"Ah, tall! The other is very short ... The tall one is the Commandant"s aide, Captain Chatel. He may not be able.... But I will see!" He disappeared again.
When he returned he had the young man beside him.
"One moment," said Chatel, as they walked towards the car; "who asked for me, the girl with the fair hair, or with the dark?"
"With the fair."
Moitriers was closed when they reached it, and they drove on to the only other place where food could be bought past the hour of midnight--the station buffet.
Pushing past the barriers at the entrance to the station they entered a long corridor filled with heavy civilian life. Men and women lay, slept and snored upon the stone ledges which lined the side of the tunnel, their bags and packets stacked around them. Small children lay asleep like cut corn, heads hanging and nodding in all directions, or propped against each other in such an intricate combination that if one should move the whole sheaf of tired heads slipped lower to the floor.
Further on, swing doors of gla.s.s led to a waiting-room, and here the sleeping men and women were so packed upon the ground and around the little tables that it was difficult to walk between them. Men sat in groups of nine or ten around a table meant for four each with his head sunk down between his hands upon the marble surface. On one table a small child wrapped in shawls lay among the circle of heads, curled like a snail, its toe in its father"s ear. At each end of the room stood soldiers with fixed bayonets.
Denis paused at the entrance. "Walk round here," he said, "there is a gangway for the sentry."
"If we talk too loud," said f.a.n.n.y, "we shall wake them."
"They must soon wake in any case. It must be near the time for the train. You know who they are?"
"Who?"
"Germans. Expelled from Metz. They leave in batches for Germany every night--by a train that comes in and goes out at some horrible hour."
Pa.s.sing through more gla.s.s doors they came to an inner room where, behind a buffet, a lady in black silk served them with beer and slices of raw ham and bread.
The four sat down for a moment at a little table--Denis talking of the system by which the outgoing Germans were nightly weeded from those who had permission to remain behind in Metz. Julien Chatel joined in the conversation. He spoke with the others but he glanced at f.a.n.n.y. For the briefest of seconds he thought as he looked at her face that he saw a new interest smile upon it. He did not know that his own face wore the same look. His look said as he looked at her: "You, you, you!" At one moment she thought: "Am I pretty?" At the next she was content only to breathe, and thought no more of herself. She took in now his eyes which seldom rested on her, now a movement of his lips which made her feel both happy and miserable, and suddenly she learnt how often his finger traced some letter upon his cheek.
These things were important. They were like the opening sentences of a great play to which one must listen, absorbed, for fear of misunderstanding all the story.
It was not long before they rose, threaded their way back between the sleeping Germans, regained the car, and drove down the silent streets towards the Cathedral.
"Have you seen it?" said Julien in a low voice, addressing her directly.
"The Cathedral?"
"Yes. I want to show it to you. Will you meet me there to-morrow at three?"
(The others talked and smiled and knew nothing. Whoever has a secret is stronger than they who know nothing. f.a.n.n.y thought: "My companions, to be as you are is not to exist! Whatever you feel, you are feeling nothing ...")
"Will you?"
"Yes," she answered, and joined her hands tightly, for this was where the play really began.
The sun shone gaily. Here was no mud, no unhappiness, here were no puzzled women, and touching mayors of ruined villages, but instead gay goblin houses, pointed churches like sugar cake, the old French theatre with its stone garlands glittering in the sun; sun everywhere, streaming over the Place du Theatre, over women shaking coloured rags from the windows, women washing linen by the river; everything that had been wet was drying, everything that had savoured of tears and age and sadness was burning up under the sun, and what moisture remained was brighter than jewels.
"Suppose he never came!"
"Why, then, be ready for that. Very likely he wouldn"t come. Very likely he would think in daylight--" She is not a woman, but an English Amazon..."" f.a.n.n.y glanced down at her clothes regretfully. She was ill-equipped for an a.s.signation.
"At least I might have better gloves," she thought, and walked into a small shop which advertised men"s clothes in German across the window.
She bought yellow washing-leather gloves at twenty-eight francs a pair, and would have paid a hundred had the salesman insisted.
And now with yellow gloves, silk stockings, shining shoes and a heart as light as a leaf upon a wind she walked towards the Cathedral.
"He won"t come. He won"t be there...." She pushed at the east door.
He was under a Madonna, his black and silver hat in his hand, his eyes critical and pleased as he walked to meet her. They sat down together on a seat, without speaking. Then, each longing for the other to speak --"You have come...." he said first. (His face was oval and his hair was shining.)
"Yes," she nodded, and noticed a peculiar glory in the Cathedral. The dark cave shone as white flesh and youth can shine through the veils of a mourner.
They no longer lived their own separate lives; they had come together at each other"s call.
"I thought you wouldn"t come."
"Why, why did you think that?"
Little questions and little answers fell in a sudden rain from their lips. Yet while f.a.n.n.y spoke he did not seem to know what she said, and answered at random, or sometimes he did not answer at all, but smiled.
Afraid of the fragile avowal of silence, evading it, she found little words to follow one another. But he answered less and less, and smiled at her, till his face was full of this smile. So then she said: "We"ll go out and walk by the river," and he rose at once and followed her among the forest of wooden chairs. They forgot that he was to have shown her the Cathedral. In all its length she never saw one statue except the first Madonna, not one stone face but his young face with the cold light upon it, his hands as white as stones, as long and fine as any of the carved fingers which prayed around them.
They walked together down the winding path below the bridge to the very edge of the Moselle, which lay in light winter sunlight, its banks buried in shrubberies of green.
Mont St. Quentin, conical, covered with waving trees, shone like a hill in summer, and beyond it the indigo forest of every Lorraine horizon floated indefinitely like a cloud.
A young doctor lounged beside them, putty-coloured under his red plush cap. "Why are all doctors plain in France?" she laughed.
"Hush!" He wound his hand round and round like the player of a barrel -organ. "I have to stop you when you say silly things like a phonograph, at so much a metre."
So he believed he might tease her.... Delighted, she stopped by the bank of the river and stared into the water. The sun ran over her shoulders and warmed her hands. The still shine of the river held both their eyes as movement in a train holds the mind.
"I am enjoying my walk," he said. He did not mean it like that, or as a compliment to her. When it was said he thought it sounded ba.n.a.l, and was sorry. "What a pity!"
But she was not critical because she was looking for living happiness, and every moment she was more and more convinced that she would get it.
But when he asked her her name and she repeated it, it sounded so much like an avowal that they both turned together down the tow-path with a quick movement and spoke of other things, for they were old enough to be afraid that the vague happiness that fluttered before them down the path would not be so beautiful when it was caught. And at this fear she said distinctly to herself: "In love!" and wondered that she had not said it before.
Coming back to him with her words, she then began to wound and to delay him. "You mustn"t be late for your office...."
"When shall I see you again?"
They dropped into a long silence. She summoned her coquetry that she called pride. The blue, blue forest at the edge of her sight tilted a little like a ship, the watery hill-country rolled towards it in mysterious kilometres.
"It is beautiful," she said clumsily, avoiding his question, ignoring it. "Yet when I go there it is always more beautiful on the next hill."
"I must hurry," he said at once, "I shall be late at my office."
"Where is your office?"