamed of her refusal.
"We go now," said the Russian, rising from the luncheon table. "Are you satisfied with your experience, mademoiselle?"
"My experience?"
"Verdun. This life is strange to you. I have seen you reflective. Now, if you will go out to the car you shall go back to your civilised town where the Governor so dislikes me, and you shall see your women friends again! But we are not coming all the way with you."
"No?"
"No, we stay at Briey. You return from Briey alone."
They set out once more upon the roads which ran between the dead violence of the plains--between trenches that wandered down from the side of a sandy hillock, by villages which appeared like an illusion upon the hillside, fading as they pa.s.sed and reforming into the semblance of houses in the distance behind them.
The clouds above their heads were built up to a great height, rocky and cavernous; crows swung on outspread wings, dived and alighted heavily on the earth like fowls. They came behind the old German lines, and the road changing led them through short patches of covering woods filled with instruments. Depot after depot was piled between the trees and the notices hanging from the branches chattered antique directions at them.
"The drinking trough--the drinking trough!" cried one, but they had no horse to water. "Take this path!" urged another, "for the...." but they flew by too fast to read the end of the message, while the path pursued them a little way among the pines, then turned abruptly away. "Do not smoke here ... _Nicht rauchen_," "NICHT RAUCHEN," "_Rauchen streng verboten_," cried the notices, in furious impotent voices. The wood chattered and spat with cries, with commands for which the men who made them cared no longer. The hungry noses of old guns snuffed at the car as it rolled by, guns dragging still upon their flanks the torn cloak of camouflage--small squat guns which stared idly into the air, or with wider mouths still, like petrified dogs for ever baying at the moon--long slim guns which lay along the gra.s.s and pushing undergrowth--and one gun which had dipped forward and, fallen upon its knees, howled silenced imprecations at the devil in the centre of the earth.
When they had pa.s.sed the shattered staging of the past they came out upon the country which had been occupied by Germans but not by warfare.
Here the fields, uncultivated, had grown wild, but round the spa.r.s.e villages little patches of ground had been dug and sown. Not a cow grazed anywhere, not a sheep or a goat. No hens raced wildly across village streets. Far ahead on the white ribbon of road a black figure toiled in the gutter, and f.a.n.n.y debated with herself: "Might I offer a lift?"
Looking ahead she saw no village or cottage within sight, and with a murmured apology to the Russian she pulled up beside the old woman whom she had overtaken.
"Where are you going?"
"To Briey."
"We, too. Get in, madame."
The Russian made no comment. The old crone, knuckled, hard-breathing, climbed in, holding uncertainly to the windscreen and pulling after her her basket and umbrella.
"Cover yourself, madame," ordered f.a.n.n.y, as to a child, and handed her a rug.
"I have never been in an auto before," whispered the old creature against a wind which made her breathless. "I have seen them pa.s.s."
"You are not afraid?"
"Oh, no!"
"Cover yourself well, well."
Gallant old women, toiling like ants upon the long stretches of road, who, suddenly finding themselves projected through the air at a pace they had never experienced in their lives before, would say not a word, though the colour be whipped to their cheeks and their eyes rained tears until, clinging to the arm of the driver: "Stop here, mademoiselle!"
they would whisper, expecting the car to rear and stop dead at their own doorstep; and finding themselves still carried on, and half believing themselves kidnapped: "Ah, mademoiselle, stop, stop...."
They slipped down into the pit of Briey where the houses cling to the sides of a circular hollow, and drew up by a white house which the Frenchman indicated.
The old woman searched, trembling and out of breath for her handkerchief, and wiped her streaming eyes; then, as she climbed out backwards, with feet feeling for the ground--"What do I owe you, mademoiselle?"
"Ah, nothing, nothing."
"_Mais si_! I am not at all poor!" and leaving a twopence-halfpenny piece on the seat, she hurried away.
Colonel Dellahousse came to the side of the car and thanked f.a.n.n.y ceremoniously. "And if I do not see you again, mademoiselle," he said, "remember what I say and go back to your home before the pleasure of life is spoilt for you."
"Good-bye, good-bye," said the French lieutenant.
Soon after she had left Briey snow began to fall. A river circled at the foot of a hill, and she followed its windings on a road which ran just above it. Night wiped out the colours on the hills around her, until the moon rose and they glowed again, half trees, half light. She climbed slowly up to a plateau not a dozen miles from Metz.
An hour later, the car put away in the garage, f.a.n.n.y was tapping at the window of the bath house in the town. The beautiful fat woman who prepared the baths answered her tap. "Fraulein," said f.a.n.n.y, "would it matter if I had a bath? Is it too late? I"ll turn it on myself and dry it afterwards."
What did the woman mind if f.a.n.n.y had a bath? Fat and beautiful, she had nothing left to wish for, and contentedly she gave her the corner room overlooking the ca.n.a.l and the theatre square, wishing her a good-night full of German blessings. The water ran boiling out of the tap, and the smoke curled up over the looking-gla.s.s and the window-sill.
When the bath was full to the brim she got in, lay back, and pulled open the window with her toe. The beautiful French theatre, piebald with snow and shadow, shone over the window-sill. The Cathedral clock struck out ten chimes, whirling and singing over her head, the voices of the little boys died down, the last had thrown his last s...o...b..ll and gone to bed.
The steam rose up like a veil before the window, and once again, between the grey walls of her bath--so like her cradle and her coffin--she meditated upon the riches and treasure of the pa.s.sing days.
"And yet," echoed the thoughts in that still water travelling still, "to travel is not to move across the earth."
Peering back into the past, frowning in the effort to string forgotten words together, f.a.n.n.y whispered upon the surface of the water: