"Among other things they give me two francs when three is marked!"
"But once they gave you ten where three was marked!"
"That"s all changed!" laughed the taxi-man. "And it"s a long story. I don"t like them."
"Go away!" said France restlessly, pushing at the new nations in her bosom. "It"s all done. Go back again!"
"Are you an Ally?" said the Allies to each other balefully, their eyes no longer lit by battle, but irritable with disillusion--and each told his women tales of the other"s shortcomings.
Along the sides of the roads, in the gutters, picking the dust-heap of the battlefields, there were representatives of other nations who did not join in the inter-criticism of the lords of the earth. Chinese, Arabs and Annamites made signs and gibbered, but none cared whether they were in amity or enmity.
Only up in Germany was there any peace from acrimony. _There_ the Allies walked contentedly about, fed well, looked kindly at each other. _There_ were no epithets to fling--they had all been flung long ago.
And the German people, looking curiously back, begged b.u.t.tons as souvenirs from the uniforms of the men who spoke so many different languages.
CHAPTER XVI
THE ARDENNES
The day wore on--
The sun came lower and nearer, till the half-light ran with her half- thought, dropping, sinking, dying. "Guise," said the signpost, and a battlement stared down and threw its shadow across her face. "Is that where the dukes lived?" She was a speck in the landscape, moving on wheels that were none of her invention, covering distances of hundreds of miles without amazement, upon a magic mount unknown to her forefathers. Dark and light moved across the face of the falling day.
Sometimes when she lifted her eyes great clouds full of rain were crossing the sky; and now, when she looked again the wind had torn them to shreds and hunted them away. The shadows lengthened--those of the few trees falling in bars across the road. A turn of the road brought the setting sun in her face, and blinded with light, she drove into it. When it had gone it left rays enough behind to colour everything, gilding the road itself, the air, the mists that hung in the ditches.
Before the light was gone she saw the Ardennes forests begin upon her left.
When it was gone, wood and road, air and earth, were alike stone-coloured.
Then the definite night, creeping forward on all sides, painted out all but the road and the margin of the road--and with the side lights on all vision narrowed down to the grey snout of the bonnet, the two hooped mudguards stretched like divers" arms, and the blanched dead leaves which floated above from the unseen branches of the trees.
Four crazy Fords were drawn up in one village street, and as her lights flashed on the door she caught sight of the word "Cafe" written on it.
Placing the Renault beside the Fords she opened the door. Within five Frenchmen were drinking at one table, and four Americans at another. The Americans sprang up and claimed her, first as their own kin, and then at least as a blood sister. They gave her coffee, and would not let her pay; but she sat uneasily with them.
"For which nation do you work? There are no English here," they said.
"I am in the French Army."
"Gee, what a rotten job!" they murmured sympathetically.
"Where have you come from?"
"We"ve just come back from Germany, and you bet it"s good up there!"
"Good?"
"Every darn thing you want. Good beds, good food, and, thank G.o.d, one can speak the lingo."
"You don"t speak French then?"
"You bet not."
"Why don"t you learn? Mightn"t it be useful to you?"
"Useful?"
"Oh, when you get back home. In business perhaps--"
"Ma"am," said the biggest American, leaning earnestly towards her, "let me tell you one thing. If any man comes up to me back in the States and starts on me with that darn language--I"ll drop him one."
"And German is easier?"
"Oh, well, German we learn in the schools, you see. How far do you make it to St. Quentin?"
"Are you going there on those Fords?"
"We hope to, ma"am. But we started a convoy of twenty this morning, and these here four cars are all we"ve seen since lunch."
"I hardly think you"ll get as far as St. Quentin to-night. And there"s little enough to sleep in on the way. I should stay here." She rose. "I wish you luck. Good-bye."
She thanked them for their coffee, nodded to the quiet French table and went out.
One American followed her.
"Can you buzz her round?" he asked kindly, and taking the handle, buzzed her round.
"I bet you don"t get any one to do that for you in your army, do you?"
he asked, as he straightened himself from the starting handle. She put her gear in with a little bang of anger.
"You"re kind," she said, "and they are kind. That you can"t see it is all a question of language. Every village is full of bored Americans with nothing to do, and never one of them buys a dictionary!"
"If it"s villages you speak of, ma"am, it isn"t dictionaries is needed,"
he answered, ""tis plumbing!"
She had not left him ten minutes before one of her tyres punctured.
"Alas! I could have found a better use for them than arguing," she thought ruefully, regretting the friendly Americans, as she changed the tyre by the roadside under the beam from her own lamps.
When it was done she sat for a few minutes in the silent car. The moon came up and showed her the battlements of the Ardennes forest standing upon the crest of the mountains to her left. "That is to be my home--"
Julien was in Paris by now, divested of his uniform, sitting by a great fire, eating civilised food. A strange young man in dark clothes--she wondered what he would wear.
He seemed a great many difficult miles away. That he should be in a heated room with lights, and flowers, and a spread table--and she under the shadow of the forest watching the moon rise, lengthened the miles between them; yet though she would have given much to have him with her, she would have given nothing to change places with him.